Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Christians Celebrating Passover

One of the things my small group from church has done during the Lenten and Easter season is to celebrate Passover with a Seder meal. Generally, we've used a Christianized Haggadah connecting Jesus to the Passover lamb. It's interesting, in this regard, how the gospel of John arranges the chronology of the Passion week to have Jesus crucified at the exact hour when the passover lambs were being slaughtered on the Day of Preparation before the Passover. In this, Jesus is seen as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."

(Fun Fact: The Synoptic gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke--have the Passover synced with Jesus eating the Last Supper with this disciples. The disagreement between John's placement of the Passover--Jesus on the cross when the paschal lambs were being slaughtered--and the Synoptic placement--the Eucharist as the new "Passover" meal--has, as you might suspect, being a subject of much discussion and debate.)

Anyway, my small group has been talking about the Haggadah we might use, Jewish or Christian, and I've been comparing and contrasting. So I was wondering, does anyone have a Haggadah they have used, online or print, that they have enjoyed? And why?

Second question for any Jewish readers: I'm curious about your take about Christians celebrating Passover. How is this viewed in Jewish communities? Is it a compliment, a sign of rapprochement? Or is it seen as seen as co-opting and a distortion? Do you think it's nice or mildly insulting?

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