The Easter Experience, Then and Now

The Sunday School Class for which I am preparing Palm Sunday and Easter reflections is called "The Biblical Perspectives Class". Our effort is to look at current questions of faith and life from a perspective illumined by study of the Bible. (My daughter persuaded me that there might be other folks who would be interested in these notes, and therefore this blog!)

Understanding the foundational Christian event of Easter from a Biblical Perspective has to begin with the antecedents in the Hebrew Bible's accounts of Passover and Exodus. This is underlined by Luke's reference in Luke 9:31 where he tells us that Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah, the symbolic representatives of the Torah (or the Law) and the Prophets, "about his departure -- and the word in Greek is his "Exodus", the same word used for the deliverance of the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt!-- which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem."
The Easter event is seen in this perspective as a new Exodus, a new leading-forth of God's people from bondage into freedom and the fulfillment of God's promises, only this time it is not a geographical but a spiritual journey, a liberation from bondage to sin and death and despair into new life and freedom and hope and joy in Christ and by God's indwelling Spirit.

In Genesis 50:24-25 the dying Joseph says to his brothers: "I am about to die, but God will surely come to you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." So Joseph made the Israelites swear, saying, "When God comes to you, you shall carry up my bones from here." This sets the Exodus of Israel from Egypt in a framework of faith in God who will come to save God's people and in whose salvation even the bodies of the dead will have a sure part. This is not yet the hope of resurrection, but it is a hope that the faithfulness and the power and the holy purpose of God transcend our deaths. The first Exodus foreshadows the glory of "the Exodus which Jesus was to accomplish at Jerusalem."

The account of the Exodus plagues has many echoes in the story of Jesus' suffering and death in the Gospels. Of course the primary echo is the death of the first-born sons of the Egyptians (Exod. 11:4-5) which foreshadows the death of God's own Son, but there is also the darkness over the land of Egypt for three days (Exod.10:21-23), echoed by the darkness over the whole land for three hours (Mt. 27:45; Lk.23:44,45), and the loud cry (Exod. 11:6, 12:30) which corresponds to Jesus' crying with a loud voice (Mt.27:46, 50; Mk. 15: 34,37; Lk.23:46). The sacrifice of the Lamb for the Passover, and the marking of the houses with the blood of the lamb, foretell the death of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). One detail noted by John 19:33-36 is that none of Jesus' bones were broken, as was required of the Passover Lamb (Exod. 12:46). The death of the first-born of Egypt opened the way for God's people to leave their physical bondage as the death of Jesus opened the way for us to escape our bondage to sin and death.