New Moon - Abib 2025
Nissan, Abib.
First month
New years
Passover, UB, first fruits.
The waters of the flood finished drying up and Noah removed the cover from the ark.
Isaac was born
The first passover and the exodus from Egypt,
Joshua sends the spies into Jericho.
The Israelites enter Canaan and the manna stops
Esther’s feast
The Lord’s triumphal entry, last supper, crucifixion, and resurrection.
Entering the Biblically commanded time of spring cleaning.
Leading up to UB.
You have a couple weeks to scour the house, and while you’re looking for leaven, you may as well do some regular cleaning,
Clear out things you don’t need.
We’ve passed through the long season of drab grays and browns and are entering a time of green and color.
(This is the meaning of Abib, the original name of the month - Green, green ear of grain)
Plants are starting to grow and bud.
Opening the windows.
Freshening.
Literally moving from death to life.
The oppressive cold of winter is finally coming to an end.
Stillness to movement
Animals coming out of hibernation or returning from the south.
Moving from long nights to longer days,
We’ve had months to come up with new projects and ideas,
And now we have a chance to get started on them.
In Egypt the Israelites were in a kind of death.
Though children of Abraham,
They had no real identity other than that of a slave
All of their labor was for a foreign master
Disconnected from the worship of God
Unable to hear the voice of God,
Then, suddenly a man named Moses brought hope of deliverance.
Although things seemed to get worse before they got better,
God had been preforming miracles and one by one defeating the gods of the Egyptians before their eyes.
The voice of God through Moses and Aaron kept crying, “let my people go!”
Let life and freedom return to Israel
Let the oppression of Pharoah come to an end.
—
There are many things about the Passover season that we can’t take part in because there is no temple, no functioning, levitical priesthood. The idea of sacrifices can even seem foreign, primitive, or antiquated.
For the Israelites in Egypt, the blood of the lamb was a very real, very necessary thing, and its effect was seen almost immediately.
No other Passover was like that.
The blood of the passover, and all the sacrifices called for in Leviticus are just as effective, but their effect cannot be seen or heard.
Those rituals are not for now.
We are not in that place, or that time.
However, there are still things that we can take part in which have universal significance.
The act of remembering.
Remembering the passover is an integral part of the commandment to observing the feast.
The elements of the seder plate assist us with that, each one a symbol for some aspect of the Israelites escape from Egypt.
I’ll leave the rest to whoever is facilitating your individual seders.
Hopefully everyone has somewhere to go if they are not doing it themselves…
Something else that we are able to participate in is the ritual of cleaning our houses of leaven.
This is an integral part of the Passover season.
And a way we can participate in God’s calendar.
Leaven is of course symbolic of sin and impurity.
Sin that spreads
It moves from little compromises,
But tends to grow and take more of our attention
The act of cleaning our homes reminds us how seemingly small and insignificant things
Little crumbs
Need to be sought for and removed.
Making sure our houses – our hearts and minds are clean of impurity
As we clean our homes, let’s also search our hearts.
1 Cor 5:6-8