POSTED 01 MARCH, 2010

The Last Sedar and Yeshua's Passover Chronology

by J.K. McKee
editor@tnnonline.net

The season of Passover was my late father’s favorite time of year, because being a licensed lay preacher at Christ United Methodist Church in Florence, KY, Holy Week was the time when he was able to conduct educational Passover sedars and expose many evangelical Christians to their Hebraic Roots. Kimball McKee was able to show many how Jesus Christ held an intimate Passover sedar meal with His Disciples prior to His death as the Lamb of God. He recited some of the various blessings, held up a piece of real unleavened bread or matzah to people who had never seen it before, and explained in a very edifying way the connection between the themes of the Exodus and the Messiah’s work in delivering us from sin. The presentation would end with a communion service completely unlike what any of the attendees had ever participated in before.

I am very blessed to be able to think back on what my father did twenty years ago, in helping people see the relevance of Passover to their Christian faith. Looking at what has transpired since, especially that I am now a Bible teacher in the Messianic movement, the Passover is one of the most important aspects of our relationship with God. If we understand the Passover, we understand a huge part of His salvation history plan. Many Jewish people have been able to understand the sacrifice of Yeshua and His atoning work for sins, far more from the typological connections made via the traditional Passover sedar than the standard Christian traditions of Holy Week. And, many Christians have been stimulated by the Holy Spirit to do far more than just attend a presentation on Passover, or even participate in the yearly sedar of a local Messianic Jewish congregation—investigating their connection to the Torah and its commandments even further.

No Messianic Believer today denies that the Exodus, Passover, and this season of deliverance is important to our faith. It is very important. But twenty years ago, the controversy that my father witnessed was that there would be a few dissenting voices in the local church about why Christians would be considering something “Jewish.” There would be people, obviously not attending his teaching presentation, who would very much frown upon evangelical Believers hearing about how the message of Jesus was seen in the Passover—even in spite of Paul’s own word, “Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). Today, in our Messianic faith community, while the relevance of the Passover is not at all questioned, we nevertheless do commonly face some controversies when the Spring holiday season arrives.

What kind of issues present themselves when the Passover season arrives? Would you believe that there are some people in the Messianic community today who do not believe that the Last Supper was a real, or even a kind-of, sedar meal? How many of you have been engulfed in the argument that we need to do exactly what Yeshua did, and not any “traditions of men,”[1] making Passover a bit unexciting? While there are longstanding disagreements on halachah between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewish traditions on what is kosher for Passover, think about some of the new Messianic disagreements that have arisen on what actually took place in those days leading up to Yeshua’s betrayal and execution. How long is three days and three nights? Was the Messiah really crucified, or put to death another away? And this is only a short list of what often gets discussed...

Reasonable theological inquiry and discussion are things that are very good, and as a teacher I encourage them. Every maturing Believer has a responsibility to go to the Biblical text, and do his or her best to interpret what is read, and when appropriate consider the relevant extra-Biblical histories or opinions of trusted scholarship. The challenge with today’s Messianic generation, though, is that this is often not achieved. Because of the easy access to information on the Internet, blogs, YouTube, or discussion forums—many people, including congregational leaders, get their teachings from less-than-reliable sources. There might be a few things quite necessary for the discussion that get left out, as they may not be found in electronic venues, but rather in (expensive) physical books. Because of this, Messianic leaders and teachers may find the Passover season to have some “issues,” which in the past might not have been issues.

Many Messianic congregations and fellowships truly make Passover into a blessed time for all who are involved. Jewish Believers get to once again connect with various traditions and customs that are familiar to them, being a part of their childhood. Non-Jewish Believers get to consider the Exodus and the deliverance of Ancient Israel is a much more tangible way, that simply reading something from Scripture does not fully convey. Everybody gets to see connections to the gospel message of salvation, that they did not get to see before. Some get to see aspects of deliverance and freedom, beyond that of just salvation from sin—such as helping the oppressed or impoverished—that they might not have thought of. Most of today’s Messianics, including myself, do believe that the Last Supper was some kind of a Passover sedar meal. For many of those same, when we “eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Corinthians 11:28), we are reminded of many meaningful and supernatural things at such a solemn point in our commemoration.

I will not hide the truth from you: there are debates among interpreters as to what actually took place in the final moments prior to Yeshua’s arrest. No one is fully agreed as to whether or not the Last Supper was a sedar meal, or the exact day on which the Lord was executed. There are disputes over whether three days and three nights is a full 72 hours, a little over 36 hours, or some other time interval. Some of today’s Messianic leaders (even myself at times), quite sadly, have looked at the Passover season with a little bit of dread—not because of its great themes of salvation from sin, deliverance from bondage, etc.—but because there will be debates over issues like the Passover chronology, which in all likelihood may never be fully solved. They want the Passover week to end as quickly as possible, and get back to the normal routine. (Of course, even this is a bit of wishful thinking, considering the fifty-day counting of the omer, and whether it is to begin on the 16th of Nisan or the first Sunday after the weekly Sabbath of Unleavened Bread.)

We may not have all of the information that we need to support, with one-hundred percent accuracy, the opinions which we hold. And what happens when we get so focused on the minutiae of the chronology of the Last Supper, trial, execution, and resurrection of the Lord? We run the risk of forgetting about the substance of what took place. It is a salvation requirement that we affirm that Yeshua died and was resurrected (Romans 10:9); it is not a salvation requirement that we affirm that it took place on a particular day of the week, or even at a specific hour, minute, and second of the day.

I want all of us as Messianic Believers to step back from our opinions for a moment, and focus first on what we can agree upon. I think we can all agree that the substance of what we need to be considering is found in Peter’s summary,

“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Yeshua the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:22-24).

We all agree that believing in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Messiah Yeshua is what is essential to our faith. I would submit that our attention during this season of Passover needs to be focused more on the severity of what took place, so we do not forget what the Lord has accomplished for us. If we can all recognize how He was scourged for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5), then we should be able to reasonably offer some proposals for how it took place. The patterns of prophetic fulfillment admittedly might not be found in some nice little package with a big bow, or seen in a chart with 0 and 1s accuracy. We have to consider the perspectives of all four Gospels, and also recognize that Twentieth and Twenty-First Century vantage points of specificity are not the same as those of ancient times. We also have to recognize the uniqueness of the year Yeshua died for us, and how in the years following things returned to their relatively normal routine.

This article will consider various aspects of what many call the “Passion Week,” or the final days before Yeshua’s execution: the Last Supper meal, His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, His trial and humiliation, and His crucifixion and death, then followed by His resurrection. While I will be interjecting some of my own thoughts and opinions as to how and when this took place, we should be more concerned with recapturing an appreciation for what actually occurred, recognizing the timing of it as secondary.

During the Passover season, some of today’s Messianic teachers and leaders could make all sorts of pulpit-pounding conclusions regarding Yeshua’s Passover chronology—but not enough reflective thoughts on what He endured for us, and how we should live in response to His atoning work as faithful men and women of God, will probably be offered. We should hope to see this trend altered. It should be our desire to probe the multiple aspects of how Paul asserts, “Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and...He was buried, and...He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3).

End of sample excerpt.

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J.K. McKee (B.A., University of Oklahoma; M.A., Asbury Theological Seminary) is the editor of TNN Online (www.tnnonline.net) and is a Messianic apologist. He is a 2009 recipient of the Zondervan Biblical Languages Award for Greek. He is author of numerous books, dealing with a wide range of topics that are important for today’s Messianic Believers. He has also written many articles on theological issues, and is presently focusing his attention on Messianic commentaries of various books of the Bible.

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