Could it be
that when Jesus, the rabbi from Galilee, instituted his Eucharist in the 1st
century that he (or a later follower of his) also introduced a new custom into
the (then fairly fluid) Jewish Passover liturgy—a custom that had the leader
choose the middle of the three loaves of unleavened bread, like the 2nd person
of what Christians now refer to as “the Holy Trinity” was chosen for a special
assignment?
Could it be
that the middle loaf of this “bread of affliction” is broken and half of it
consumed, like our Lord Jesus, who was “afflict[ed]” for our sins. Indeed, he
referred to himself as the “Bread of Life,” who must be personally appropriated
in order for an individual to live eternally with God?[1]
Could it be
that the other half of the broken loaf, the afikoman, is taken, wrapped in a
linen “shroud” and hidden from view, just like Jesus the Messiah, suffered,
died, was wrapped in a shroud, and then buried? And could it be that the
afikoman is sought for by children during the modern Passover, like Jesus and
his kingdom must be sought for by those who humble themselves like little
children?[2] Is there a cryptic message from Jesus himself in the modern Passover
seder?
Please also
remember, afikoman means “I am coming.”[3]
The Gospel
text simply says:
And as they
were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed[a] and broke it, and gave it to the
disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is my body” (Mat 26:26).[4]
Likewise he
also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my
blood, which is poured out for you” (Luk 22:20).
We know that
the third cup of wine drunk at this stage of the Passover meal was called by
Jews the “cup of redemption” and also the “cup of blessing.” So when we read in
one of Paul’s letters that he called the wine of the Eucharist the “cup of
blessing,”[5] it is fairly certain that he had the third of the four Passover
cups in mind. Further evidence is that both Paul and Luke state explicitly that
the cup Jesus used to inaugurate the new covenant was drunk “after supper,”
apparently referring to the full-blown meal (See above, also 1Cor 11:25).
And that is
when the “cup of blessing” is drunk during the Jewish Passover ritual.
In the
Bible, covenants are binding legal agreements between two or more parties, …
sealed in blood. Moses had inaugurated the covenant given at Mt. Sinai some
1,500 years before Jesus by sprinkling the blood of sacrificed cattle on the
assembled representatives from Israel. Then he spoke thus:
“This is the
blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these
words” (Exo 24:8).
The new
covenant was not invented by Jesus and his followers. It was hinted at
throughout the Hebrew Scriptures,[6] and specifically promised by God via the
prophet Jeremiah about 600 years before Christ:
“Behold, the
days are coming,” says the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel and with the house of Judah … I will put My law in their minds,
and write it on their hearts … they all shall know Me, from the least of them
to the greatest of them … For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I
will remember no more” (Jer 31:31-34).
Therefore,
Jesus took the third cup of the Passover meal, the “cup of redemption,” the
“cup of blessing,” and he pronounced the traditional benediction.
When he told
his disciples, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out
for you,” Jesus was purposefully linking the meaning of the third cup in the
Passover liturgy, the “cup of redemption,” the “cup of blessing” together with
a series of biblical phrases.[7] The first phrase came from what Jeremiah had
said (“new covenant”) 600 years before Christ. The second phrase came from what
Moses had said (“blood of the covenant”) about 1,500 years before Christ. And
the third phrase, concerning an innocent person who would die on behalf of
sinful Israel, came from what the prophet Isaiah had about 700 years before
Christ:
“… he poured
out his soul unto death … (Isa 53:12).
By this
particular statement at Passover, drinking, not the first, second or fourth, …
but the third cup of the seder, the “cup of redemption,” the “cup of blessing,”
Jesus meant to communicate to his Jewish disciples in that upper room a couple
of things:
First of
all, please remember that the Passover in Egypt was God’s salvation for all who
applied the lamb’s blood to their doorposts. The LORD judged Egypt. But His
death angel did not perform his task based on whether one were Israelite or
Egyptian. Each family had a firstborn. Israelite and Egyptian. And each
firstborn was protected from the angel so long as he, and all family members,
stayed inside the house where the Passover lamb’s blood had been properly
applied.
For those
who for whatever reason failed to apply the blood of the slain lamb to the
doorposts of their house, the result was a terrible tragedy.
Jesus wanted
his followers to apply the blood he referred to—his own blood—to the
“doorposts” of their hearts and so be saved from the coming judgment of God. He
was promising to “redeem” and “bless” them if they accepted the covenant. Just
like those Hebrews who accepted the terms of the Passover deliverance were redeemed
and blessed. To drink the cup under Jesus’ “new covenant” conditions would be
an act of faith for the disciples. Just like it was for the ancient Hebrews
back in Egypt.
Secondly, by
his statement in that upper room, Jesus wanted his disciples to understand that
he would initiate the prophesied “new covenant” via his own “blood,” thereby
“pour[ing] out his soul (i.e. life)” so that God might forgive their sins.
By their
drinking of that cup of wine, the disciples were accepting the terms of this
promised “new covenant,” this binding legal agreement sealed in blood. They
thereby committed themselves in faith to their Messiah, who would die on theirs
and all of Israel’s behalves. They hardly knew the full extent of what they
were doing, or what actually would happen to Jesus the next day. The
crucifixion. Nevertheless the disciples present, having faith in their leader
and friend, drank the cup anyway and so entered into the “new covenant” that
would shortly be ratified by Jesus’ own shed blood.
And that is
how it can be for anyone today.
