A New Passover

Introduction

The purpose of spiritual ritual in worship is to unite our physical, lived experience with unseen, spiritual truth.

The Table is a mystery which invites us into a sacred space where we may exercise our faith in a uniting participation in the body and blood of Christ. In doing so, we are brought closer both to the Throne of Grace and to the presence of Christ as it exists in the congregation of believers. Today, we will witness the establishment of this practice and from it we will discern the mysteries and benefits that are ours who are in Christ.

The Context of the Supper

The Passover week approaches:

14th of Nisan was the day one would prepare for the week of feasting, beginning with the feast of unleavened bread which would be celebrated at sundown, which would technically be the 15th of Nisan.

This supper was the particular occasion when the Passover lamb would have been slaughtered as the Passover sacrifice and then cooked with bitter herbs during the meal the marked the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which would then last a week. It had to be celebrated in Jerusalem or not at all, which is why the disciples are told to go into the city and find a place for then to prepare the feast; they could not have it in Bethany where they had been staying the past week.

The meal would also include unleavened bread (hence the name) and four cups of wine. The unleavened bread would be dipped into a bowl of sauce made from crushed fruit. Unleavened bread, which symbolized haste in leaving Egypt, was to be eaten the entire week of the feast.

During the feast, a young child was to ask the head of the family (usually the Father) what all this means, and he was to respond with an explanation, which we saw given in our reading of Exodus 12. After this, the second cup of wine was given. The Hallel which is a collection of Psalms that all begin and end with Hallelujah or Praise the Lord are also sung at various points. In fact, the Greek word Eucharisma which is where we get Eucharist means thanksgiving and is associated with the songs of praise given at the Passover. We should not be afraid to use that word to describe the Table, although we must be careful not to use it confusingly as most people associate it with Roman Catholicism.

The third cup of wine was called the cup of blessing, and it was a remembrance of God’s promises of blessing in the covenant he had made with his people. It is this cup that most scholars agree was specifically used for the institution of the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper. The forth cup would have then been taken when they close the evening by finishing the Hallel hymns and drink the final cup (Matthew 26:30).

A Sacrificial Feast

Jesus is careful to prepare for their taking of the feast and of instituting the Lord’s Table. It is not clear whether Jesus had arranged this naturally or supernaturally. Regardless, it is clearly important to Jesus that his disciples experience this, of all Passovers, as this celebration will never be the same for them again.

At evening, the twelve are eating with Jesus. The Passover was taken in small family groups, so here is Jesus with his family, his mother and brothers; his faithful disciples. And yet, not all of them are so faithful, for there is a wolf among the sheep, as Matthew already made us aware of in vs. 14-16. At this point, in the context of Jesus’ closest friends, those whom he considers family, Jesus makes them aware of a betrayer among them. Jesus is not taken by surprise, and surely he could have made the traitor known and his plan would have been stopped. But here, he makes known only the existence of the betrayer. This forces each disciple to ask a very heart-provoking question: is it I?

When Jesus says it is one who dips his hand in the dish with me, this emphasizes that this person is there, right now, in this most sacred and secret of places for only his closest friends. He is there, participating in the feast, dipping his bread in the same sauce as Jesus does.

Jesus’ answer to Judas in verse 25 literally reads, “have you not said?” This isn’t a clear answer, as the other disciples do not take this as affirmation, but rather is a subtle way in which Jesus uses Judas’s words against himself. He is now a witness of his own betrayal.

In verse 26 we get to the heart of this text, and it is at this point that the meal changes from what was normally expected at such a feast.

