Daily Lesson for April 17, 2014

We continue in our Daily Lessons to reflect on the last week of Jesus' life. Today we reflect on Mark chapter 14, remembering the Passover meal Jesus shared with his disciples and what he did while at table with them:

22 And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” 23 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. 24 And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many."

On that last night, Jesus and his disciples sat for the Passover meal, a meal commemorating the deliverance of God's people from bondage in Egypt. During dinner, Jesus stood for what the disciples would have expected to be a traditional reflection on the meaning of the Passover lamb, whose blood had been offered as a sacrifice in the Temple and whose meat was now before them. Instead Jesus did something quite different. He stood and gave the disciples two powerful images: bread, which he broke with an intent, tearing manner saying, "This is my body." And a cup of wine which he brought to the lips of each of his disciples whispering softly and intimately into their ears, "This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of your sins."

We do not know if it was clear to the disciples on that night what was happening, or if it dawned on them afterward - perhaps during the long, grievous hours when Jesus hung upon the cross. He was reinterpreting the Passover story through his own story. Like the Passover lamb, whose blood had been shed and body flayed for the sake of the Israelites, now Jesus' blood would be shed and body broken for the sake of salvation of all. Blood, a symbol of uncleanness, and a broken body which would never have been allowed to enter into the Temple in Jerusalem, would join together to become a new, holy Temple in the person of Jesus. It is the Temple which was soon to be destroyed, yet would be raised up in three days, and would be open to all people to come and find forgiveness and deliverance from sin. Like the Passover lamb, his blood too would be shed for the deliverance of Israel - and for the rest of the world also.

We do not know that the disciples put all of this together at the table that night. I suspect they didn't. But later, when they thought of the bread and the cup and what Jesus said, they realized why out in the wilderness three years before John the Baptist first introduced Jesus to them with these words, "Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world."