¹ Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

The Upper Room discourse took place in the context of the Passover Feast. Core to Jewish religious life was the celebration rooted in the Exodus story when God liberated their ancestors from bondage in Egypt. This annual feast reminded every succeeding generation of the major theme of their existence: they were a redeemed people, special to God among all the nations of the earth. Exceptionalism at it’s finest, defined by the eternal, almighty God of Creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the One who identified Himself to Moses as “Yahweh,” the name that means He will be everything Israel needs Him to be as they traverse the geographic and time landscape of God’s plan for the world.

The Passover specifically recalls the sacrificial lamb that was offered up to protect the households of Israel (Exodus 12-13). God had sent a destroying angel to kill the first born throughout Egypt, as the final “plague” against all those who rebelled against God’s word through Moses. Every household that in faith smeared the lamb’s blood on the door posts was protected from the destruction of the “Passover” angel. As barbaric as that may seem to our present day sensibilities, the resolution is certainly simple. Only those who rejected God’s word would suffer the calamity.

So as Jesus spoke with His disciples, the imagery of rebellion, judgment, sacrificial substitution, faith and redemption were very much on the forefront of the disciples’ consciousness. Jesus would certainly have been fully aware of this setting and took full advantage of it. In fact, one could say the Feast itself was intended by God to have been the ages-long pointer, not only to the redemption that took place during the Exodus, but also to the more perfect Exodus and redemption that God was going to provide. Not just an earthly liberation from political domination, with which Israel struggled almost their entire existence, but a liberation from the spiritual domination of sin and death. Everything Jesus had to say was against the backdrop of the Passover. And John brings this to our attention, as readers today, so that we will understand the connection, that Jesus’ soon coming death was a direct fulfillment of the inherent prophecy of the Feast of Passover. With that in mind, Jesus begins His final conference with the disciples before His death.

Lord, I am excited to listen in on the words of life that Jesus is about to share with His disciples. Help me to think deeply and reflectively, so that I may grow.