Grace and peace are yours through the perfect Passover Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Amen.

Almighty God, we give You thanks for our salvation freely given through the death of our Passover Lamb, whose blood was poured out for us, for the gift of faith, and for deliverance from death. We give You thanks for the Holy Supper of our Lord in which You give us the gifts of life and salvation, and by which we are sustained in our journey through time to eternity. Lead us to a faithful participation in Christ’s body and blood in his Supper this night. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

What kind of memories do you have of the Fourth of July? Most of us probably think of summer nights and fireworks, bright lights and loud noises. I think of having Miriam on my shoulders with her hands over her ears and Abbey taking pictures of the fireworks that never turn out. We may also remember hauling lawn chairs and coolers and pulling the kids in a red wagon. We may remember slapping mosquitoes and trying to keep kids occupied for two hours while we waited for it to get dark enough to begin. All those things go along with the fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Fireworks are the signature event in our country for Independence Day. God didn’t build fireworks into the celebration of his Old Testament people’s independence day. But Passover is a celebration of freedom from slavery. God commanded special rituals to make this day, and it’s meaning, last in his people’s hearts and minds. Passover points to Christ. What do we see in the Passover celebration? We see Jesus freeing us. He frees us from the power of sins. And he frees us to share the good news.

Passover was the greatest of the Old Testament holidays. Passover is much more than simply the Jewish version of the Fourth of July. It demonstrates how God stepped into our world in a miraculous way and freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and made them his own people. If we were going to name the signature element of Passover, what would we choose? We would say the lamb, wouldn’t we? But that’s not what our text chooses. It’s the unleavened bread, or matzah as Jewish people call it. Moses called the entire week following the day of Passover the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

For a whole week, the Jewish people were forbidden to eat anything with yeast in it. God commanded, "On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel" (verse 15). Not only were they forbidden to eat yeast, they had to get all the yeast out of their houses or they ran the risk of being cast out of God’s people. Over time the Jewish people have devised a series of rituals to ensure that they don’t break this command. In the weeks leading up to Passover, observant Jews clean their houses and remove even crumbs of bread or crackers or baked goods with yeast in them. Anything they can’t get rid of they sell to a non-Jew and then buy it back after Passover is finished. On the day before Passover begins, Jewish families often conduct a search for anything with yeast in it. To make it a family activity, the parents hide little pieces of bread for their children to find. They burn any that they find before Passover begins at sundown. Twice during the last 24 hours before Passover, they "nullify" the yeast they may have missed by renouncing ownership of it before God.

Why get rid of yeast? The answer points in two directions. First, not using yeast for a week points backward to the original events. When God brought his people up out of Egypt, by design he did not give them time to wait for their dough to rise. So the unleavened bread recalls all that God did for them in the exodus. Second, the answer also points forward, to the future. It points to what Christ would do for us. The New Testament often uses yeast to represent sin. Both Jesus and Paul call false teachings yeast—warning that those teachings spread throughout the whole body of the church if they aren’t checked. In 1 Corinthians, Paul calls the sin in our hearts yeast and tells us to get rid of it now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed.

Christ freed us from the power of our sin in our hearts. How did he do that? By shedding his blood for us. Before the Passover meal was eaten, the lamb was killed. Its blood was spread on the doorposts of the homes of the Israelites, and the angel of death passed over without killing the firstborn children in those homes. But every firstborn in every Egyptian household died. The blood of the lamb saved God’s people from destruction. This is the reason that Jesus is called the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The Passover demands a lamb without blemish. That Lamb’s blood causes God’s wrath to pass over us sinners and leave us untouched. Peter reminds us: "It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from [your] empty way of life, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect." (1 Peter 1:18-19)

The removal of physical yeast from the everyday lives of God’s people shows us what Jesus did for us on the cross. We live in a society that wants us to believe that all people are basically good. It says that children should be taught to follow their hearts and that if they do, they won’t go wrong. "Modern" public schools don’t give out grades in class and there are no winners or losers in sporting contests, because everybody is good and decent.

But the Passover presents a completely different reality. We aren’t basically good people trapped in an unjust society. We are by nature thoroughly corrupt sinners. We revel in our godless society. We aren’t good. We are evil, lustful, pride-filled losers.

