by Jeffrey Jason Hill

Created on: April 11, 2009   Last Updated: April 19, 2009

Every March or early April, Jewish homes observe certain symbols associated with the historic background of Passover. Take the matzo. The holy cracker. They look like your typical saltines. A little darker, though. When you cook them, roasting a simple mixture of wheat flour and water dough, the part near the holes becomes brown but the dough where the holes are remains beige. Exodus says the reluctant Pharaoh said to Moses, "Rise, go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel, and go" - and don't let the beaded curtain hit you on the way out. Now imagine thousands of slaves in the middle of the night hastily getting up to turn out enough unleavened cakes to last them at least a week's journey.

On the Passover table, there is a plate with three unbroken matzos on it. Early in the meal the father stacks the three unleavened cakes and puts them into a cloth bag. Sort of like an envelope. The middle matzo is then taken out and broken in half. The other two are set aside. Members of the family share and eat one-half, and the other half is wrapped in a linen napkin and hidden away. This is called the eating of the "aphikomen."

Don't you agree there is something wonderfully reminiscent in the symbolism? These three matzos symbolize the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. At the Last Supper in the Upper Room the Lord Jesus Christ sat down with His apostles and took the unleavened bread, broke it, and divided it among His disciples. "Take, eat: this is my body," He told them, in spite of the fact that He obviously also was about to be broken.

What happens to the hidden half of the unleavened middle cake? At the end of the meal the young children take off to search together for the aphikomen. When it is found, they bring it to the father, who unwraps it, and says to all, "The aphikomen has been found."

Let me go over with you why this is so centrally important. The Father, the first Matzo if you will, didn't let the life of His Son stay under the earth hidden away either. No, he was "unwrapped." Literally. Of the three, only the Son was brought out where man could break Him and the Father could bring Him back. How the disciples must've felt when they finally realized what this age-old ritual was a symbol of!

But to get back to the symbols. Four cups of red wine on the table symbolize the blood of the lamb. The bitter herbs remind them of the sorrow of the Hebrew slaves of Pharaoh, their own ancestors. Before the meal the father, who is the leader of the Passover celebration, brings out and unfurls a rug on which the members of the family recline and eat upon with their hands. Don't you see how this represents how the people of God, without chairs or furniture, wandered in the wilderness for forty years, often getting up to move on without a moment's notice?

Passover - the story of deliverance. The symbols take on a greater significance than any of us can truly imagine.

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