Tonight we feast on the finest bread … bread from Heaven [break bread].
Tonight we drink deeply from the cup of God’s grace [hold up chalice] … and we give thanks for God’s mercy and our eternal salvation.
Tonight we feast … a feast fit for a king … and you are all invited.
You know, I’ve never been to a “feast” … at least not the kind I picture when I hear the word “feast.” I picture the kinds of feasts you read about in the Bible or history books or something that you see on TV or in the movies. The king … seated at the head of the table in the place of honor … surrounded by nobles and dignitaries. The great banquet hall filled with guests. People laughing and eating and drink while servants run about carrying huge trays of food and jugs of wine … and there’s music and entertainment going on the whole time. Feasts of these kind were obviously held to celebrate important occasions … to commemorate some historic events in the life or history of a community … weddings … the birth of a child … a peace treat … a major victory.
It is for this reason, I believe, that God commanded that His people observe or celebrate seven annual “festivals” or “feasts” – the first and one of the most important being the “Passover” seder or meal. “Celebrate ‘Pesach,’ the Festival of Unleavened Bread,” the Lord commanded the Israelites. ‘For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt” (Exodus 34:18).
In Jesus’ day, over a million pilgrims would descend on Jerusalem for the Passover. People opened up their homes to these pilgrims or the pilgrims would camp in tents outside the city. It was a busy, exciting, colorful time. A hundred thousand lambs would be slaughtered and you could smell their roasting flesh everywhere.
I’m sure that a few, like Herod, would hold lavish affairs in their homes or palaces, but most people celebrated the Pesach … the Passover … much like Jewish people still do today … with family and a few friends.
While Passover is something that you celebrate today with family and friends, it didn’t start out as a “celebration” … but it did start out with family and friends. “Passover” was the night that God sent His angel of death to “passover” the houses of the Egyptians and their Hebrew slaves. Through Moses, God instructed the Hebrew slaves to slaughter a lamb, roast it, and eat it … sharing the lamb with family and friends who didn’t have a lamb. After the meal, they were to go into their homes and be prepared to flee at a moment’s notice. The Lord promised them that the angel of death would pass over any house that had lamb’s blood smeared on its doorposts and lintels.
There was no partying that night. No music or laughing or huge platters of food or jugs of wine. No celebration as they huddled and waited and listened in their houses, knowing that the only thing that stood between them and the death of their first born was some lamb’s blood smeared around their doors.
And then they heard it. Eerie, chilling wails and cries of grief and anguish coming from the Egyptians’ homes … joined, eventually, with wailing and cries of anguish from the Pharaoh’s palace … and they knew that it was time to flee. It was time to leave their homes and run as fast as they could toward the wilderness and an uncertain future.
Having delivered the Hebrew slaves from the Egyptians, God commanded them to celebrate this great event once a year with a “feast.” The purpose of the feast is to “remember” what God did that night, which is why the Jews have lamb and eat matzo or unleavened bread as part of their Passover celebration. But there is another reason that God commanded them to hold a feast to remember that night. He wanted them to remember that the Hebrew people were no longer slaves but had become a nation.
Passover is like our Thanksgiving and Fourth of July all rolled into one. At Thanksgiving we gather around the table with family and friends to give thanks … just as the pilgrims and the early settlers did to give thanks to God for getting them through the past year. On the Fourth of July, we take the feast outside where we celebrate the founding of this country with family and friends. We remember the many battles fought and the many lives lost. We remember the sacrifices that were made to found this country and to keep it free … free to work and to play … free to celebrate with family and friends … free to openly worship and thank God. Celebrations like these … Passover, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July … connect us to our past and to each other.
There have been thousands of Passovers celebrated since God first instituted this tradition … but one stands out for us today … the one we call “The Last Supper.”
Over the centuries, many, many artists have tried to capture that meal on canvas or in sculptures of fiascos. In some artistic depictions, the mood is festive. The Disciples are portrayed with smiling faces looking up at Jesus. Others portray the mood as somber … almost morbid … which is understandable give the seriousness of what would happen after the meal. But the only one who knew that at the celebration was Jesus.
For the Disciples and Jesus’ followers, this was Passover in Jerusalem. A million people all celebrating in their homes and in the streets. The smell of food and roasting lamb everywhere. This was Passover! A time to celebrate with their Rabbi and their friends. As they ate the unleavened bread … as they recounted God’s powerful redemption … as they passed the cups of wine … I’m pretty sure they were in a festive mood, don’t you?
When the hour came, Luke says, Jesus took His place at the table. He said to the Disciples and the crowd of follower who filled the room: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover meal with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God” (Luke 22:15-16).
Eagerly?
How could Jesus say that He “eagerly” desired to eat this Passover meal with His Disciples, and His followers and friends, knowing the horrific suffering that He was going to have to endure in a few short hours? Jesus’ Disciples and followers had no idea what was about to happen … but Jesus did … and so do we! His betrayal … His arrest … the torture … the beatings … the humiliation … ending in His public and shameful execution on a wooden cross.
How could He be eager to face all that? Because He knew what lay on the other side … and so do we, amen? An empty tomb! Death did not pass over Him. His lifeless body was placed in a tomb and sealed shut. But the empty tomb meant that death would pass over us because of the blood of the Lamb that was shed on that cross.
He was eager to celebrate this particular Passover because … like the first Passover that night in Egypt … this Passover would represent a new beginning for us. That night in Egypt, God created a nation. On this night, Jesus created a Kingdom.
Four cups of wine are served during a traditional Seder feast. The first cup is called the “common cup.” “Take this [cup],” said Jesus, “and divide it among you, for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes” (v. 17-18).
