It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”

Passover was a festival when the Jews sacrificed lambs. It was a way of remembering with thanks their liberation by God from their suffering in ancient Egypt, and how they escaped from slavery carrying just travelling food for the journey.

Yeshu gave the Jews the opportunity to kill him at Passover time as a sacrifice to clear our sins. In this way we believers are liberated from the slavery and suffering of samsara and are invited into the unfading life of God’s heaven. (Because Yeshu is the Lamb of God, the sacrifice of those lambs for the sins of men is no longer necessary)

In the next two chapters we learn about Yeshu’s arrest and how he died on a cross.