Did you note that Easter and Pesach (Passover) coincided this year?

A friend of mine from our local Messianic synagogue offered to get me some matzah (unleavened) bread for the festival and even suggested that it would be good for me to do a clean-out of yeast from my home, as is Jewish tradition. I accepted the matzah offer but held reservations about the yeast clean-out! My whole house was badly in need of a spring clean - the idea felt to me like barely scratching the surface of a major clean-out job that was hardly started. So on Thursday afternoon before Good Friday, I decided that my priority was to search our scullery for my kayak roof-straps (much more important than a yeast hunt!).

Over the past several years the part of the scullery in question, originally devoted to bicycles and sacks of grain, had gradually also accommodated a large number of boxes of papers and other items that we hadn’t found the willpower to dump. In a far corner of my collection of grain, bicycles and junk, I spotted a small pile of wheat where it should not have been.

Removing boxes and sacks, I discovered rodents’ nests inside three sacks of wheat and several boxes of papers. The priority for my afternoon immediately changed - to emptying the scullery and filling the car with everything that had become corrupted, plus items that I now took courage to throw.

And a thought popped into my head.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust [and rodents, I add!] doth corrupt…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt… (Matthew 6:19-20, KJV)

Another translation of the Greek indicates that the “rust” could alternatively be referring to vermin that might consume a supply of grain.

Getting Rid of Leaven

But what has this to do with Passover (Pesach)? My thoughts were taken to the aspect that my friend was guiding me towards, something I’ve never given much heed to, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Yeast or leaven speaks of corruption in scripture. The matzah is a wonderful reminder of Messiah Yeshua’s body: leaven-free, or sinless.

The Apostle Paul brings Messianic understanding to this week-long festival in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 (CJB version):

Get rid of the old hametz, so that you can be a new batch of dough, because in reality you are unleavened. For our Pesach lamb, the Messiah, has been sacrificed. So let us celebrate the Seder not with leftover hametz, the hametz of wickedness and evil, but with the matzah of purity and truth.

Here I was, clearing up a big infestation of corruption that needed eradicating! So what am I to learn from my experience?

• Take time and trouble to remove all that may corrupt what might otherwise be pleasing service to God.
• Choose carefully what is important to aid me in my lifelong Heavenward journey.
• Take care of these important treasures, neither neglecting them nor getting them mixed up with the ‘stuff’ which would likely destroy both.
• In the future, take consideration of all that the scriptures have to teach about the entire festival of Passover and Unleavened Bread.

Come Good Friday morning, when otherwise I might have been attending a memorial service or march regarding Jesus’ crucifixion, I was instead driving to the local dump and off-loading a car full of rubbish. The poignancy of the situation was not lost on me.

Author: John Quinlan