Actress Jen Lilley recently shared a series of Gospel-themed videos explaining the genuine meaning behind Easter and why she sees transformative power in the biblical narrative. Lilley said in the first video released by TV network Great American Family, “Easter means everything to me. The detail and the great lengths that God the Father went through to adopt me as his child astounds me.”
In her first clip, delivered in honor of Palm Sunday, the actress provided parallels between the Jewish celebration of Passover and Jesus’ sacrifice. She said, “Easter is actually a celebration of Passover, which is a remembrance of being saved from death and delivered out of slavery out of Egypt. And each year for Passover, a family would bring a lamb to be killed.” Lilley noted how these lambs were taken into Jerusalem to be inspected. She said people would wave palm leaves as the lambs were brought into the city.
She then paralleled how Jesus’ story includes a mirrored detail about His entrance into Jerusalem before His death. Known as the triumphal entry, Scripture proclaims in Matthew 21:1-17, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:29-40, and John 12:12-19 that people laid down palms as Christ arrived on a donkey. “On the same day this ritual happened,” Lilley said of the lamb sacrifices, “Jesus, who is from Bethlehem, returned to Jerusalem through the Mount of Olives, entering through the eastern gate.”
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Another parallel between the lambs and Jesus’ story is that the High Priest would say, “It is finished” after the lambs’ sacrifice. Scripture tells us Jesus said the same after He was hung on the cross and before He died. John 19:30 (NIV) reads, “When He had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ With that, He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.”
Lilley concluded by driving home the significance of it all. “On Easter, Jesus was both our perfect and final Passover Lamb and our High Priest,” she said. “He saved us from death, and He offered us new life and His blood became the door to access the Holy of Holies to God’s presence.”