Much ink has been “spilt” over Jesus’ words, “Take, eat; this is my body…Drink, all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Jesus’ followers refer to this as the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion or Holy Eucharist. Some of his followers refer to it as a sacrament, and others do not; each for various reasons.
I want to first stay with Jesus, in this moment, in this text.
When I do, I notice he is celebrating the Passover meal with his disciples. His last Passover.
Place yourself there with the rest of the disciples. What must that night have been like. He has had a challenging week. It was just a few days ago he entered Jerusalem to shouts of praise. Immediately after he was engaged in intense debate with the religious rulers. Now, he is coming to celebrate the Passover with his closest companions.
You would think they, his followers, might be welcoming the break and looking forward to the festal meal.
The next few hours and days would turn any thought of a festal time on its head. The text reveals, Jesus reveals, it will be quite the opposite. The tension and challenge are only growing (v.21).
Jesus knows just how special this meal was.
Let’s set it up. First, consider how important the Passover is to Jews. It is the meal that celebrates their deliverance from slavery to freedom by Almighty God’s intervention into their plight.
Let me just say that differently. The Passover celebrates God’s intentional action in history, action that forced Pharoah to let the Jewish people be free.
Pharoah’s grip upon the Jews was fierce; more akin to a strangle. It took God sending plague after plague upon Pharoah and the land to free them. In fact, it was not until God sent death upon the land that Pharoah released them. (And even after he freed them, he with his armies then chased after them.)
How did God send death upon the land, and yet spare the Jews? He directed them to slaughter a lamb, spread its blood on their doorposts, and eat the lamb. When they did, the Angel of Death passed-over them.
Year after year the Israelites celebrate this event, The Passover.
The Old Testament foreshadows God’s action in and through the person of Jesus. It is no wonder that Jesus himself, with his own powerful words, captures and breathes full and new meaning into this meal of freedom—this meal remembering God acting in history through shed blood to free them—ultimate human freedom is now coming to its fullest through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the Passover Lamb—yet the meaning of those words is so much deeper. Jesus is not only looking back. He is looking forward. The New Covenant means that all people, through Jesus, can received forgiveness and know Almighty God.
This meal, this remembrance, is more than “just bread and wine”; but it certainly has not morphed its molecular structure to be “flesh and blood”.
Theology is important, but in our human drive to “define exactly” the meaning of Jesus words regard the elements of the meal, we have allowed their debate to perhaps overshadow the eternal importance of this new meal.
When was the last time you received Communion—when you did (or do), what is your heart and mind captured by?