We’ve reached Passion Sunday and the end of our message series on sacrifice. As we read the story of Jesus’s Passover, and prepare to celebrate its completion at Easter in the Resurrection, I hope you can hear the story of Palm Sunday and Jesus’s death on the cross in a new way.
Today, let me share with you an insight I first learned from Dr. Scott Hahn. To prepare for Good Friday and Easter, you might consider to learning from Dr. Hahn, too. Click here for a great video featuring him. (The video includes some ads, but it’s worth it.)
At the time of Jesus, Jewish believers celebrated the Passover with both a sacrifice and a meal. The sacrifice took place in the temple, where lambs were offered to God in sacrifice, as commanded in Exodus 12:1-6 and Deuteronomy 16:1-6. Soon afterward, each family feasted on their lamb in a special meal, the seder meal, as commanded by Exodus 12: 8-11, 24-27. At the time of Jesus, the meal included four cups of wine. When the family shared the first cup, they consecrated the night as special to God. When the family shared the second cup, they recited the story of Passover, remembering God’s great deeds. When the family shared the third cup, they blessed God and experienced communion with one another. Finally, the family ended the night singing a great hymn of praise to God, and shared the fourth cup.
When we pay attention to Gospels, we learn that at Jesus’s Last Supper, he both followed and diverged from the usual celebration of the Passover. There were multiple cups (Luke 22:17, 22) and, especially, the cup of blessing offered and shared in communion (Luke 22:19-20). But after the great hymn of praise, everyone left for the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed and entered into the agony of his passion (Matthew 26:30). They skipped the fourth cup! They skipped the climax of the Passover! Indeed, earlier that night Jesus said that he would not drink of the fruit of the vine again until he drank it new in the kingdom of God (Matthew 26:29).
As Jesus suffered on the way to his death, at first he refused to drink the wine that they offered him to numb the pain (Mark 15:23). Then an eyewitness, John, tells us what he saw Jesus do at the point of death: “In order that the scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I thirst.’ There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit” (John 19:28-30)
What was finished? Not all that God was doing. Not all that Jesus did for us. Jesus went on rise from the dead on the third day (Mark 16:1-8; Romans 4:24-25; 1 Corinthians 15:3-9). So what was finished? The celebration of Jesus’s Passover sacrifice. The sacrifice Jesus offered on the cross, giving his life in love for us to the Father, so we could have union with God, continued and completed what he had begun in his Passover meal, the Last Supper, the first Eucharist. At the first Eucharist, in a new sacrament, he offered himself to his disciples as food: “Take and eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:26). At the first Eucharist, in a new sacrament, he offered himself to the Father for their salvation. “I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” And he commanded his disciples to continue this sacrament, so that his sacrifice and passion and Passover and resurrection, would reach you, too. He said: “Do this in memory of me” and “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me” (1 Corinthians 11:25; John 17:19-21).
At each Eucharist, by a miracle, we enter the one sacrifice which saves, the offering of Jesus’s life on the cross. When we receive Holy Communion, we participate in his sacrifice, as our ancestors shared in the Passover by consuming the Passover (Paschal) lamb. Jesus began this miracle and continues it because also for you he is God, savior, and friend. May your celebration of his Passover this year lead you deeper into communion with him!