3Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house:

4And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.

5Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:

6And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.

7And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.

8And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

9Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof.

10And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire.

11And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD'S passover.

12For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

The second reading from the First Letter of Peter, 1 Peter, takes me back 55 years. Ordination candidates below the age of thirty were, that year, required to sit an exam on two prescribed New Testament books, demonstrating a knowledge of the original Greek, and I landed on 1 Peter and the letter of James. Luther did not like the Letter of James, and famously called it an epistle of straw, but 1 Peter is a more positive experience. It has to be said that it probably wasn't simply written by St Peter. In those days you would attach someone's name to a piece of writing if you wanted to honour them and felt sure you were on their wavelength, or were descended from their original community. Had St Peter the Apostle – who was apparently Jesus' closest follower - sat down and written this, it would be on page 1 of the New Testament, not up the back! It would also be likely to include lots of actual words and sayings of Jesus himself. Instead, 1 Peter is full of the thought of St Paul, and the original Apostle Peter and St Paul were never best mates.

The Letter must be looked at for what it is, and a few features always stand out. The writer is keen about our baptism, seeing it, like Paul, as focusing our dying and rising with Christ, to an inheritance which cannot be destroyed. 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.' We are, as Christians, born again to a 'lively hope', usually now translated as a 'living hope'. The passage is sometimes quoted at funerals. You might think that all hopes are 'living' - positive. But not all hopes are the same. You might work or campaign for better housing or law or education or whatever, in the hope of benefitting society in the long term, which is very laudable, and might in due course bear fruit for some people somewhen. But the Christian hope is more 'living' in the sense that it is something vitally significant assured for the actual individual. 

Significantly, however, the thought continues to say that Christians should always be ready for testing times, perhaps arriving quite unexpectedly.  'Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.' The thought there being that testing of our faith is not all bad: just as valuable metal has to be refined in hot circumstances.