Passover is coming!

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."

-G.K Chesterton, friend and contemporary of C.S. Lewis, in his book Orthodoxy

I love the tradition of a passover meal. I love how the symbols are so chock-full of God-things. We have held a Seder meal anually for a few years now. We also celebrate a fairly traditional Protestant Easter, too, with new Easter outfits, Easter baskets, and an egg hunt. As I was thinking over our various tradition, it occurred to me that our passover meal -with all its rememberances- on Thursday or Friday was utterly disconnected from the celebration and brightness of Easter morning. If the traditions are so compartmentalized in my reasoning, adult brain I can only assume that my children will suffer the same dis-connect. I was sharing this thought with a dear friend the other day and she offered this wonderful idea that I cannot wait to implement this year:

Our Seder meal, representing both the deliverance from Egypt and our deliverance from sin, also puts us in mind of Jesus celebrating His last passover before the crucifixtion. So we (in a mind of grace, not requiring exact days to match) will celebrate our Seder this year on Friday evening. Saturday, we are going to wear mourning clothes. As black and plain as I can find.

The followers of Jesus were grieving. Their hope of a Messiah was lying dead in a tomb, only a shadowy promise left. Would Jesus really rise from the grave? They were grieving, questioning their faith, scattered and dis-heartened. I want to remember. It was the darkness before the dawn, and I want my children to know. Pain and blackness. Clothes plain and black.

And this will then be the setting from which we wake Sunday morning to the glory of the resurrection: the brightly colored Easter dresses and ties, colored eggs and the SWEETNESS of His life.