lambs

127:6.6On this visit oc­curred one of those pe­ri­odic out­breaks of re­bel­lion against tra­di­tion—the ex­pres­sion of re­sent­ment for those cer­e­mo­nial prac­tices which Je­sus deemed mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his Fa­ther in heaven. Not know­ing Je­sus was com­ing, Laz­a­rus had ar­ranged to cel­e­brate the Pass­over with friends in an ad­join­ing vil­lage down the Jeri­cho road. Je­sus now pro­posed that they cel­e­brate the feast where they were, at Laz­a­rus’s house. “But,” said Laz­a­rus, “we have no paschal lamb.” And then Je­sus en­tered upon a pro­longed and con­vinc­ing dis­ser­ta­tion to the ef­fect that the Fa­ther in heaven was not truly con­cerned with such child­like and mean­ing­less rit­u­als. Af­ter solemn and fer­vent prayer they rose, and Je­sus said: “Let the child­like and dark­ened minds of my peo­ple serve their God as Moses di­rected; it is bet­ter that they do, but let us who have seen the light of life no longer ap­proach our Fa­ther by the dark­ness of death. Let us be free in the knowl­edge of the truth of our Fa­ther’s eter­nal love.”

127:6.7That evening about twi­light these four sat down and par­took of the first Pass­over feast ever to be cel­e­brated by de­vout Jews with­out the paschal lamb. The un­leav­ened bread and the wine had been made ready for this Pass­over, and these em­blems, which Je­sus termed “the bread of life” and “the wa­ter of life,” he served to his com­pan­ions, and they ate in solemn con­for­mity with the teach­ings just im­parted. It was his cus­tom to en­gage in this sacra­men­tal rit­ual when­ever he paid sub­se­quent vis­its to Beth­any. When he re­turned home, he told all this to his mother. She was shocked at first but came grad­u­ally to see his view­point; nev­er­the­less, she was greatly re­lieved when Je­sus as­sured her that he did not in­tend to in­tro­duce this new idea of the Pass­over in their fam­ily. At home with the chil­dren he con­tin­ued, year by year, to eat the Pass­over “ac­cord­ing to the law of Moses.”

192:2.2Je­sus then turned to­ward Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you love me?” Pe­ter an­swered, “Lord, you know I love you with all my soul.” Then said Je­sus: “If you love me, Pe­ter, feed my lambs. Do not ne­glect to min­is­ter to the weak, the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel with­out fear or fa­vor; re­mem­ber al­ways that God is no re­specter of per­sons. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you; for­give your fel­low mor­tals even as I have for­given you. Let ex­pe­ri­ence teach you the value of med­i­ta­tion and the power of in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.”

179:0.3The apos­tles knew that Je­sus had cel­e­brated other Passovers with­out the lamb; they knew that he did not per­son­ally par­tic­i­pate in any sac­ri­fi­cial ser­vice of the Jew­ish sys­tem. He had many times par­taken of the paschal lamb as a guest, but al­ways, when he was the host, no lamb was served. It would not have been a great sur­prise to the apos­tles to have seen the lamb omit­ted even on Pass­over night, and since this sup­per was given one day ear­lier, they thought noth­ing of its ab­sence.

85:3.4The wor­ship of in­sects and other an­i­mals was pro­moted by a later mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule—do­ing to oth­ers (ev­ery form of life) as you would be done by. The an­cients once be­lieved that all winds were pro­duced by the wings of birds and there­fore both feared and wor­shiped all winged crea­tures. The early Nordics thought that eclipses were caused by a wolf that de­voured a por­tion of the sun or moon. The Hin­dus of­ten show Vishnu with a horse’s head. Many times an an­i­mal sym­bol stands for a for­got­ten god or a van­ished cult. Early in evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion the lamb be­came the typ­i­cal sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mal and the dove the sym­bol of peace and love.