Most of us
basically know the rest of what happened with Jesus and his followers that Good
Friday in the upper room. Jesus vowed that he would not drink wine again until
they all celebrated together in his Father’s kingdom.[8] The remaining eleven
disciples and Jesus spoke and prayed together.[9] They sang.[10] Then all of
them left Mark’s family’s Jerusalem home heading east, going down into the
Kidron valley that skirted the portion of the city closest to the temple, then
up they went onto the nearby Mount of Olives where they and other pilgrims were
camped for the holidays.
In the
meantime Judas Iscariot had aroused members of the religious establishment who
viewed Jesus as a threat to the stability of the occupied nation.[11] These
leaders convened a meeting and sent Judas to find Jesus.
Sometime
later on the mountain, Jesus agonized in prayer in an isolated olive grove
named for an oil press, Gethsemane. [12] Meanwhile his followers, eyes heavy
with wine, food, and sorrow, fell asleep a short distance off from where Jesus
prayed. Judas and a band of Jewish temple guards, sent with him by the
religious leadership, traveled outside the city walls and up the slope of the
Mount of Olives to arrest Jesus.[13]
Betrayed by
a kiss from a kinsman and friend, Jesus began his trial in earnest and the next
day walked the lonely road to the cross.
End Notes
[1] Joh
6:35, 48-58.
[2] Mat
18:1-5.
[3] Paul
later wrote, “This means that every time you eat this bread and drink from this
cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until *he comes*” (1Cor 11:26, emphasis
mine).
[4] In the
Passover liturgy we find these words: “This is the bread of affliction that our
ancestors ate when they came out of Egypt.” Yet no knowledgeable Jew of any era
would insist that the bread he held in his hands were the actual bread that the
Hebrews baked centuries prior on the night of their exodus from Egypt. If any
of that bread at all had remained, it could not be handled, much less eaten.
Indeed it would have long since crumbled and become dust. In the same way, we
should not insist that when Jesus said, “This is my body,” that he meant that
the morsel in his hand had somehow changed to become his actual body; this is a
hyper-literalism foreign to the thought-world of Jesus and his contemporaries.
But neither should we see our partaking of the bread as a mere
recalling-to-mind of the passion of Christ, and his promised return. Memory in
the Bible is rarely passive, but most often involves resolve to perform acts of
covenant loyalty (E.g. “Then God remembered Noah …” [Gen 8:1]; “And … God
remembered Abraham …” [Gen 19:26]; “… and God remembered His covenant …” [Exo
2:24]. Etc. The question to keep in mind for a proper understanding of memory
in these and other verses is: Did God ever FORGET Noah, Abraham, or His
covenant with the Patriarchs? Also see Deu 25:19 “Do not forget [the covenant
unfaithfulness of …] Amalek.”). Again, the idea in older Jewish thought was
that through reenacting ancient events via covenant rituals (E.g. the Passover,
… or in our case as Christians, the Eucharist, baptism, etc), time was—in a
manner of speaking—“collapsed” so that those present personally participated in
that singular unrepeatable past event. The event was not repeated per se, and
what was past did not become current. The ritual participants themselves, so to
speak, went back in time. Note what Jonathan Went states: “Eating Passover is
considered to be not a memorial but a reliving. Hebrew allows for this since it
had no word for history and its verbs do not properly distinguish between past
and present.” (“Passover and the Eucharist,” Leadership University Website,
1998-2005, emphasis mine). Likewise, the chief rabbi of England wrote regarding
this aspect of the Passover: "History is what happened to someone else.
Memory is what happened to me" (Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi, The Times, 22
April 1995). Therefore, when we eat and drink the Eucharistic elements, we
should understand that God does not transubstantiate the bread into the actual
body of Christ, or the wine into the actual blood, and thus through celebrating
the Eucharist we (or someone) re-crucifies our Lord (See Heb 10:12). No, we are
the ones somehow transported back in sacred history to sit with Christ and his
disciples in that Upper Room some 2000 years ago.
[5] 1Cor
10:16. See also Stern, David H. Jewish New Testament Commentary. Clarkeville,
MD: Jewish New Testament Publications Inc., 1992, p. 471.
[6] E.g. Deu
30:6; Isa 42:6; 49:8,9; Eze 11:19, 20.
[7] As a
rabbi, Jesus handled the Scriptures in a very Jewish way, here linking
different Bible passages together for a multifaceted, yet unified message using
a midrashic technique called “stringing pearls.”
[8] Mar
14:25. Since there remained one more cup, the “cup of Elijah,” to drink to
complete the required four cups of the Passover celebration, it seems likely
that the disciples partook of it while Jesus abstained.
[9] Joh
13:31-18:1.
[10] Mat
26:30; Mar 14:26. We may not know all they sang, but it at least included
Psalms 115, 116, 117, and 118 since these were dictated by the Passover liturgy
at the conclusion of the seder.
[11] Joh
11:47-53.
[12]
Gethsemane is from the Greek transliteration of two Hebrew words gat (i.e.
press) and shemenim (i.e. oils). The fact that the place to which they retired
was some kind of garden, and that (so it is claimed by a few botanical experts)
there remain on the traditional site living olive trees whose roots (not trunks
and branches) are from the essential time of Jesus, lends credibility to the
name.
[13] Joh
18:3. While the TEV has “… a group of Roman soldiers, and some Temple guards
sent by the chief priests and the Pharisees …,” there is nothing in the text
itself to warrant such an editorial interpolation about Romans. During the
later interrogation by Pilate and the actual crucifixion it is plain that the
occupying forces were heavily involved. But the arrest in Gethsemane appears to
have initially been the sole plan of the Jewish leadership, carried out through
the greedy disciple Judas Iscariot. A literal rendition of Joh 18:3 from the
Greek states that a “band of men and officers [was] sent from the chief priests
and Pharisees.” No mention of Roman soldiers. Yet.
-Michael
Millier
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