ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN WORSHIP 2 13.LW2 Captioning provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 ******** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ******** >> JOSHUA: Thank you for all these insights. Do we know what the Passover Seder looked like at the time of Jesus? >> DR. ARTHUR JUST: Before we stop talking about table fellowship, we must take a moment and talk about the Passover Seder at the time of Jesus because it's in the context of this Passover Seder where Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist which is the meal that we continue today in our worship where Jesus comes to us with his body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine. At the time of our Lord, and this would have, of course, extended way back into the history of Israel, all the way back to the exodus, there was a pattern of celebrating the Passover in families. Now, I need to say this very carefully. There was a structure. There was a pattern. And there were certain things that one did. But there was also freedom in this structure for the host of the meal, the head of the family called the paterfamilias, to, for example, tell the story in his own way or pray in his own way. Here's a good example of how there is a pattern and a structure. And yes, there is freedom within the structure. And the Jews had a real sense of how one needed to follow this order, this Seder, and at the same time, however, have the freedom to do things in a way that seemed reflective of the context, both the family context and the cultural context, in which they celebrated these meals. In the Passover Seder, there was a preliminary course where the family would gather together and the father would bless cup No. 1. Now, this was almost like a toast to God. Blessed are you Lord God, king of the universe because you give us the fruit of the vine to rejoice our hearts. And blessed are you, Lord God of the universe. Now, this was an opening, like I said, a toast to God where we begin the meal in a way that shows that it is certainly reverent with prayer, but it also uses a cup to acknowledge that God is the giver of a good gifts of wine. Then there would be a blessing for the day which, of course, was the feast of unleavened bread which is called the Passover. If this were the Sabbath, the Sabbath Seder, they would bless God for the Sabbath. But here, the blessing is for the specific feast, the most important feast in the history of Israel. Then after these two blessings, these two prayers, they would bring the food in, and they would set the table. Now, the food, now, is an opportunity for them to interpret what is going on in the meal. Here the paterfamilias would interpret why is the bread unleavened. Why are the herbs bitter. Why do we eat lamb. And in explaining these things because of the hurriedness of our journey with the bread, the bitterness of our journey and having to leave so quickly and not knowing where we�re going, the lamb which is a recognition of the blood of the lamb on the lintel post that caused the angel of death to pass over our house. All of these things are examples of interpreting the food in a theological way to communicate the significance of this meal. The paterfamilias, the head of household, would now tell the exodus story, how the children of Israel being saved from the angel of death by the blood of the Passover lamb, and now escaped Egypt through the Red Sea and came into the wilderness later to enter into the Promised Land by going over the Jordan River. This narration of the exodus was at the center of this teaching at the table. Following the narration of the exodus event, the paterfamilias would take a cup, this is cup No. 2, and he would toast the exodus by means of a prayer in which he would acknowledge in this prayer how God had shown his great redemption in bringing the children of Israel out of bondage when they escaped the Pharaoh in Egypt. As soon as this cup No. 2, called the cup of redemption, was drunk, the paterfamilias would take the bread. He would bless it; and he would break it. This is called the bread of affliction, and he would pass it out to the people at the table. And this would be the beginning of the meal. And here now, the people would eat all the food that was set there, the unleavened bread, the bitter herbs, the lamb, the pureed vegetables, etc. And they would also drink a little bit more wine during the meal. When the meal was over, and this sometimes would take an hour or more to eat, the paterfamilias, the host of the table, the father, would get up with now the third ritual cup called the cup of blessing. And he would give the grace after the meal toasting, you know, God again by means of prayer and what we called earlier the * beercot, blessing God for creation, thanking God for redemption, and petitioning God that he would save his people by coming to Jerusalem as the Messiah to redeem them from their sins. That is what we think is the essence of the Passover Seder at the time of our Lord. Now, let me just go through it very briefly with you and show you how Jesus, in a sense, followed the pattern, followed the structure, followed the ritual almost to the exact detail in every way. And yet, what he provided for the disciples was an interpretation of these things that they had never heard before. Now, remember, the disciples were used to going to the Passover every year. They had expectations. They had even been to the Passover with Jesus on a number of occasions so they knew that Jesus, as the host of the Passover, would have done it in a particular way. Now Jesus, in a sense, kind