The Chosen People—Celebrating Passover Together

As the Jewish people celebrate Passover, we’d like to share this inspiring conversation between Yael Eckstein and Bishop Paul Lanier. The two discuss the relevance today of the ancient and timeless Exodus story for both Christians and Jews.

The Passover celebration rallies people of faith around the table and reminds us of who we are in God. And through Passover, we are reminded that God is always with us—through our afflictions and our suffering—bringing us His redemption.

Join Yael and Bishop Lanier for a hopeful message during this holy season.

Learn more about the ancient and biblical celebration of Passover.

And listen to more of Yael’s Bible teachings on her podcast, The Chosen People.

Episode Notes:

What began as a hallowed conversation between God and the children of Israel around a story of bondage and freedom, of deliverance and redemption, has in recent years become a dialogue that many Christians are interested in joining.

With this in mind, Bishop Paul Lanier—pastor of Hope Community Church in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and Board Chairman for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews—joined Fellowship President and CEO Yael Eckstein to discuss what Christians should know about the Exodus story during the Passover season.

“God uses the people of Israel to bless all the nations of the world,” Bishop Lanier says, “and so we [Christians] have been able to sit at the table and understand that the grace and mercies of God have expanded to include me. And while I don’t have ethnically that same conversation, that same history, yet God says, ‘Sit down and participate in this.’ It moves me.”

As a Christian, Bishop Lanier understands that Jesus was an observant Jew who would have gone to Temple and would have gone to Jerusalem three times a year for the pilgrimage holidays of Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (Pentecost), and Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles). And it is likely that Jesus and his followers were celebrating the seder meal on the night he was arrested.

The Passover story is critical to understanding the Christian faith story, Bishop Lanier explains: “Oppression and deliverance are such a big piece of our stories. We see the oppression and inhumanity and brutality that the children of Israel experienced in Egypt. Then, as a Christian watching Moses confront the powers that be, Pharaoh, and telling him to ‘let my people go,’ we see that same story replaying itself with Pilot of the Roman Empire coming in and binding and imprisoning the Jews. And then there’s Jesus coming to say, ‘let my people go.’”

For Bishop Lanier, the main message of Passover is hope. “We are kept, we are sustained. We are together, we are one,” he says. “And for me, Passover isn’t that we got exempted from a thing, but we were kept in the midst of that thing.”