Peace, Fellowship, Sacrifice, Meal

The scriptures referred to 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

During our Lenten Bible study we examined the sacrifices made in the Tabernacle and Temple. We used this definition: sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or lives to a higher being as an act of worship, or for a higher purpose to gain something more important, worthy or valuable. Most of the offerings had to do with sin and guilt. But in our last session we looked at what is called either a fellowship or peace offering. And we looked at the Passover. In both cases they are meals, the physical preparing and eating of foods, but they have great spiritual significance.

The shalom or peace offering was unique among the 5 types of offerings laid out in Leviticus because it was not wholly given to God, as was the case in the burnt offering, nor parts shared only with the priests, as with the grain, sin and guilt offerings, but everyone, including the person offering it, got to partake of the meal. That's why it is also called a fellowship offering. It was a meal where the worshiper symbolically got to eat with God. In the Middle East to eat with someone is to be at peace with them. In addition, the offering was not a mandatory but voluntary one, usually made in thanksgiving for recovery from illness or escape from danger or safe return from a journey. The person is thankful for God's protection and healing and their resulting wellbeing, which is another meaning of the word shalom. The peace offering was a happy occasion and you invited family and friends to join you in the meal. To ensure that, nothing could be left over. It was a feast.

Tonight we celebrate the institution of the Lord's Supper. The disciples were literally sharing a meal with God made man. And during the meal Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my own peace I give to you; I do not give it as the world does.” (John 14:27) And I wonder if this is what inspired Paul to write that “...we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...” (Romans 5:1) or “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross...” (Colossians 1:19-20)

Through the sacrifice Jesus made we are reconciled to God. We are no longer in rebellion against God but at peace with him. And Jesus may have been thinking of that when he was speaking at the meal. But he was definitely thinking of another sacred meal.

A Jewish wag once summarized all Hebrew holidays thus: “They tried to kill us; we survived; let's eat!” That's especially true of the Passover. It is a festival in which Jews commemorate being liberated from slavery in Egypt. If the death and resurrection of Jesus is at the center of the Christian faith, Passover is the center of the Jewish faith. It is the event that defines them. The Talmud says, “In every generation, each must see himself as if he went forth from Egypt.” Each Sabbath, Jews bless a cup of wine and in their prayer recall the Exodus from Egypt. And that was true in Jesus' day as well.

And you can imagine how fraught this Passover was for Jesus' disciples. They had acknowledged him as Messiah, God's anointed one, who will bring in the kingdom of God. He was given a royal welcome when he entered Jerusalem just 5 days ago. The city was packed with Jews from all over the empire. They are about to celebrate God liberating their people from a foreign pagan government. This could be it! Jesus could start the revolt against Rome!

There was probably no Haggadah or authorized liturgy of the Passover in Jesus' day as there is now but the focus was nevertheless on the retelling of the story of the Exodus. So when Jesus took the unleavened bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them, the disciples were expecting him to say something like, “This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate when they came from Egypt.” Instead he says, “This is my body, which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” What was going through their minds as they were passing the bread and eating it? Jesus said and did surprising things. They were used to that now. But what was he doing with the central commemoration of Judaism?

After supper, he took what was either the 3^rd or 4^th cup of wine one drank on Passover, gave the traditional thanks for the food, for God's care of his people and for his protection of Jerusalem. And then Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Again though the disciples are not recorded as saying anything, their minds must have been on fire with questions and speculations. What was Jesus saying here? Why is he saying the elements of the Passover were things a Jew would never eat: human flesh or any kind of blood? Why is he asking us to remember him? Where is he going? Why?

“Why?” was probably the question that echoed in their brains the most. Jesus took a sacred meal that already had a meaning, and whose foods already represented things, like the bitterness and tears of their enslaved ancestors, and gave them new and, let's face it, rather strange meanings. Why did he do that? As with a lot of things Jesus did and said the meaning would become clearer to them after the events of the next 3 days.

From our perspective what Jesus meant is easier to discern. Jesus is taking bread and wine, staples of life back then, and identifying them with himself. The bread is obvious. It is one of the oldest prepared foods, going back perhaps 30,000 years. The oldest evidence of bread making has been found in Jordan, 14,500 years ago. Consequently it stands for the basic necessities of life, which is why in the Lord's Prayer, we say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That's why we call the family's provider the “breadwinner.” In fact the English word “lord” comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “bread keeper.”

