Passover

There is something so amazing about the calm and righteousness of a true believer. The stoic ability to stand their ground and say outragious things with a clarity and complete conviction. It also scares the shit out of me.

The economizing office in the the absence of the British Jewish boss celebrating passover on a sunny island somewhere, is manned by a Pakistani Muslim, an Australian Christian and little me. Inevitably we talk about passover. I talk about my favorites, the excessive wine and the Charoses (sp?) when Australian economist pops his head over the cubicle barrier and says with conviction that I am not understanding the whole story and its important message at which point he launches into an explanation of the whole story and its important message.

The true meaning you see is the parallel between the suffering of the Israelites in Egyptian captivity and the message of Jesus Christ. The fact that the Israelite's first born son's were spared due to their obedience to God's wish and their putting blood of the sacrificial lamb on the door of their house shows the mercy of God and Christ and the need for you and me to believe and obey.

The escape of the Israelites from Egypt with the red sea parting for the Israelites but crashing down on the Egyptians that chase them is the meaning of believing some more: Jesus saves those who believe in him and becomes brings death upon those that do not. Here I can barely contain a smirk. Is this guy truly telling me he literally believes in the actual sea parting, as in water masses moving to the sides? We are not talking a random flash flood due to some insane moon activity, we are talking a purposeful parting of the waves in order to reward and punish respectively (WAIT A SECOND! The Asian tsunami of 2006 did happen the day after Christmas..). Moving on.

Being in captivity in Egypt is like having to fight Satan. As any Christian will tell you (according to Australian economist) just when Jesus has found his way into your heart, Satan will come after you. He will tempt you. He will try to make you do crazy things like jump off the balcony. Satan will try to enslave you, make you his. Just like the Egyptians tried to do with the Israelites.

Now onto faith: The lamb that was slain and whose blood had to be used to mark the houses where the Israelites lived is quite obviously Jesus' blood and the angel of death out searching for first born sons to kill will spare you if you believe and thus slay the lamb and mark your house.

Fun fact: The Israelites were instructed not to break the bones of the lamb when they killed it. This instruction only make sense if you know the lamb is Jesus because apparently when people got crucified they did not die for a long time and to hurry up the process people would show up at night and break their bones to make them die faster. Don't ask me if and how that works. However, in Jesus' case when they came to break his bones, he was already dead. Thus in order for the parallel to work out perfectly in its foresight, the lamb's bones should stay intact as well.

I pointed out that in fact the current Israelites are not so hot on Jesus at which point Australian economist jumped off his chair, shouting and pointing "and that is the tragedy! But they will! One day they will believe! The old testament is predicting that they will deny the symbolism of the sacrifice that Jesus made and they will try to tell their children that passover is not about a sacrifice" but here he pulls out Exodus 12:26 and quotes that in fact they ought to be telling their children that passover is celebrated to honor this sacrifice and by doing so they will be implicitly telling their children to believe in Jesus Christ.

Without meaning too much disrespect to anyone, it's pretty hard for me to follow how back in the days all these amazing things happened like parting seas, angles swooping down killing first born sons and bread that should have run out a long time ago just replenishing itself over and over. I mean if that sort of stuff were to happen today, maybe I would be a believer too but it's been pretty calm on the eastern front as of late.