Let me ask you … If I took a sip from this chalice here and then passed it around, would you be comfortable drinking from a cup that strangers’ lips have touched? I don’t think so. But you might share a cup with members of your family, wouldn’t you?
Well …
We Methodist don’t do that because we serve unfermented wine … grape juice, if you will … so it wouldn’t be very hygienic. Real wine, however, has alcohol in it so we could all safely drink from the same cup. Sharing a cup is something that you do with family. In the last three years, Jesus and His Disciples had become a “family.” By sharing this cup, they were declaring their oneness with Jesus and their oneness with each other.
Then, says Luke, Jesus took a loaf of bread and when He gave thanks of God, He broke it and passed it to His disciples. The Greek word for “thanks” or “give thanks” is “eucharisto.” Sound familiar? It’s where we get our word for “eucharist” … which means, “to thank or give thanks.”
Jesus “eucharisto” … gave thanks … broke the loaf of bread and gave it to those present, saying: “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Where are we at in this Passover meal? What is it that Jesus wants us to do to “remember” Him? We’ve had the first cup of wine, which is the common cup, and now He’s broken bread.
Well, let’s fast forward a bit. The early church began after the Holy Spirit came. “Awe came upon everyone,” Luke reports in the book of Acts, “because many wonders and signs were being done by the Apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as they had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the Temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the good will of the people” (Acts 2:43-47; italics mine).
Day by day, they spent much time together at the Temple. Hummmm … they spent much time together at the Temple. What were they doing together at the Temple? Hummm … they were worshipping together … they were doing like we’re doing now … gathered together here in church … and Luke reports that they did it how often? “Much time.” Sounds like they did more than a hour or two a week. They spent much time together worshipping in the church and when church was over, they didn’t just get in their carts and go their separate ways. They continued to hang out together. They went to each other’s homes where they broke bread together and shared a cup of wine … and they did this a lot, according to Luke … almost every day, if not every day.
Now … there is a great deal of debate between historians and Bible scholars as to whether they were engaging in “The Lord’s Supper” or just a meal but my question is this: Does it matter? They were sharing a meal together … like we are doing this evening. Sharing a meal builds community. Jesus sat and ate with all kinds of people during His ministry: Pharisees, tax collectors, bakers, cloth merchants, outcasts, losers, and sinners. As the Apostle Paul so powerfully pointed out: “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of one loaf” (1st Corinthians 10:17).
Sharing a cup … breaking bread … sharing a meal … opening your home to family and guests … is a way to make connections. It’s a way to break down barriers. Whether it’s during a formal “communion” meal or a shared meal, Jesus said that wherever two or more of us are gathered in His name, what? Yeah! There He is also. When we “eucharisteo” … when we give thanks and ask Him to bless our meal … His Presence becomes as real to us as it did the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Like the Disciples, we become a family with Christ at our head. And we, like our early church ancestors, eat our meal together with glad and generous hearts, amen?
“Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). What does Jesus want us to remember? Well, as I said, there are the rewards that we get when we participate in the Lord’s Supper together or when we share a meal together with family and friends … glad hearts, generous hearts, praising God together. We get the sense and assurance of His Presence. We get that sense of oneness with one another. But most of all, Jesus wants us to remember Him … to be aware of His Presence … His love and His care and His heart for us.
You may have never noticed this before, but the meal is not over yet! Luke says: “And [Jesus] did the same [as when He broke the bread] with the cup” … when? … “when the meal was over, He took the cup, and saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’” (v. 20).
What “new covenant”? The new covenant that God promised in Jeremiah 31. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them out of Egypt – a covenant they broke. … But this covenant that I will make with the House of Israel after these days, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God; and they shall be my people. No longer will they teach one another or say to one another ‘Know the Lord’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more” (v. 31-34).
That night … that day on the cross … a new age was inaugurated. And Jesus established this new reality by using the symbols of the Passover feast. The bread they ate in the wilderness now represents His body, given for us. The wine symbolizes Jesus’ blood, which was poured out for us. His blood, the blood of the Lamb, smeared over the doorposts of our souls. When we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we remember how Christ suffered in our place. We will continue to share this meal and we will continue to remember until He comes again … or, until, as John saw in in Revelation, we feast with Him at the Lamb’s heavenly banquet.
Communion draws us into covenant with God and with each other. It links the past with our present and our present with the future. There will be a new Exodus … a time when the Lord will come and take His bride … that’s us … that’s the church … to be with Him in a place that He has gone to prepare for us. “I will not eat it” … the Passover feast … Jesus promised “until it finds fulfillment in the Kingdom of God” (v. 16). “And I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes” (v. 18).
Like the Passover lamb in the first exodus, Christ’s blood will turn away the angel of death. His blood is our covering. When the angel of death comes by, he must pass over. As the Apostle Paul reminds us: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1st Corinthians 15:54-55).
As we go through life, this meal … this “feast” … reminds us that the new covenant has been established. Signed and sealed in His blood. The Holy Spirit has arrived. The world is not perfect. We are not perfect. But we will be made perfect when He returns and claims His bride. Our dowry had been paid. We have been bought with a price that’s already been paid … in full! Let this meal … this feast … remind us not only of what He has done for us but what we must do for Him … Remember Him! Be faithful to Him!
As we partake of this feast in a few moments, let’s take a minute or two to remember that we are not perfect people. That we are sorry for our mistakes. That we want to be something more. Let us remember all that the Lord has done for us. Let us remember His “hesed” … His “steadfast” love … for us. And let us look forward to the day when we will stand before Christ … not as perfect people but as forgiven people, amen?
[A few moments of silence.]
Let us pray …
[At the end of the prayer] … so, anybody read for a feast? [serve Communion].
