LET US ACKNOWLEDGE THE INTERVENTION OF GOD

Tonight begins the week-long celebration of Passover, a Jewish holiday commemorating God's deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptian captivity. It also is the start of the Christian Holy Week, commemorating God's deliverance of mankind from the bondage of sin and death.

In 1994, the holiday is greeted by news of tribal and ethic unrest in South Africa and the former Yugoslavia, the readying for war in North Korea, and legions of other political, cultural and ethnic upheavals throughout the world. In the Middle East and the United States age-old friction persists. Just days after a Brooklyn-born Jewish settler in the West Bank massacred Muslim worshipers at a mosque in Hebron late last month, a gunman opened fire on a van of Hasidic students on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing one and wounding three. In Germany, a Jewish synagogue was firebombed this week.

Now is an appropriate time for people everywhere to withdraw for a moment from the world's turmoil to acknowledge those moments in time when omnipotent God intervened in the existential world on behalf of His people. Unfortunately, such reflection will do little to bridle mankind's lust for brutality. Yet reflect we must if we are to preserve a measure of saneness in an increasingly insane world.

Western Civilization's greatest treasure is its Judeo-Christian heritage, from which we can extract meaning and hope in the direst circumstances. Through that heritage we know that, in the words of C.S. Lewis, we dwell but briefly in these shadowlands while life eternal beckons.

The first Passover occurred thousands of years ago as God's patience wore thin with a stubborn Egyptian pharaoh who refused to heed Moses' admonition to "Let my people go." The final plague brought by God against Pharaoh's Egypt on behalf of the children of Israel was harsh -- even by today's debased standards. "For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord." (Exodus 12)

God, through Moses, instructed the Israelites how to protect their own households from this judgment. Each household was to sacrifice an unblemished lamb, the blood of which was to be applied to the two side posts and upper door posts of the houses of the children of Israel. "And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt." The Israelites remained in their houses until the night had passed, protected from the outside terror by the blood of the lamb.

Jews continue the tradition today, commemorating not only God's deliverance of His people from Egyptian captivity, but also His provision, the blood covering that spared the Israelites from His wrath.

Generations later, Jesus of Nazareth journeyed to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover with his disciples. What Christians today celebrate as "The Last Supper" was the traditional Passover meal shared between Jesus and the 12. The unleavened bread of the Passover, a symbol of the unblemished lamb that died on behalf of the captive Israelites that terrible night in Egypt, became, in the words of Christ: "my body. Take, eat." The cup, a symbol of the blood of the lamb that covered the houses of the children of Israel, became Christ's own blood -- a final, perfect sacrifice to cover the sins of all mankind forever. "For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." (Matthew 26).

At the end of that Holy Week 2,000 years ago, Jesus hung dying on a cross, taking upon his battered and wounded body all the sins of mankind. His blood became a final atonement, as revealed when the temple veil was rent, which separated the holy of holies, where the mercy seat covered the ark of the covenant, from the rest of the temple. Only the priest was able to enter the holy of holies, and only under the covering of the blood sacrifice. But the veil was rent when Christ died -- giving free access to God's presence through His blood. Three days later, His resurrection became the justification for our own resurrection after this life.

It's a familiar story, the Easter story. Yet it bears repeating. It's a story that renders insignificant today's petty political and social strife.

Jews don't believe Jesus was the Christ. They continue to celebrate Passover while they await Christ's coming. Christians believe otherwise, but they also wait -- for Christ's return, when He'll come not as a sacrificial lamb, but as the Lion of Judah to establish His reign on earth. We may be unable to make sense of the chaotic world in which we live, but in the awesome context of God's provision for the redemption of mankind, as revealed through the events that inspire the Passover and Easter holidays, we can find peace in the hope for what is to come.