Easter Lamb

Some of you gobble up chocolate bunnies for Easter. I know you do!  Usually for Thanksgiving we have turkey and for Easter – a crown roast of lamb, (if you’re not vegan of course)! How in the world did this choice of food get chosen for the Easter Holidays and Passover season?

I love this picture. A perfect little lamb is a fitting symbol for the rebirth of spring. When a lamb is born, it is such a symbol of innocence and purity. And so it must have seemed to the prophet, John the Baptist when he first saw the stranger named Jesus Christ approaching him to be baptized in the Jordan River. “Look, the Lamb of God” (John 1:35), he exclaimed.

When Jesus died on the cross, they called him the Passover Lamb. According to the Jewish calendar he died on the very same day the Israelites had always slaughtered the best lamb from their herds to prepare for the yearly Passover celebration meal. This commemorated the night they had been instructed to sprinkle the lamb’s blood on their doorposts to protect them from a deadly plague and to escape their oppression of slavery in Egypt.

Did some of the Jewish crowd at the crucifixion see this similarity to the ancient practice when they saw his blood running down the cross? Both lambs, in the Old Testament and in the new, had to be unblemished. Jesus was said to be perfect because he didn’t transgress any of the Great Ones’ laws. He represented the highest of humankind.  

God from the heavens, backed by a consortium of angels and other powers, sent his only son down to our planet to rescue us from an evil world. From a celestial viewpoint, wouldn’t Jesus’ crucifixion by humans seem like a precious lamb had been sacrificed? Jesus took on this role himself.

"He gathered his friends for the last supper to reenact the Passover ceremony of sacrificing the lamb, but now with symbolic bread and wine. Jesus asked the disciples to eat the bread he gave them, and he called it his own flesh. Then he passed around the wine and told them to drink as though it were his own blood. What morbid requests to make to your friends! He said to them: “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” And he took wine and said, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” 
(Excerpt from The Celestial Proposal, Chapter 7, "Levels in the Life Game," page 77-78)

Yes, what a morbid thing to ask your friends to do! Yet, this same ceremony is prevalent in Christian congregations around the world and is called Holy Communion. But now you know the intrinsic meaning of it. So if you go to a church for Easter Sunday and take the bread and wine with a prayer, you are consuming the metaphysical living presence of an alien Jesus! You are feasting upon him, nourishing your bodies, as was the ancient custom with the actual lamb.

But that’s all history in the past you say? Revelation, the last book in the Bible, also speaks about a Lamb of God in a vision of prophecy. The disciple John “saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain” but who had the authority to open the way for a utopian kingdom on earth. In John’s vision he heard these words being spoken to the Lamb:

"You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because you were slain and with your blood, you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and peoples and nation." (Revelation 5:9)

Now all this makes awesome sense if you believe God, Jesus Christ, elders around the throne, and hordes of angels are actually the “Great Ones” from somewhere in outer space! Heavenly omnipotent immortal beings trying to mentor us and to save us from self-destruction. An otherworldly Jesus, half man/half God, whose perfection could pay a ransom for us to be free from guilt in this world. Then his miraculous Easter resurrection shows us that even death can be defeated. All this vast drama happens over the timeline of humanity, the symbolism playing across multi-generations. This celestial perspective is why people sing the song, “Worthy is the Lamb.”

Doesn’t this grandiose panorama make the simple idea of an Easter Bunny just sound kind of ridiculous?

The link below to a youth who sings out his own beliefs captures the awe of it all! It always makes me cry as I become aware of God’s love toward me.

#easterweekend #Easter #ChristDidIt #Resurrection #ResurrectionSunday #Motivation #Inspiration #FridayFeeling 

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* Excerpts and links of this material may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jane Catherine Rozek and TheCelestialProposal.com website.