Exploring My Strange Bible - The Passover Meal - Gospel of Matthew Part 32

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

This teaching is actually kind of a replay and development of a teaching that I gave numerous times about the Messianic Passover. As we retell the story of Passover year after year, we can see that the story is forward-pointing as it represents liberation. What Jesus does with this meal and how he takes its meaning and tweaks it is really interesting. We address all of this and more about the Passover Meal in this episode.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, in this episode of the podcast, we are continuing to explore the gospel according to Matthew. We have for many episodes been in the part of the story where Jesus is in Jerusalem. It's his final week there. It's the week leading up to Passover. This teaching is actually something

of a replay and a development of a teaching I gave actually numerous times when I was at Door of Hope. And it's actually, there's an earlier similar version to this message in the podcast called the Messianic Passover. But, you know, every year, think of it, for over 3,000 years in Jewish tradition, people have every year been celebrating the Passover meal, retelling the liberation story of the Israelite freedom from slavery in Egypt. And not just to remember the story of the past, the Passover story in Jewish tradition is forward-pointing. Every year, you're anticipating the ultimate liberation from evil and tyranny and slavery to death and corruption itself. And so, in Jesus' day, you know, 2,000 years ago, the meal totally had that forward,

future-pointing symbolism to it. What Jesus does with this meal, how he takes its existing symbolism and meaning, but then also tweaks it and orients the whole meal and its meaning around himself and what he was about to do in the next 72 hours in Jerusalem. Holy cow. So what we do in this teaching is actually I get some people up with me and we do a little kind of mini Passover as we teach through the symbols and what it means and why the Last Supper is important to recognize with a Passover meal. It's awesome. Anyway, there you go.

It's a lot of fun, a lot of laughter and silliness, and I hope a lot of learning for all of us. So there you go. Let's dive in. What we're going to do right now is what we always do right now, which is I invite you to open a Bible and to turn with me to the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 26. Open up or turn one on. It's about 50-50 these days. Some of you are old-fashioned. Some of you are new-fashioned or whatever. Anyway.

So we're a year and a half in to Matthew, and we have, for a couple months, been immersed in this story of Jesus' last seven days in the city of Jerusalem, Holy Week. I don't know if you pay attention to the flow of the ancient Christian calendar. My hunch is, knowing enough people around Door of Hope, there are some of you who that's meaningful to you, and you do some hybrid form of it, because we're Americans.

We love to innovate and change it up, even if it's 3,000 years old. And some of you are like, what? Christian calendar? I mean, some of you, before I was a paid Christian, I worked at a church. And Easter always surprised me. I didn't grow up with any of these ancient rhythms of the Christian calendar and so on. And so every year it's like, oh yeah, resurrection Sunday. It's the most important day. Right. It's this Sunday. Wow. Anybody? You're not going to be honest. You might be honest.

But I know some of us are like that. And so whatever, you know. And for some of us that's really meaningful. It's a way for us to construct the course of a year in these sacred times and blocks of retelling the story of Jesus.

It's a very, very ancient practice. Last week began a key day in the Christian calendar that starts the clock ticking for Resurrection Sunday. What happened Wednesday? Ash Wednesday, which historically marks a 40-day period where followers of Jesus will deprive themselves of something or fast in the 40 days leading up to Resurrection Sunday, to Easter, as a way of joining Jesus in solidarity his 40 days in the wilderness before he announced the kingdom of God. So that ball's rolling already right now. I don't know how many of you are participating in that. And then it all leads up to.

Palm Sunday. Coming next month. In about four and a half weeks. And then Monday, Thursday, Good Friday. Resurrection Sunday. So that's the ball that's rolling. For our calendar. We're going to finish the gospel according to Matthew. When we gather together for Resurrection Sunday.

But if we're where we are in the story right now, we are in the thick of all of that. Palm Sunday's passed now by like a week almost. Jesus rode into Jerusalem, remember, on the donkey, acting like a king, acting like he owned the city. And then he went to the most important place in the city, the temple and he pulled his stunt there and made all the leaders angry but then made the people quite happy by exposing their corruption. And so all week long Jesus, he's been trying to tell his disciples they're going to kill me, they're going to kill me, it's not an accident, this is how it's all going to go down and they're just, they're cl to kill me, they're going to kill me, it's not an accident, this is how it's all going to go down, and they're just, they're clueless, they're clueless. And so we're picking

up the story today where it's the last hours of Jesus before his arrest and before his trial and execution and so on. And we pick up, if you were here last week, there was this powerful story of Jesus was at a dinner party and a woman poured, do you were here last week, there was this powerful story of Jesus was at a dinner party and a woman poured, do you remember this? Poured the expensive perfume all over him and that was extravagant and inappropriate and we pick up the story from there, Matthew 26 verse 14. Then one of the twelve, the one called Judas Iscariot, he went to the chief priests.