The truth is, it’s almost impossible to get rid of physical yeast in our homes. That’s why Jewish people came up with practices like selling their yeast to Gentiles and nullifying whatever might have slipped by. God knew how hard keeping this law would be. He wanted his people to struggle with the underlying reality that we cannot put off our sinful natures. No matter how dedicated we are to our faith, no matter how much time we spend in church or how much we serve in the school, no matter how much money we give to our congregation, we cannot work off our sin. We cannot reform our lives and rise above our sin. Sin ruins us. It corrupts us. And it sends us to hell.

A businessman owned a warehouse that had sat empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and trash was everywhere inside the building. The businessman showed a prospective buyer the property and took great pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage and clean out all the garbage. "Forget about the repairs," the buyer said. "When I buy this place, I’m going to build something completely different, something entirely new. I don’t want the building. I want the site!"

Jesus has made a total renovation of your soul. Your "old building" is the old, sinful, yeast-filled you. Jesus doesn’t want the building. He wants the site. He creates a new you in the image of God – " the old has passed away and the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17) And the old building – with its dark rooms and bad habits – is demolished. Jesus did this demolition and reconstruction work in you through his suffering, death, and resurrection. The sin that corrupts and the guilt that destroys, Jesus removes through the water of Baptism, the strengthening of the Lord’s Super, and the freedom of his forgiveness.

You are living proof of God’s freeing forgiveness. You’re here! A veteran professor at our seminary used to counsel future pastors not to mourn over the people who were not in church but to rejoice over those who were because it takes a miracle every week to bring each one of them there. The natural thing for all of us would have been to stay home tonight. But the gospel washed our sins away and created faith in our hearts. And God moved us to be here because we are free. That’s God’s lesson in the Feast of Unleavened Bread. We see Jesus, who frees us. He frees us from the power of sin.

God wanted his people to remember the signs of this Passover, so he commanded them to share the good news of the story behind the Passover. Moses writes: "When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them" (verses 25-27). Tell them! God built a ceremonial retelling of the story of their deliverance from Egypt into this great festival. To this day, that retelling is always a part of any Passover celebration. God’s love for his people comes spilling out of the story. They retell how God sent Moses to Pharaoh, how Pharaoh rejected Moses’ request and suffered ten horrible plagues, and how God brought his children up out of Egypt as his own people. It’s all about God’s love for his people.

In recent years Christian celebrations of the Passover have become more and more popular. I still remember a Greek Christian coming to our farm to slaughter a sheep and hang it up by its feet to drain its blood for his family’s celebration of the Passover meal. In past Maundy Thursday services, we have used a whole loaf of unleavened bread broken into pieces instead of the thin unleavened communion wafers. These Passover celebrations clearly point to Jesus. But our true Passover celebration begins at home. It begins when we teach our children who their Savior is and what he did for them. It continues when the love of Christ shines in our lives day after day.

This telling is also a part of our communion celebration. Moses called the Passover "a day . . . to commemorate"—a day to remember. Jesus gave us his body and blood and told us to celebrate it "in remembrance of me." In the Passover, God was preparing his people for Communion. In both, he points his people to Christ.

Her breathing had become shallower since the last time the pastor saw her. Her eyes, when they were open, were sunken. Her body had become thin and frail from the chemotherapy. Her end was surely near. The doctors had tried a new, experimental treatment that seemed like a "miracle" cure … for a while. But in the end, their treatment had been beaten, once again, by death. But not so the Supper.

"Wilma," said her husband, "It's Pastor. He's come to bring you Communion." Wilma was dying, but the Supper had come to bring her life. As the pastor approached her bed, she opened her beautiful eyes. "I've come to bring you the Lord's body and blood, Wilma," he choked. And the liturgy began.

With her eyes closed, she followed every word with her lips. For 76 years she had sung those same words uttered from the mouths of countless saints gone this way before her: "The Lord be with you." "And also with you." And then: "Take, eat; this is my body ... Drink of it, all of you; this is my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins." His words, His body and blood, His forgiveness. What Calvary created, was now given her to eat and drink. And with it, life.

Life – real life – had come to Wilma once more. What the doctors could not give, the Lord now gave in full. And two days later, she would come to eat and drink of that same life-giving banquet "face to face" in heaven. "For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation" (Small Catechism). The Lord’s Supper tells of the good news of freedom in Christ.

Fourth of July celebrations with sparklers and bottle rockets and fireworks last a day. But tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday morning, we are celebrating our real independence – independence from slavery to death, independence from the power of sin, and independence from the influence of Satan. And we are celebrating our dependence upon Jesus, the Passover Lamb who gives us his own body and blood to set us free. Amen.

Paul reminds us: "Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast--as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed." Amen. (1 Corinthians 5:7)