Here are the girls... My mom, Family friend Cindy, Me, and Hilary.
My mom had set our dining room table and pulled out all the good stuff. :) It was a very beautiful table.
Everyone had a copy of this...
... the Messianic Haggadah.
It was our script for the evening. There are parts the leader (typically the oldest at the table) reads. Parts for the child (or the youngest at the table. Which last night was ME. Gotta appreciate a room where I'm still the youngest.) Parts for Readers 1 - 4. And several parts where everyone at the table speaks in unison.
This Haggadah is different from the one in some Jewish families in that it is Messianic, meaning that it does reference Christ as the Messiah. So while other Jewish Haggadahs may talk about looking forward to the Messiah, this Haggadah would say that we know He's already come.
At the table, we set a place for Elijah. (He would've sat on the left. He didn't show up, in case you were wondering. ;) ) The Jewish tradition teaches that he will appear to announce the coming of the Messiah.
In fact, at one point in the script, I was to get up and open the door for Elijah-- in hopes that he would come-- while we read something in unison.
This plate is central to the Passover Seder.
This particular plate came from Tel Aviv. There are words in Hebrew that I don't understand. But I will walk you through what this is.
In the middle is salt water. We first washed our fingers in the salty water.
Then we passed around the parsley and dipped it in the water and ate it. The parsley represents the bitterness of the Israelites' slavery and the salt water represents their tears of gratefulness for freedom.
The leader of the Passover Seder then takes some Matzah bread... I have a picture here of the box it came in... It was wrapped beautifully at the table though...
And broke it, like Jesus' body was broken. He then wrapped half of it. It was noted that the bread is unleavened like the bread that was eaten when the Jews had to hurriedly flee Egypt, and the stripes also remind us of Jesus being beaten.
We passed around the Matzah and took a piece. We put horseradish on it and ate it.
The bitterness of the horseradish reminds us of the trials the Jews have faced.
Then we took Matzah, horseradish, and an apple relish.
The apple relish is sweet and really covers the overpowering flavor of the horseradish. This reminds us that God makes our trials bearable. His presence makes even the hard times sweeter. The apple relish also appears to resemble clay to represent the bricks that the Israelites made while in captivity.
The lamb bone represents the lamb that was sacrificed for sins. And of course, as Christians, we believe in the Lamb that died on the cross. It also represents the destruction of the Temple.
The roasted egg on the plate had a few meanings. One is eternal life. There is no beginning or end to the shape of an egg. The other is the Temple Holiday Sacrifice.
We did not eat the egg.
The endive on the plate, I believe, took a place of another bitter herb we could have had. We didn't use it either.
We drank four small cups of Kosher wine, which tastes A LOT like the grape juice at the Lord's Supper. You'd be hard pressed to convince me that there's alcohol in Kosher wine. Especially since children usually participate in seders.
But each cup represented something different--
The first was the cup of sanctification and blessing.
The second was plagues and iniquity.
The third was redemption.
And the final cup was praise and completion.
(And those of you Bible scholars will recall that when Christ and the disciples had their seder the night He was betrayed, He refused to drink the last cup, saying that He would drink that with us in Heaven.)
The story of the Passover was told towards the middle of the Haggadah.
About 3/4 of the way through the script, we stopped and had dinner. We ate lamb, although, traditionally Jews would NOT eat lamb at Passover because they are remembering the destruction of their temple.
Dinner was great!
Then the Seder was finished with a little more reading and some singing.
It was a very packed night. Full of meaning. I should probably go back and study the Haggadah again to really understand what it is I was doing. And to try to appreciate that this is a feast Christ would have had every year as a Jew. There's just so much going on. And Hebrew words thrown in the mix. And you're trying to read your script and speak when you're supposed to and not when you're not. So it's kinda hard to absorb everything.
But I do see why Hilary finds it to be so meaningful. I look forward to my next seder to understand it all even better.
