FOURTEEN

THE FEAST

For the ancient Jews—and still for Jews today—Passover was an annual meal that commemorated a defining moment in the history of Israel. More than a millennium before the time of Jesus, the Israelites had been enslaved to Egypt’s pharaoh, trapped in miserable bondage. After sending many plagues to Egypt to loosen the pharaoh’s oppressive grip on Israel, one night God sent the final plague; he unsheathed the sword of divine justice. And this justice would fall on everyone. It could not “pass over” the Jews simply because they were Jews. In every home in Egypt—of Jews and Egyptians alike—someone would die under the wrath of justice. The only way for your family to escape was to put your faith in God’s sacrificial provision; namely, you had to slay a lamb and put the blood on the doors as a sign of your faith in God. In every home that night there would either be a dead child or a dead lamb. When justice came down, either it fell on your family or you took shelter under the substitute, under the blood of the lamb. If you did accept this shelter, then death passed over you and you were saved; that’s why it was called Passover. You were saved only on the basis of faith in a substitutionary sacrifice.

This is how God delivered the Israelites and led them into freedom, into the Promised Land. Every year the Passover meal commemorated this deliverance (referred to as the exodus), which had been the most important moment in the life of Israel as a nation and as a people.

But as dramatic and moving as this deliverance was, it leaves us with a nagging question. Why in the world would the sacrifice of a woolly little quadruped exempt you from justice? The answer lies in what happens when Jesus and his disciples celebrate Passover. Mark writes:

On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?” So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.” The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

(Mark 14:12–16)

The Passover meal had to be prepared in a certain way and had a distinct form. It included four points at which the presider, holding a glass of wine, got up and explained the feast’s meaning. The four cups of wine represented the four promises made by God in Exodus 6:6–7. These promises were for rescue from Egypt, for freedom from slavery, for redemption by God’s divine power, and for a renewed relationship with God. The third cup came at a point when the meal was almost completely eaten. The presider would use words from Deuteronomy 26 to bless the elements—the bread, the herbs, the lamb—by explaining how they were symbolic reminders of various aspects of the early Israelites’ captivity and deliverance. For example, he would show them the bread and say, “This is the bread of our affliction, which our fathers ate in the wilderness.”

Jesus was the presider at this Passover meal with the disciples, and Mark recounts what happened when Jesus raised the third cup:

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. “I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.”

(Mark 14:22–25)

Imagine the astonishment of the disciples when, blessing the elements and explaining their symbolism, Jesus departs from the script that has been reenacted by generation after generation. He shows them the bread and says, “This is my body.” What does that mean? Jesus is saying, “This is the bread of my affliction, the bread of my suffering, because I’m going to lead the ultimate exodus and bring you the ultimate deliverance from bondage.”

In ancient times when someone would say, “I’m not going to eat or drink until I _______,” they were making an oath. For example, in Acts 23, some people get so mad at Paul that they say they’re not going to eat or drink until they kill him. It’s like when we say, “I’m going to do this if it kills me,” but in biblical times this was an oath that was taken very seriously and was literally marked with blood. This oath meant you were making a covenant—a solemn relationship of obligation—between you and another party. Like signing a contract. But this covenant was established and sealed by killing an animal, cutting it in half, and walking between the pieces as you stated your oath. Or sometimes you would spill the blood and have it sprinkled on you as you made your promise. It’s gory and repulsive to us, but it was a way of saying, “If I do not fulfill my promise, may my blood be spilled, may I be cut in half.” This was a very vivid way of making the covenant binding. Remember what Jesus said when he took the cup:

Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. “I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.”

(Mark 14:23–25)

Jesus’s words mean that as a result of his substitutionary sacrifice there is now a new covenant between God and us. And the basis of this relationship is Jesus’s own blood: “my blood of the covenant.” When he announces that he will not eat or drink until he meets us in the kingdom of God, Jesus is promising that he is unconditionally committed to us: “I am going to bring you into the Father’s arms. I’m going to bring you to the feast of the King.” Jesus often compares God’s kingdom to sitting at a big feast. In Matthew 8, Jesus says, “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast . . . in the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus promises that we will be at this kingdom feast with him.

With these simple gestures of holding up the bread and the wine, with the simple words “This is my body . . . this is my blood,” Jesus is saying that all the earlier deliverances, the earlier sacrifices, the lambs at Passover, were pointing to himself. Just as the first Passover was observed the night before God redeemed the Israelites from slavery through the blood of the lambs, this Passover meal was eaten the night before God redeemed the world from sin and death through the blood of Jesus.

The Main Course

Jesus’s last meal with his disciples departed from the script in another way too. When Jesus stood up to bless the food, he held up bread. All Passover meals had bread. He blessed the wine—all Passover meals had wine. But not one of the Gospels mentions a main course. There is no mention of lamb at this Passover meal. Passover was not a vegetarian meal, of course. What kind of Passover would be celebrated without lamb? There was no lamb on the table because the Lamb of God was at the table. Jesus was the main course. That’s the reason that when John the Baptist saw Jesus for the first time, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). It is also why in Isaiah 53, the prophet writes about the Messiah:

The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter. . . . he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.

(Isaiah 53:6–7, 12)

In Mark, when Jesus says, “This is my body. . . . This is my blood . . . poured out,” he means: I’m the One that Isaiah and John spoke about. I am the Lamb of God to which all the other lambs pointed, the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.

On the cross Jesus got what we deserved: The sin, guilt, and brokenness of the world fell upon him. He loved us so much he took divine justice on himself so that we could be passed over, forever.

