This year, due to the rhythms of the Jewish calendar, Passover and Easter occur only a few days apart from each other.  As you may know, Passover remembers and commemorates how many centuries past God liberated the Hebrews from a four hundred year captivity in Egypt, delivering them, eventually, into the promised land.  It begins at sundown tonight. Around the world, millions of Jewish families will be gathering for the seder, the meal whose various components point to the elements of captivity and liberation.  The structure of the seder has not changed since Moses instituted it over three millennia ago.  Passover is central to the Jewish tradition.
     When Moses laid out the instructions for Passover, he specified that it begin with the sacrifice of a lamb, a lamb whose blood would be spread on the doorposts of every Hebrew home in Egypt.  When God subsequently executed his final judgment on Egypt and its enslavement of the Hebrews, he would "pass over" the homes on which a lamb's blood had been placed.
     Enter Easter.  Christianity makes Jesus the ultimate Passover lamb.  It sets Jesus and his sacrifice of himself at the center of its understanding of God's ways with humanity.  It takes what was once a tradition of one tribe and extends its effects to all of humankind.  In effect, Christianity "universalizes" Passover.

      Remember our Jewish brethren tonight.  Remember their remembering of God's love for them.  And in a few days hence, remember Jesus, the Jew whose love for the world compelled him to die, and rise, for the liberation of all peoples.
     Remember the glory, the weight of glory, the glory of life, the glory of memory:  the glory of the love of God.