He Gave Us A Meal

The following is an adaptation of a devotion I wrote on my Substack. However, I believe it is fitting given our lectionary text, and the fact that this reflection will come out on Maundy Thursday, the day Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples.

Exodus 12:1-4,12-16

12:1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb t for his family, one for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.”

12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.14 “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance. 15 For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. 16 On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat; that is all you may do.”

Passover is central to the Jewish calendar, the Jewish story, and the Jewish psyche. Much of its symbolism might be lost on us today, but it remains central to Jesus and the story of our salvation.

If we are to make sense of Jesus, his death, and the story our salvation, we need to understand Passover. We can achieve this by unfolding the three primary symbols at work: the bread, the blood, and the lamb. Onto those three symbols.

The Bread

Bread is what sustains. Simple enough. In this sense, bread can also be a stand-in for food more generally. But why unleavened bread? Unleavened bread became a symbol of the haste with which this meal was eaten. Beginning this night of Passover, Israel will live as nomads, just like their ancestors, until they are settled within the land, ending a long exodus path through the desert. The bread, therefore, is baked quickly, without yeast.

For the rest of the feast, any yeast is forbidden. This may be symbolic of the state of Israel’s oppression under Pharaoh, who prevented them from being able to multiply and spread. Similarly, yeast, as Jesus understood it, was symbolic of multiplying one’s qualities (remember that strange warning against the ‘yeast’ of the Pharisees, Matt. 16:6).

All in all, the unleavened bread was emblematic of the new mode of existence Israel would have until Yahweh set up his temple in Zion. Israel lived off manna, what the land provided, and every word that God gave them.

The Blood

Blood is life. Not just metaphorically. Yes, that is also true throughout the Hebrew Bible. But blood is our life. Blood covers the entrance to the home so that “the destroyer” would not enter. The scarlet streaks were a stark reminder of the first plague and the slaughter of the boys by Pharaoh that began the book. The blood is a sign, a sign that God will look to the life of a blameless representative instead of taking back the life of the firstborn. God will “pass over.” But what does that mean?

Here is a puzzle. Unlike how it’s commonly understood in English, the Hebrew word pesah, doesn’t simply mean to ‘pass’ or ‘skip’ over. It means to cover. Isaiah 31:5 uses pesah as a synonym for ‘shielding’ or ‘protecting’. It’s what Yahweh does. He stands at the entrance, between destruction on the outside and the life inside. In other words, Yahweh identifies Himself with the blood of the lamb.

As Passover continued to be celebrated by Israel, wine became a parallel symbol for the blood. However, unlike the blood, the wine becomes an ingested symbol of the life given in your place. As Passover tradition developed, there were four cups to commemorate the fourfold promise of God, “‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people…” (Ex. 6:6-7).

The Lamb

The spotless lamb is a blameless representative for the firstborn sons of Israel. This lamb is how the sons of Israel are redeemed. There’s that too familiar word. But what does it mean? As I mentioned before, redemption is all about repossessing something that belongs to you. All of the sons belong to God. God has a claim on their lives. However, Pharaoh enslaved them. So God will redeem them from their slavery. Moreover, God has a claim on all life. And He’s going to follow through with that claim. But the only way one can be redeemed from slavery and death is by another life taking their place. God then gives the lamb as a placeholder. When the lambs are slaughtered, it reminds them that they were redeemed through the shedding of blood, a gift of God.

Seeing these symbols together, the Passover marks a new beginning. The calendar Israel used now resets, centering on the moment in history when Yahweh delivered them from slavery and death. This is Israel’s foundation story, their birth as a nation. More than any other festival in the Hebrew Bible, Passover defines the story of Israel. With this in mind, we can now shift to how Jesus interpreted the Passover story in light of his suffering and death. From there, we can see what applications we can glean if you’ve stuck this far.

Jesus and Passover

Knowing his arrest was at hand, it seems Jesus celebrated an early Passover with his disciples (Thursday evening/Friday morning), reinterpreting the meal in light of what would take place later that very day (the Hebrew day begins at sundown).

In the gospels, all the symbols now come together in the four Gospels as Jesus celebrates Passover. Matthew, Mark, and Luke identify Jesus with the Passover meal, the bread and cup (representing the blood). John clearly identifies Jesus with “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn. 1:29), who is crucified on the Day of Preparation, when lambs were being selected for Passover.

What should be obvious now is that when Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples, he was not making things up. The bread and cup were not just convenient symbols that Jesus hijacked for his own purposes. No. This meal already told a story, a story that pointed forward to a greater fulfillment, a greater exodus. A cosmic salvation story. The symbols of Passover collapse into the Messiah and his story: the bread, the cup, the blood-soaked wood, the lamb, and God Himself covering his people.

The Father gave Jesus as a ransom for us. That is, he took our place as a blameless representative. We deserved to be handed over to the powers of Sin and Death. But Jesus stood in our place to redeem us, to take ownership of us. He did this by shedding his blood, giving up his life, to shield us from death and free us from our slavery to sin and death. In communicating the meaning of his death, Jesus didn’t give a theological explanation or sermon. He gave us a meal. The Lord’s Supper, harkening back to the Passover meal, is a tangible reminder of the salvation accomplished by the death of the firstborn of all creation. 

Jesus, Lamb of God. At the table, you gave us a meal. 

Your broken body, you gave saying, “Take and eat.” 

You poured out your blood for our forgiveness, passing over us, covering our shame. 

When we eat and drink, we proclaim your death until you come again.

Amen