Christ, Our Passover Lamb

Yesterday, Danny and I had the privilege of attending the Samaritan’s Passover sacrifice. As I was standing, observing on the fence beforehand, a couple things hit me in the face about the process of sacrifice. But a few clarifying comments first.

First, the Samaritans are a people group that never departed from Samaria (North of Jerusalem) because they believed that’s where God’s temple should be. In the first 5 books of the Bible, Jerusalem is never mentioned, but the area of Samaria is. So they’ve never departed from that. Now, there are about 700 citizens of this village and they are fairly exclusive.

Secondly, Christ as being slaughter as a lamb probably sounds weird to those outside the faith, and common to those inside. So, as a brief overview to those outside, here are a few comments. There’s a Jewish festival celebrating the Exodus when God brought the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage. They had to sacrifice a lamb and put the blood on their door posts, so that the Lord would “pass over” there house and have mercy on their firstborn. This was just a shadow of what was to come. Christ came to fulfill this shadow with a true reality of forgiveness and covering. His blood covers us, so that God’s wrath passes over us on the Day of Judgment. God sees Christ’s blood and righteousness, and not our own sin and dirtiness. By His blood we are made clean.

Now some notes on the sacrifice. We actually did not get to see the deed done, which was disappointing. The highlight though was them bringing the dead, skinned, gutted sheep and set them up and cleaned them literally right in front of me. The similarities of the sacrifice and of Jesus’ sacrifice came before the slaughter, mainly because that’s all I saw. The parallels could be more modern, or they could reach back to antiquity. Anyway, before the sacrifice the people were mocking the sheep and afflicting them. They beat them and slapped them. They lifted up and carried them by their fur. They were making a show of it, just as they did to Jesus. Even though they were supposed to show remorse for their sin, it was more of a celebration. Also, the sheep almost strangely knew something was going down. They tried skirting away. They were making noises. I see this in Jesus’ prayer in the garden. If there was a way out, He asked for it. But there wasn’t. So he didn’t try to run, because there wasn’t another way. Isaiah says,
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?"

For the joy set before him, he endured the shame and embarrassment of the cross. He said not a word to Pilate under accusation. He knew the path he had to walk, and He walked it obediently. He did not try to escape. He raised not his voice.
Maybe this is a more modern comparison, or maybe this tradition was passed down. Either way, I think it provides some good insights to what Biblical Passover may have looked like- and more fully what and why Jesus’ crucifixion was described as it was.

Praising the Perfect Sacrifice,
Sos