It bears repeating: All love, all real, life-changing love, is substitutionary sacrifice. You have never loved a broken person, you have never loved a guilty person, you have never loved a hurting person except through substitutionary sacrifice. Two chapters back I gave a couple of examples; here are a few more.

Say you’re one of the cool kids in high school, and there’s a classmate who is considered geeky. Nobody likes her; she’s isolated and alienated. You try to reach out and be her friend. The next thing you know, the other cool kids are coming to you and saying, “What are you doing with her?” What’s happening is, some of that geekiness is rubbing off on you. You’re not so cool anymore if you hang out with her. There is no way for you to diminish her isolation without entering into it, without some of it falling on you.

One more example: I read some years ago in National Geographic that after a forest fire in Yellowstone National Park, some forest rangers began a trek up a mountain to survey the damage. One ranger found a bird of which nothing was left but the carbonized, petrified shell, covered in ashes, huddled at the base of a tree. Somewhat sickened by this eerie sight, the ranger knocked the bird over with a stick—and three tiny chicks scurried out from under their dead mother’s wings. When the blaze had arrived, the mother had remained steadfast instead of running. Because she had been willing to die, those under the cover of her wings lived. And Jesus said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Luke 13:34). He did indeed gather Jerusalem’s children under his wings—and he was consumed. All real, life-changing love is costly, substitutionary sacrifice.

The Last Course

When Luke describes this same meal in his story of Jesus, he records a few more of Jesus’s words. Luke adds:

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

(Luke 22:19)

Jesus is saying that in remembrance of him, the disciples and anyone who believes in him are to eat the bread and drink the cup together. This practice is called the “Lord’s Supper” (1 Corinthians 11:20) for obvious reasons, but it is also called the “Lord’s table” (1 Corinthians 10:21), “communion,” “cup of blessing” (1 Corinthians 10:16), and “breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42). The bread that is broken, given, and eaten in the Lord’s Supper is a reminder of Christ’s body given and broken on the cross for our sins. The wine poured out to drink is a reminder of Christ’s blood poured out on the cross for our sins. So when anyone eats that bread and drinks that wine they are reminded of the sacrificial, substitutionary love of Jesus.

The first Passover meal in Egypt was, of course, an actual meal. It was not enough that a lamb was slain and its blood put on the doorposts. The lamb also had to be eaten; it had to be taken in. In the same way, the Lord’s Supper is a way of “taking in” the death of Christ for yourself and appropriating it personally. Mark writes:

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”

(Mark 14:22)

Jesus says, “Take it.” He lets us know that we have to take what he is doing for us. We have to receive it actively. It is common to distribute the Lord’s Supper and say, “Feed on him in your hearts by faith.” You don’t get the benefit of food unless you take it in and digest it. You can have a meal piled high in front of you, all the food cooked to perfection, and you could still starve to death. To be nourished by a meal, you have to eat it. The excellent preparation of the food doesn’t help you if you’re not willing to pick it up and take it into yourself. Taking it is the same as saying, “This is the real food I need—Christ’s unconditional commitment to me.”

The “mealness” of the Lord’s Supper is a reminder that no one can appropriate the benefits of Jesus’s death unless he calls them into a personal relationship with him. To share a meal with someone—particularly in Jesus’s place and time—is to have a relationship. So Jesus is saying that we need a personal relationship with him if all the benefits of his perfect, substitutionary, sacrificial suffering are to come to us.

The “mealness” also tells us something else. The Jews celebrated each Passover by eating the feast with their families. The Passover is a family meal. Then why was Jesus pulling his disciples out of their families and organizing a Passover meal with them? Because he was creating an altogether new family. When you have been raised with brothers and sisters, you share a powerful bond. You have been through everything with them; you have more common experiences with them than with anyone else. Earlier Jesus had said, “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). As one writer put it: “What binds [Christians] together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort. Christians come together . . . because they have been saved by Jesus Christ. . . . They are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’s sake.”60 When you take the Lord’s Supper, you are doing it with brothers and sisters, with family. This bond is so life-transforming that it creates a basis for unity as strong as if people had been raised together.

Finally, the Lord’s Supper does something more beautiful yet: It points toward our future with Jesus. As he presides over the Passover with his disciples, he tells them the rest of the story of the world in two sentences: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many . . . I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.” He is saying that this Passover meal makes the ultimate feast possible, and in so doing, draws an inexorable arc between the events of the ensuing three days and their consummation in the future.

Jesus’s words call to mind some of the stunning prophecies about the future kingdom. Psalm 96:12–13 says, “All the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the LORD, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth.” Isaiah 55:12 says, “The mountains and the hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”

If you put seeds into a pot of soil and then put it away in the dark, away from the sun, the seeds go into dormancy. They can’t grow to their potential. But if you bring the pot with seeds into the presence of the sun, all that has been locked within them bursts forth. The Bible says that everything in this world—not just we human beings but even the plants, the trees, the rocks—is dormant. These things are just shadows of what they have been, would be, and will be in the presence of their Creator. When the Lamb of God presides over the final feast and the presence of God covers the earth again, the trees and the hills will clap and dance, so alive will they be. And if trees and hills will be able to clap and dance in the future kingdom, picture what you and I will be able to do.

The Lord’s Supper gives us a small, but very real, foretaste of that future.

Imagine you were in Egypt just after that first Passover. If you stopped Israelites in those days and said, “Who are you and what is happening here?” they would say, “I was a slave, under a sentence of death, but I took shelter under the blood of the lamb and escaped that bondage, and now God lives in our midst and we are following him to the Promised Land.” That is exactly what Christians say today. If you trust in Jesus’s substitutionary sacrifice, the greatest longings of your heart will be satisfied on the day you sit down for that eternal feast in the promised kingdom of God.