Jesus is the Exodus Way

If you recall back in June we talked about the very first Passover meal as the Israelites prepared to leave Egypt during their Exodus to the Wilderness with the promise of the Promised Land on the other side. This was an important to meal to both save the firstborn children, but it was also a meal to commemorate the salvation that God had been preparing for them. Because this was such an important point in the relationship and the faith of the people of Israel God instructs the people to have this Passover meal every year so that they can remember what the LORD had done for them. That means that this Passover meal had been celebrated for about 1500 years when Jesus celebrated it with his disciples the night that we call the Last Supper.

One thing to keep in mind is that on the surface, for the disciples, as they are eating this meal together there is nothing out of the ordinary going on. In fact, if we were to look at the Gospel of John we would see that Jesus celebrated the Passover two or maybe even three times before the final Passover celebration during what we call Holy Week. The first indication that something is going is when Jesus talks about the betrayal by one of his disciples. This probably set the tone that something different was going on.

Despite that change the meal continues as normal until Jesus breaks the bread. And to be clear it isn’t the breaking of the bread that is different, that continues to fall into the category of normal Passover meal practice. Jesus has likely recited a typical prayer at the breaking of the bread but then he begins to talk about the bread being his body. In the midst of the normal but also very sacred meal Jesus starts talking about the bread not just representing the haste by which Israel had to leave Egypt, and not that God provides us our daily bread, but that this bread is a representation of Jesus body.

Then he takes a cup and in similar fashion does something that would have been a part of a normal Passover meal, reminding them of God’s blessings and the abundance of God’s mercy, praying a prayer from the Psalms, and then as he invites them to drink he shares with them that the cup represents his blood which is a part of the covenant or as we see in other Gospels and in Paul’s letters, this cup is the new covenant. This cup is poured out so that people may be forgiven of their sins. This wording may have reminded the disciples of the covenant that God made with the people through Moses at Mt. Sinai during the wilderness time of the Exodus.

This language of covenant and forgiveness also comes directly from Jeremiah 31:31-34 where in verse 31 Jeremiah talks about the new covenant that God will make with God’s people and then in verse 34 where God says that God will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins. Jesus, through this bread and cup is declaring that he is the new covenant that God promised would be coming and that through this new covenant he is declaring the forgiveness of people’s sins. Then he finishes off this sharing of the bread and cup by saying that he won’t drink with them until he does it in a new way in his Father’s kingdom. In other words Jesus is pointing to the past Exodus, the present Exodus, and the future Exodus where God continues to provide salvation to the people.

So by connecting Passover to what we now call Communion Jesus is hosting the Passover salvation event which celebrates the escape or Exodus from Egypt and anticipates their arrival in the Promised Land, to the life, death and resurrection of himself and the way in which Jesus delivers us from our bondage to sin and death. If Jesus is connecting the Passover event to himself through the bread as his body and the cup as his blood, then we can see that Jesus is Exodus Way. He is the way by which the new covenant is being made and fulfilled. This new covenant with God through Jesus represents the forgiveness of sins and the promise of a present and future breaking in of the Father’s kingdom which we get to experience through Jesus.

If we jump over to Luke’s gospel and look at what he includes in Jesus’ Passover meal, we see that he includes the phrase, “do this in remembrance of me”, which we also see repeated by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. This idea of remembrance connects us to God telling the Israelites to remember what God did at the first Passover, and it now reminds us of God’s new saving act through the life of Jesus. If we look at Paul’s communion liturgy in 1 Corinthians he ends it with the phrase that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup we are proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes.

That means that every time we come up for communion we, like the Israelites are remembering and reconnecting ourselves to the saving act of Jesus through his life, death, and resurrection. We are remembering that salvation comes through Jesus, meaning that it is not something we can do but only something God can do for us. We call that grace. It is by the love and grace of God that God created a way fr us to be forgiven of our sins that didn’t require something we do, or something we have to say. It is by God’s grace that we have been saved because God sent Jesus, the word made flesh to be the Exodus Way, the way out of our bondage to sin and death.

Now if you take a look at last week and this week you will see that, among other things we looked at Jesus’ baptism, and now this week we look at the Last Supper. While we skpped over so many other stories that are important to our faith and understanding of Jesus as our messiah and savior, we see that two of the most pivotal moments in his life and what it means for us and our relationship to God resides in our two sacraments. We are baptized in the same baptism that Jesus was baptized and we celebrate communion the way that he invited us to asked us to remember what he has done for us. We give thanks to God for creating the way, Jesus, for us to move forward in our life with God, a way that is full of grace, forgiveness and salvation. For God’s abundant love for us we are forever grateful. Amen.