If Jesus came today, would we be any braver, any more open, any more willing to give ourselves to his love, than were those who cried out, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"? Would we be any more willing today to allow him to love all kinds of people, even those we don’t much care about?

That, of course, was part of the problem—Jesus’ friends. They were not the right people. he went to the wrong dinner parties (his first miracle took place at a big party). He loved children, and let them climb all over him with their sticky little hands and dirty little feet. He even told us that we had to be like little children ourselves if we wanted to understand God, and yet the world (and too often the church) taught then, and still teaches, that we have to outgrow our childhood love story of imagination, of creativity, of fun, and so we blunder into the grown-up world of literalism.

–  The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth - Madeleine L’Engle

The Seder

The Seder is an elaborate ritual feast that takes place on the first two nights of Passover (the first night for Reform Jews). The purpose is to awaken hope for a final redemption. The ceremony is based on the injunction in the Bible to the parents to inform their children of the deliverance from Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)

The Seder dramatizes the event in recorded history in which the Lord freed an entire people. Through a combination of special foods, wine, song, rituals, prayers and questions, the Exodus is reenacted and its meaning probed. The Haggadah is the script that sets forth the order and narrative of the Seder service. The youngest child asks four questions, and the story of the Exodus unfolds through the answers and dramatization. Four cups of wine are are drunk, corresponding to the four expressions of redemption in the book of Exodus. Elijah, the herald of the Messiah, is welcomed with his cup of wine.

All Jews of every generation are to regard themselves as having been personally freed from Egypt. They count as the first of the Ten Commandments, "I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."

On the Seder table a platter includes:

1. A roasted egg, symbolizing the festival offering
2. A roasted bone, commemorating the paschal lamb (z'roah)
3. Bitter herbs, as a reminder of the suffering of the slaves in Egypt
4. A green vegetable, symbolizing renewal
5. A mixture of nuts, wine and cinnamon, as a reminder of the bricks and mortar the slaves were compelled to make.
6. Salt water, signifying tears.

Another platter has on it three matzoth (unleavened bread). Those around the table sit in a reclining position, as a sign of freedom. 

Sources: The Dictionary of Bible and Religion, William Gentz | The Bible Almanac, White
| Easter a Pictorial Pilgrimage - Pierre Benoit |

Easter Quotations

Resurrection Living

For resurrection living
There is resurrection power,
And the praise and prayer of trusting
May glorify each hour.

For common days are holy
And years an Easter-tide
To those who with the living Lord
In living faith abide. breast.

       —Author unknown

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.  

1 Corinthians 5: 2I

The Crucified becomes one with the unrecognized and misused and cruelly treated in every age. The nail-pierced Figure on Calvary haunts our race as a symbol of what is forever taking place generation after generation, and of what each of us has his part in.

HENRY SLOANE COFFIN, The Meaning of the Cross, 1931,