of blows their minds by on this night in which he was betrayed interpreting this meal in a way they had never heard before because he is going to interpret it now in terms of himself. Now, we don't see all of what he does in the scriptures. The best example of this in the scriptures is in John Chapter 13 and following in the farewell discourse. Although we have glimpses of it, and certainly what he says about the bread and wine is at the heart of his new interpretation of the meal. There have been some wonderful books written about how Jesus interpreted this meal in terms of himself, and I'll reflect this now as I go along. When Jesus began this liturgy, he would have begun it like in the paterfamilias with the first cup toasting God and the blessing of the day. But then, when the meal is set on the table, Jesus would talk about the food in a way that perhaps he had never talked about it before. For example, the bitter herbs, the bitterness of the journey of the Israelites would now be seen as the bitterness of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem where he is bearing the sins of the world and the bitterness that would come with his death. Luke tells us, for example, that when he talks about the lamb, he says it is necessary that today, the Passover lamb be sacrificed. He's not only talking about the lamb that they were eating at the supper, but he was talking about himself as John says, as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Throughout the reading of the exodus, Jesus must have now shown how this exodus was fulfilled in him. And again, Luke tells us that Jesus� journey from heaven back to heaven through a cross, a tomb, and then rising on the third day, and fortieth back to heaven, that this is described as Jesus' exodus which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. I'll refer to it later on where Jesus uses that very language in the transfiguration. But Jesus now fulfills in his exodus perfectly what Israel was unable to do in its exodus. But the most extraordinary reinterpretation of this meal for Jesus to his disciples is when he took the bread, broke it, gave it to them and said, take eat, this is my body which is given for you. Eat this in remembrance of me. When Jesus calls the bread his body, he is giving an interpretation that they would have never heard before, and interpretation which, in fact, would have scandalized them. Now, some people have asked, why does Jesus give his body in bread that is broken. Well, perhaps, you never thought of this before but before the fall, there really probably was no bread. Bread is something that comes because of our work, the sweat of our brow. We need to work to get bread. We have to plant the seed. We have to till the soil. We have to raise up the seed. We have to harvest it. We have to pound it out, etcetera, and bake it. This requires work. Bread is, in a sense, a reflection of our fallen nature, and Jesus' body, not bones that are broken, but his body broken in death is given in, with, and under this food that comes after our fall into sin. Again, what many people don't realize is after Jesus breaks the bread and says this is my body, they would sit down and eat the meal for an hour or more before he gets up again, now with the cup of blessing. And Paul says very clearly, that the cup of blessing which we bless is this not communion with the blood of Christ. This is the cup after the supper. Jesus stands up with this cup and he says, take, drink. This cup is the New Testament in my blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me. Now, we know from John Chapter 6 that the Jews would be scandalized to drink the blood of a human being, let alone the blood of Jesus, the very son of God. And so the disciples must've been completely set back by eating his body and drinking his blood. Now, the blood is given in, with, and under the wine because the wine, in the Old Testament, is the drink of heaven. Wine rejoices the heart. Wine is a drink that shows us a foretaste of the joy that we will have in our full communion with Christ. And so his blood now becomes a means by which we rejoice in the redemption we have in Christ. If you think about the wedding feast at Cana, how important wine is there at that significant event. What many people don't realize is that the worst thing that could happen at a Jewish wedding is to run out of wine. I mean, the steward is in charge of a seven-day feast. And he brings out the best wine first so that everybody can get up to the right level of joy. And then he brings out the poor wine, and he cuts it with water so that people do not have too much fun or have too little fun. They stay on that wonderful level of joy that the wine gives in rejoicing the heart. Here Jesus is showing us that the feast of the Lord's Supper where he gives his body and blood is a meal in which we rejoice in his presence. We proclaim to one another his death until he comes because his death is the means in which we have this full communion with him in heaven. And so we see in the Passover Seder a very clear example of where we receive the liturgy of the Lord's Supper, where Jesus, now, takes this Passover into himself. And even though we sometimes call it the Last Supper, perhaps the best way to speak of this is as Jesus Passover, that he takes this now and makes it his own. This has been a Passover that has never happened before, and, in a sense, will never happen again. It's the last meal of the old era of salvation and the first meal of the new era of salvation that will give birth to a meal which we now call the sacrament of the altar or the Lord's Supper.