You would think that water would be the other element Jesus would use but, while everyone prized fresh water, trustworthy potable water only came from springs and wells. Even a creek or river, especially if it was downstream from a town or city, might not be healthy to drink. Plus in an agrarian society most of your water would go to irrigating your fields and hydrating your animals. Even today 70% of water used by humans goes to agricultural uses. So wine was the standard beverage.

Wine was part of Jewish rituals, especially on the Sabbath and in the Passover. Red wine was also associated with blood in ancient Egypt and by Greek and Roman cults. And in Genesis (49:11) and Deuteronomy (32:14), wine is poetically called “the blood of the grape,” though Jews rarely called it that, probably because they were prohibited from eating blood. (Leviticus 17:10) And in the verse immediately following that prohibition the reason is given: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.” (Leviticus 17:11) The life poured out, the spilled blood of the sacrifice, provided atonement.

Why didn't Jesus just use the blood of the Passover lamb? Wasn't it dabbed on the door frame and wasn't it the sign that the Israelites were to be passed over by death? Yes, but that was only done on the original Passover, not on subsequent reenactments. No Jew does it today, either. So it wasn't available for Jesus to use. Plus, if we go by the crowd's reaction to Jesus' address in John 6, where he tells them they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, this may also have been a test which separates those who get what Jesus is saying spiritually and those who can only perceive things in a literal fashion. Jesus lost a lot of followers when he gave that speech. Jesus says to them, “The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” (John 6:63) Yet many left him. Jesus then says to the Twelve, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” And Peter replies, “ Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:67-68) So when this comes up again at the last supper, it's possible the disciples thought, “Well, this is just something Jesus says from time to time. Maybe he'll explain it later, like he does the parables.” If he did explain it, it would be after his resurrection. And, unfortunately, it was not preserved so as to cut off all the debates in Eucharistic theology.

But there are some things about the Lord's Supper practically all Christians agree on. Jesus commanded it. The only two sacraments all churches agree on are baptism and communion. Baptism brings us into the body of Christ and communion nourishes the body of Christ. And whether they believe that the body and blood of Jesus are literally in the bread and wine, or that they are merely symbols used in a memorial, or that Christ is really here in a way we are not knowledgeable enough to define, Christians believe that there is a spiritual significance and benefit to partaking of communion. It is, as St. Augustine put it, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. God communicates with us through physical things all the time. We call Jesus the Word of God made flesh. It is appropriate that he communicate his spiritual nourishment of us and our dependence on him through bread and wine.

The first description we get of the Lord's Supper is not in the gospels but in Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth. At that time, it was the highlight of an actual meal called the Agape or Love Feast. Unfortunately it was getting out of hand: some were getting drunk or overeating, some were bringing their own private suppers and others were left out. The significance of the Eucharist was getting lost. So Paul reminds them what is really going on when we share the body and blood of Christ. “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:26)

Jesus was obviously thinking of what was going to happen in just few hours: he would be arrested and crucified. He was tying the Passover feast, the celebration of God protecting his people from death and freeing them from slavery in Egypt, to what he was about to do, free all people from slavery to sin and thereby protect them from spiritual death and separation from God. He was also tying in the ideas of sacrifice and covenant. Technically Passover was neither. The lamb was not offered to God but was eaten by the family. The covenant was not made at Passover but later at Mount Sinai. Yet Passover, sacrifices and covenants all involve the shedding of blood. That act showed how serious these matters were.

We do not sacrifice animals anymore. God the Son's sacrifice of himself ended all that. But we share the bread and wine in remembrance of what Jesus did for us. He died that we might live. God's Son became a human being so that humans might become children of God. He took the brunt of the evil we unleashed on God's creation to heal the breach between us and God. He came to free us from our enslavement to sin and the self-destructive things we let take control of our lives. He came to make a new agreement between divinity and humanity in which God shows his love by giving us his Son and his Spirit and we in turn are to reflect that love in all we think, say and do to everyone we meet and to everyone whose life we impact.

Jesus was distilling all of that into what he said and did at this meal. And in a few minutes we are going to commune with God at a simple meal, sharing the body and blood of Christ that we might be the body of Christ in this world, proclaiming God's love as seen in the death of Jesus until the risen Christ comes again to welcome us into the wedding supper of the Lamb.