Palm Sunday and Passover

 Palm Sunday, Passover, and all that

April 10, 2025

John 11:55

55Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the Passover to purify themselves.

John 12:12-13 - Jesus Enters Jerusalem

12 On the next day the large crowd who had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, 13 took the branchesof the palm trees and went out to meet Him, and began to shout, “Hosanna! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, even the King of Israel.”

Deuteronomy 16:1

1 “Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover to the LORD your God, for in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night.

Leviticus 23:5

5 Inthe first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight is the LORD’S Passover.

Palm Sunday is coming up this Sunday, and so the following Sunday will be Resurection Sunday (Easter), and I was thinking about calendars and dates. Saturday at sundown also is Passover. So how do we calculate the dates for Palm Sunday, Easter and Passover and why are they close, but not the same? 

Let’s start with the Biblical Hebrew calendar. The first month of the Biblical calendar was called Abib or Nisan. It started on the first new moon in the spring, after the vernal equinox. The 14 of Nisan was established as Passover, so 14 days after a new moon would be a full moon. This year Passover is April 12.

Easter is calculated, in the Julian calendar, as the first Sunday, after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. This year the equinox was March 21. The first full moon (Pink Moon) is April 12, and the next Sunday is Easter on April 20.

The events leading up to Easter were all around Jesus going up to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of Passover, so why are the holidays on different days? Jesus was the Pascal lamb who’s death on the cross was the ultimate Passover to deliver us not only from Egypt but also from all the sins of this world. So where did the separation occur? This actually dates back to the council of Nicea in 325 A.D, where they purposely created a calculation for for Easter designed to be different from Passover in order to seperate Christianity from Jewish tradition. This was unfortunate but was the result of much animosity between the Church and the Jews of that time. Even the name Easter was chosen to be different from Passover even though the name Easter is not found anywhere in the Bible. This fact should not detract from our celebration of Jesus, the Messiah, as the Lamb of God.

John 1:29

29The next day he *saw Jesus coming to him and *said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

This Palm Sunday, as we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we also cry Hosanna, Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! And as it happens also to be Passover, we should also celebrate Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The blood of the Lamb that signaled the angel of death to Passover the houses of the ancient Jews in Egypt was just a sign and a symbol of the ultimate blood of the Lamb of God which causes the angel of death to passover all those who proclaim Jesus as Lord. Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who takes away the sins of the world!