Jesus takes the unleavened bread, tells the disciples to take and eat as it is his body. While Roman Catholics have done much wrong to the table in supposing that the bread physically becomes Jesus’ human flesh, we understand what the church Father Augustine said that images like this are “not Christ by substance, but by significance.” Just as the Scriptures say Christ is a rock, a shepherd, a gate, the manna, and the Temple, when his physical flesh was none of these things and yet in a certain sense Jesus Christ is all of those things by representation. So it is that the substance of the thing we hold in our hand is bread, but by significance it is the flesh of Christ to us. When I eat, I eat it as though it were the flesh of Christ because to me who eats in faith it signifies and represents the flesh of Christ and so I treat it as the flesh of Christ. Jesus doesn’t need to explain this, because it is quite plain. The disciples know he is not speaking of his literal flesh, as they see him whole before them. At the same time, Jesus uses these words because that is how the bread to is to treated by those who take it with faith. Paul calls such partaking a participation in the flesh and blood of Christ (1 Cor 10:16) and warns us of condemnation if we do not discern the flesh and blood of Christ at the Table.

In the context of both of these texts, Paul’s main focus is on fellowship and unity. When the rich were feasting at the table before the poor could eat anything, they were not discerning the body of Christ: that is, they were not actively aware of what they were doing and how they were blaspheming Jesus by hurting his body the church while they ate what was supposed to signify that same Body. Likewise, Paul’s conclusion in 1 Cor 10:17 is

1 Corinthians 10:17 ESV

Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

So what makes the table we eat a legitimate participation in Christ has nothing to do with apostolic succession of a priest, as many non-Protestant and even some Anglicans claim, but by this: do I treat it, and my fellow Christian, as the body of Christ? To me, my fellow Christian is Christ (as we saw a couple of weeks ago in the parable of the sheep and the goats) and likewise to me the bread is the flesh of Christ. The bread eaten serves as a representation of our full union with Christ in ceremony, just as our service of one another represents the same thing in action. Jesus counts your treatment of other Christians as treatment of himself, and he counts your taking of the table as a taking of himself. This is why it is wrong for us to refuse the Table for ourselves or others unless they be under the discipline of the church or otherwise severed from Christ and his people. To refuse the Table for myself is to say I do not need union with Christ, and to refuse it to another believer without a just reason is to refuse Christ to them. We all partake of the one bread, Paul says, and we all partake of one another and by so doing in faith we partake of Christ himself.

When Jesus takes the cup, he similarly tells them to drink it as representing his blood. He has more to say about the cup than the bread, however.

Blood of the (new) covenant - This interesting phrase can multiple OT connections. Although the phrase blood of the covenant is not specifically mentioned in the OT, there are a couple of times when blood was used as part of the establishment of God’s covenants with his people.

In Genesis 15, God establishes his covenant with Abraham through an ancient tradition where animals would be cut into pieces and those entering into the covenant would pass through the pieces in the blood of the animals. The idea was that those who walked through the blood were under an oath which, if they broke, would put them under a curse to be cut into pieces like those animals. In that case, only God’s presence passed through the animals, signalling God’s commitment to his promises to Abraham to be accomplished by his own strength alone. So here, Christ breaks the bread as his body will be broken and gives the wine as his blood will be given to establish a greater covenant than the one established with Abraham.

The other place where blood is mentioned in the establishment of a covenant is when God makes his covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai. After God gives Moses the book of the covenant we read in Exodus 24:5-8

Exodus 24:5–8 ESV

And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

Here, as God establishes the structure of the relationship he will have with the nation of Israel, once again blood is used to establish and seal this covenant. The people are now under the blood of the covenant and will receive blessing for their faithfulness to it and punishment for their unfaithfulness. God also is under the blood of this covenant, the half thrown against the alter, and this assures Israel of the LORD’s faithfulness.

poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins - But this blood is also more than a sign. The blood of Christ is effectual for the forgiveness of sins.

The image of this pouring out was one the disciples would have been very familiar with, since only that day they had sacrificed their own passover lamb at the Temple where a lot of blood was being poured out. Jesus himself is the passover lamb here and so the image of the wine is one of the sacrifice of his own body as an atonement for sin.

