Northgate Christian Community

On Palm Sunday, we looked at Jesus’ journey to the cross. We see the final leg of this journey in Mark 15, where Pilate (pressured by the Jews) condemns the innocent (Jesus) and grants freedom to the guilty (Barabbas), a picture-image of the freedom granted to each of us through the judgment Jesus suffered on the cross.  And when we take in a larger frame of the biblical story, we see that Jesus’ journey doesn’t begin when he enters Jerusalem during his final week, but instead reaches back to the Old Testament and begins in places such as Exodus 12 and Psalm 22. In Exodus 12, God is actively at work delivering Israel from Egyptian slavery by sending an angel of death over the land. To escape this judgment, God instructs each family in Israel to slaughter an unblemished, innocent lamb at twilight and put its blood on the doorposts and lintel of their houses. The blood of the lamb would allow Israel to live when the angel of death passed over the land. When Jesus hung on the cross and died at twilight Israel wa