Grace and Peace to you from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
One of Debbie’s teaching buddies is Jewish and she invited us over for her families Passover Seder one year. The Seder is a meal and it is also a religious service – the most important family celebration in a Jewish household. A friend of mine who is a rabbi told me once that he and his wife have the “dining room” at the top of their list whenever they go house hunting. The room in which the Seder is held determines whether they will be happy in their new home.
It doesn’t take long for an outsider to see who the Seder is orchestrated for. It is designed to teach children the history of the Jewish people – especially the central event in their self understanding which is God’s deliverance of them from slavery in Egypt. They dip food into salt water and eat it to remind them of the tears their ancestors shed. They eat bitter herbs to recall the bitterness of their bondage as slaves. They eat apples and honey to commemorate the sweetness of their liberation and freedom. Matzah – unleavened bread is featured and the children are taught that they eat this special bread as a reminder that their ancestors made unleavened bread because there was not time for them to let their bread be raised. They eat lamb because the blood of a lamb was painted over their doorposts so that the angel of death, sent to demonstrate God’s power would “passover” their houses.
Jesus ate a meal similar to this with his disciples on this very night, Holy Thursday, Maundy Thursday. They remembered their deliverance from slavery and the sacrifice of a lamb whose blood spared their lives. The unleavened bread reminded them of God’s power to release them from bondage too. Yet Jesus added a new dimension to this Seder. By his innocent suffering and death, Jesus would forever change our relationship to God. Jesus took away the power of sin and death and conferred on us the innocent of Adam and Eve before the fall. Jesus restored us to God.
I loved the way the words that begin the service of Holy Communion start. They say, “Our Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed…” One of the fun things about having done this nights service for almost 30 years, is that you are always leaning something new. The actual Greek words could also and perhaps better be translated, in the night in which he was “handed over”. What a world of difference that makes. Who was Jesus handed over to? He was handed over to Satan and the powers of evil and death. He was handed over to be put to the test yet one more time.
Do you remember Luke’s version of Jesus temptation in the wilderness. Jesus endure a series of tests-turning bead into stones, being shown all the kingdoms of the world and being promised untold political power, and being tempted to dazzle the people with displays of divine power simply to impress or con them into obedience. At the end of the story it says and the Devil withdrew from him until an opportune time.
Now Jesus is handed over to Satan for his ultimate testing. God has called him to be the passover lamb, the innocent sacrifice that is needed to take away the world’s sin. Yet he must embrace it willingly and say not my will but thine be done.
Jesus calls this bread and wine the New Covenant poured out in his blood. We re-call the words of the prophet Jeremiah who said that God would make a new covenant with his people unlike the old one which the people broke. But Jeremiah says, “I will write my law within them, upon their hearts”. This is ultimately the way God does that. God writes his love in our hearts with the body and blood of Jesus.
The ancient church mothers and fathers called the sacrament the “medicine of immortality”. (Try getting that one passed FDA!) What they meant by that was that this bread and wine remind us that we are not destined for death and obliteration. Our destiny is to be with Christ in the eternal realms of heaven with all those who share our baptism and this Holy Meal. We are cured of our sin-sickness by the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.
So never despair. When you get world-weary with the worries that weigh you down, remember that Christ has conquered sin and death and set you free.
God has conquered the world in the power of the Lamb. So if the Lamb makes you free, you are free indeed.
In Jesus’ name Amen.
Who We Are