For the forgiveness of sins should not be understood as if the elements themselves are a sacrifice for sin, or that the Lord’s table is a way by which we obtain forgiveness. This understanding evolved over more than a thousand years in the Roman Catholic Church, but is nowhere to be found in Scripture or the early church. This is also true of baptism, which Peter says in Acts 2:38 is for the forgiveness of sins. In both of these cases, it is not the sacrament which removes sin, but what the sacrament represents. It is the sacrificed body and blood of Christ on the cross, not bread and wine at the Table, which takes away sins. Likewise, it is a spiritual unity by faith in the death and resurrection of Christ which applies this forgiveness to the believer, which of course is represented in baptism.

However, it would be wrong to come to the opposite conclusion and think that these ordinances are merely symbolic. To take these ordinances by faith is to willingly and visibly unite yourself to the things they represent. To undergo baptism does not forgive your sins, but to participate in the death and resurrection of Christ by faith does. The visible display of such a union is through baptism, where the church and the individual believer together declare this truth and that believer participates outwardly in what is already true inwardly. In the same way, eating bread and drinking wine will not forgive your sins, even if the Apostle Peter himself blessed it. The forgiveness of sins comes through a participation in the blood of Christ by faith, and this is affirmed visibly as the believer continues to take of the Table. It is how we respond in faith to the gospel continually and declare our continued faith in the blood of Christ which saves us. That is why Paul says that when we take of the Table we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again.” This isn’t merely a statement, but a personal confession of faith displayed in the sharing of the Table. The ordinances are the ways God has told us to express our faith in the forgiveness of sins, first and once through baptism and then regularly through the Table. In response to this obedient display of faith, the Table is a visible assurance that what is here represented is spiritually true of us if done in faith. In approaching God in this way with such faith, the Table becomes a means of grace by which we participate in the body and blood of Christ, as we earlier saw in Paul’s teaching.

Eschatological significance - Jesus final words in verse 29 give the Table a meaning, not just as we look back on Christ’s death on the cross, but also as we look forward to a heavenly feast in glory. Jesus himself is on a fast of his own, withholding himself from the joy of wine until we arrive to drink it with him. It is a comfort that, as we remember the blood of Christ as we drink the cup, we can know that Jesus is looking forward to the end of our salvation, the consummation when we will eat and drink with him in the festivities of the new heavens and the new earth.

Conclusion: What is the Table to Us?

At the first Lord’s Table the night before his crucifixion, Jesus did not abolish the Passover meal but rather changed if forever. A feast that used to remember the blood of a lamb which marked the people of God and kept them from death and punishment has now been made about the blood of the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Bread which once reminded the people of God about the haste with which they left Egypt now reminds us of the broken body of our crucified Saviour. The wine which once represented the covenant promises to Israel now represents the promise of forgiveness we have in the new covenant made in the blood of Christ. This is so much so that even reading the establishment of the Passover in Exodus can make the connection obvious:

Exodus 12:13 NIVUK

The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

So believers, if you have entered into covenant with Christ by faith, if you have obediently declared that faith in the church through baptism and so have visibly united yourself to Christ to reflect your inner unity with Christ by faith, if you are continuing your walk in faith, daily repenting of sin and daily seeking to follow the Lord, the Table is a feast for you. It is an opportunity to come before the Throne of Grace and once again declare your faith and dependence on his body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, a price that was paid once for all on the cross and which is represented for us at the Table. It is also an opportunity to remind ourselves of the unity we have as the body of Christ. Remember this was Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 10. Because we all take of one bread and one cup, we show ourselves to be one body in union with Christ. What we declare says something about our faith and how we mean to have it play out in our lives in the will of God. To take the Table says, “I see that the body and blood of Christ, which were broken and spilled on the cross, is payment for my sins and security of my salvation. I behold and receive them by faith. I also recognize that partaking of the body of Christ unites me with those who are also united to Him by faith, and I will obediently serve and love them with the love that is so wonderfully shown to me at this Table.”

If you take the Table with such a heart, there will be much grace to be gained from the generous hand of Christ in receiving it.

And if you do not yet know Christ or have not yet publicly acknowledged Him and been acknowledged by his church in Baptism, let these elements pass from you until the appropriate time. Let them speak truth to you of the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sins in his blood. These are words of life to you, and the Table invites you into the fellowship in which this sacred ordinance is received.