Christ our Passover: Marked for Salvation Exodus 12:21-23

Grace, mercy, peace…

At last we’ve made it to Lent. It almost seemed like we had Easter before Lent this year, at least as far as the weather goes.

Our Lenten series is entitled, Christ: Our Passover. Jesus served as the Great Passover Lamb when he gave himself on the cross as the sacrifice for our sins.

In our Lenten services, we’ll look at different elements from the Passover or Seder Meal, and what their symbolism is for the Christian life.

Tonight, our theme is marked for salvation. We’ll look at the blood markings that were smeared on the door frames of the homes of the Israelites at the first Passover in Egypt.

The night he was betrayed, Jesus celebrated the Passover Meal with his disciples. Since it was the last meal he had before he died, it’s sometimes called the Last Supper.

For some Biblical context, the first Passover Meal happened about 1500 years earlier, in Egypt. God had sent nine plagues or disasters upon Egypt to convince the Pharaoh to release God’s people from slavery.

Pharaoh’s heart was so hard that he didn’t care that His stubbornness against God was bringing disaster on his people. So God sent one last disaster to convince him to release the Jewish slaves, the death of all the first-born sons in Egypt.

Since the first born son was the legal heir in each family, that would have caused social and economic upheaval in the land, not to mention the extreme grief of it. 

To save His people, God told Moses to instruct them to celebrate the Passover Meal. At the heart of it was the sacrificing of a spotless lamb, collecting the blood, and roasting the meat for a meal.

Then they were instructed to smear the lamb’s blood on the door posts of their homes using a hyssop plant, which was bushy and served as a brush, and also had detergent qualities, thus the symbol of cleansing from sin. Later that night, the Angel of death would see the blood and pass over those homes, not bringing death to the oldest child or anyone in them.

The reason the angel passed over the home marked with lamb’s blood, was that it represented the blood of Christ, that would be shed on the cross 1500 years later, and which cleanses us from sin or forgives us, and thereby saves us from death.

The Passover was celebrated by God’s people every year after that. Eventually it became known as the Seder Meal. Jesus was celebrating the Passover with his disciples as a Seder Meal when he instituted the Lord’s Supper.

Seder means sequence. There was a very precise sequence of events and rituals performed during the meal.

A number of rituals were added over time, so the Seder Meal was more elaborate than the original Passover Meal was. Likewise, the Seder Meal celebrated by Jewish people today is more elaborate than it was at the time of Jesus.

Originally, the Passover was celebrated in people’s homes. This continued for the first few centuries that the Israelites lived in the Promised land.

After the temple was built, many would travel on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover, and the lamb would be sacrificed in the temple and the blood poured out on the hillside behind the temple. It would run down to the stream below, and the stream would run red with blood for several days because of the, by the time of Jesus, hundreds of thousands of lambs that were sacrificed in the temple at the Passover.

This all pointed to the time when the Messiah, the Perfect Lamb of God, would be sacrificed on the cross, and his blood poured down from the cross to the ground for our forgiveness.

The cross and the ground below was marked by the innocent blood of God’s Son. But it would need to be innocent blood to save us from our sin. Guilty blood couldn’t have saved us.

In the first Passover sacrifice, the mark of salvation was the blood of a spotless lamb on the people’s door posts. In the Last Passover sacrifice, Jesus made the cross the eternal mark of salvation.

We started the service with the hymn In the Cross of Christ I Glory. The cross may well be the most recognized religious symbol in the world. But without faith, it’s just a pretty symbol or shape. Making the sign of the cross is just an empty ritual without faith. But with faith, the cross means everything.

The pastor often makes the sign of the cross at the beginning of the service during the invocation, and again during the absolution, and again at the close of the service during the Benediction.

This is a reminder that our worship begins, continues and ends focused on Christ and his death and resurrection. But more than that our lives begin, continue, and end with Christ and the cross.

When we do a Baptism, there’s a place early in the baptismal service where we make the sign of the cross, over the child’s head and heart, to mark him or her as one “redeemed by Christ who was crucified and is risen.”

In Baptism we’re marked by the cross as belonging to Christ.

People can do many different things to mark themselves. Some people choose to get a tattoo or two or more. Some NBA players are more tattooed than not. It’s hard to see any place they’re not tattooed.

Tattoos or body art mark you; they say something about you.

It reminds me of the Milky Way commercial where the big tough guy is getting a tattoo that’s supposed to say “no regrets” but instead in comes out “no regerts”. I bet he “regerted” getting that.

In ancient times, tattoos where signs of belonging. Romans soldiers and others would be tattooed as belonging to the Caesar.

In Revelation, there’s the mark of the beast. This implies the Imperial tattoo. It was talking about all who were taking part in the Emperor cult at the time, and worshipping Caesar as God, that they would have the same judgment as the Caesar who was persecuting God’s people, and all who reject God and harm his people.

In contrast, Christians at the time were marked by the cross of Christ, and refused to bow down to the Caesar and worship him.

The mark of the cross, having faith in Christ, identifies us as belonging to Him, and serving Him alone as our God. It also identifies us as His forgiven people.

On Ash Wednesdays some churches will mark people with ashes on their forehead in the shape of a cross. I saw a man on the news this morning with the sign of the cross on his forehead.

The ashes remind us of our mortality, and our need for salvation. The shape of the cross reminds us that our salvation has been won, and that in Baptism we have been marked for a heavenly inheritance.

Under the sign of the cross, at the Lord’s Table, we receive the gifts that we’ve been marked for: forgiveness, life and salvation, peace of mind, healing for our hearts, strength for living, hope to live by, and love to rejoice in.

From here, having been marked for salvation, we go into the world, bearing the sign of the cross.

Wear it boldly, on your sleeve, so to speak, as well as in your heart. Your faith in Christ says more than any tattoo or body art ever will; it’s the mark of your way of life, and more than that, of your way to eternal life; the mark of your salvation.

And finally, it’s the mark of God’s peace for you, which passes understanding, and guards your heart and mind in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.