Consider this Scripture as you meditate on
this Holy Week, the coming Passover and your traditions.
So the Pharisees and teachers of religious
law asked him, "Why don't your disciples follow our age-old tradition?
They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony." Jesus
replied, "You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you,
for he wrote, 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far
from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands
from God.' For you ignore God's law and substitute your own tradition."
Then he said, "You skillfully sidestep God's law in order to hold on to
your own tradition. Mark 7:5-9
Traditions. Most Christians don’t celebrate
Passover. In fact if you really look at the Christian Easter Traditions it
includes dressing up on Easter Sunday, having an Easter Egg Hunt…either the day
before or right after church…and a big meal—probably with ham, which would
offend most Jews. Remember Jesus was Jewish—no pork. Then after gathering the
eggs, deviled eggs were whipped up from all those hard-boiled colored eggs. What
does the easter bunny have to do with Jesus and Resurrection Sunday? This year
there won’t be many Easter Egg Hunts. For those following social distancing and
not shopping this week it is kind of hard to make deviled eggs from dried eggs,
if you happen to be out of fresh eggs.
 |
| Sunrise or Sunset? |
Saturday evening, when the Sabbath ended, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went out and purchased burial spices so they could anoint Jesus' body. Very early on Sunday morning, just at sunrise, they went to the tomb. Mark 16:1-2
Just at sunrise. A couple of years when our
church didn’t have a Sunrise Service I even hiked the 1.3 miles to the top of a nearby mountain…Badger Mountain…with an altitude of 1,593 feet. Good hike
and great view of the Tri-Cities at sunrise. It was a special time of worship…just
the Lord and me. What will this year hold? With the Stay-at-Home directive and
social distancing, especially for us “older folks” Easter will be a bit different
this year. I still want to get up at sunrise…and worship our risen Savior at
that time of day.
Traditions. Tonight at sunset Passover begins. Jews celebrate Passover in remembrance
of the first Passover in which God spared them from the angel of death…the
tenth plague which finally released the Israelites from captivity in Egypt.
They recognize the plagues as part of the Haggadah tradition in the Jewish
celebration of the Passover meal. Those plagues were:
Blood
Frogs
Lice
Flies
Pestilence
Boils
Hail
Locusts
Darkness
Death of the Firstborn
Have you ever looked at these plagues and
tried to make a correlation between the plagues and tribulation events? An
interesting study I hope to pursue soon. In the meantime…look at your
traditions. What do you do year after year at Passover or Easter?
Prayer
~ Lord Jesus, help us to see more to the Resurrection Sunday celebration than
traditions. May we honor You with our hearts.
©
2020 Text and photo by Mickey M. Hunacek. All rights reserved.
Unless
otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation,
copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of
Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc. Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Follow And Like "Banquet With
The King" on Facebook. 👍
No comments:
Post a Comment