Exodus 12:14: 14 “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
Prayer Focus: We began this week’s devotions with a reminder that these verses of scripture represent a break in the narrative saga of Exodus. Time and space are transcended, and the ritual of Passover becomes far bigger than any single place or group of people. Every time the ritual of Passover is enacted, God’s redemptive activity continues here and now. When Jesus Christ and his disciples gathered in the upper room to celebrate Passover, they were doing more than just remembering events of the past. They were experiencing the same liberating power of God known by those enslaved Israelites. For as the Jewish Passover liturgy says: “God brought us out of Egypt.”
Likewise, when we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we are not simply remembering the events of Christ’s passion that unfolded long ago. Rather, we are drawn into Christ’s saving work and nourished by God’s grace here and now. I pray that as we come to the Lord’s Table today, we may experience the saving grace of the God who liberated the enslaved Israelites at Passover and who, in Jesus Christ, liberates us from sin and death.