Celebrating Passover

This Saturday past was the beginning of Passover for many Jewish households.  Our family celebrates a home “representative” (symbolic) Seder almost every year, to remind us of the roots of our Christian faith.  This year we celebrated on Sunday the 20^th, with six friends, only two of whom have previously observed Passover with us.  It is always a blessing to see how the Passover picture of Christ’s sacrifice touches believers who have never experienced a Seder before.

Unlike other years, we added a ceremonial hand washing.  This turned out to be the most somber moment of the evening.  Everyone had their hands “washed” by someone else, and in turn, washed another’s as one person read the entirety of John 13:3-17.  This idea that we are clean already in Christ, and have need only to confess our sins to restore our fellowship with God, and that we are responsible to our fellow Christians to encourage them on their Christian growth was quite striking as we participated in the hand washing.  As a result, a fairly significant discussion about foot washing ensued after the Seder.  What a blessing!

Adding the hand washing extended the celebration by ten to fifteen minutes.  My wife informed me that it took a total of 55 minutes this year.  It is my preference to keep the entire Seder under 30 minutes.  Over the years I have added more Scripture reading to our “script.”  I am uncertain what to do next year.  Already, I feel we are omitting so many passages to keep the time manageable.  This will require some thought and prayer. 

Here is a link to our present Seder script (without the hand washing) and the recipes my wife used: http://thefaithfulword.org/seder.html

A second link explains my views on the propriety of celebrating Passover: http://thefaithfulword.org/passoverfaqs.html

Feel free to leave a comment about your own Seder experiences.