Good guys or bad guys? Chief priests. Well, according to him, you know, I mean, actually, you want your kids to grow up being neighbors with their kids kind of thing. You know, they're the most moral people you could imagine, you know. And they're examples in the community. They're elders. They have, you know, they know the scriptures. So, and I'm actually sure, for the most part, they were really decent, wonderful people.

So, this is about a conflict of interest, isn't it? But from their point of view, Jesus is a threat. He's a threat to national security. He's a threat to the heritage of Israel. He's a false teacher. He's leading everyone astray. He's got to be stopped. And so these chief priests, in their vision of doing what is good, end up getting in cahoots with one of Jesus' closest followers.

Judas asked, what are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you? So they counted out to him 30 pieces of silver, about 4,000 bucks, something like that. 30 pieces of silver, about 4,000 bucks, something like that. And from then on, Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over. Now this is interesting. This is one of the most significant question marks in the history of Christianity, is why did Judas do what he did? We know from the Gospel according to John that it seems to one factor at least was what Jesus did

with money that he kept giving it all away and seemed to be reckless with his generosity and Judas thought that was irresponsible but that's the only thing we have to go on in the four accounts of Jesus' life we don't know you know

4,000 bucks isn't really the kind of money, it's not a small amount of money, but it's not the amount of money that will make somebody change the course of their entire life direction. So there's already something going on inside of Judas. At some point, he's come to believe that Jesus is a threat. That his ethic of loving your enemies and not killing them,

that that's unrealistic and dangerous. That his teachings about, you know, loving your neighbor as yourself, even if it includes a Roman soldier, that that's, he's gone too far. That he's made too many exalted claims about himself in relationship to God. We don't know.

But at some point, Judas believes that the right thing to do is to get rid of Jesus too. And so that's the backdrop of this story that we're going to reflect on today that I'm guessing is pretty familiar to most of us. So let's go. Verse 17. Now on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus and they asked, where do you want us to make preparations for you all to go to eat what? Passover. So in the Christian calendar, resurrection is the kind of culmination of the Christian year. And in the Jewish calendar, Passover is the culmination of their calendar year. And the two always overlap.

And that's because of the events that we're going to think about for the next couple weeks. The Last Supper and Jesus' death and resurrection, Jesus timed. He's brilliant, he timed that it would all take place at Passover. Passover was known by a couple names, one, and you saw them both right here, didn't you? One is called

Passover, what's the other? The festival of what? Of unleavened bread, and you'll see in a little bit why those two are together. And so, it's a seven day set up feast, a pilgrimage feast. Jews come from all over the world, 100,000 extra people in the city, which is not huge already. It's packed, it's dense, all these Jewish pilgrims,

lots of languages being spoken. And you can imagine you're in the city, it's all these alleyways, and the smells and the music and people's homes are packed and extended relatives are all, that's the scene. 100,000 extra people. And so Jesus has come a week into this he's been a very public figure this week and it comes down to it

that's the night that transitions into the celebration of Passover. Now, Bible nerds, some of you know that in the Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they paint this last night and this meal that Jesus is about to have as a Passover meal happening on Passover.

If you go to the Gospel according to John, the calendar seems different by a day. It seems like John's saying that it happened a day before the Passover meal. Like eight of you are aware of this and even care about it, right? But it's really interesting. So, you know, I could go on for an hour about this. I think it's really fascinating, but I won't. We don't have time for that. A large position of scholars, what they think is going on, and I agree with this view, is that, first of all, the Jewish calendar. When do days begin in at least ancient Jewish tradition? At sundown. For some reason, we've marked a magic moment in the middle of the night where our calendars change the number day, yeah? So that's our magic moment. In Jewish traditional culture, it was much more intuitive

when the sun goes down. That's when the day ends, and that's when the next day begins. Their calendars, their iPhones would change at sundown, right? So, almost certainly what's happening here is that Jesus is celebrating it on what we would call Thursday night, but after sundown, technically when the day of Passover has begun. Because we know it's the wee hours of the night when all of this is going to go down. And why Jesus is celebrating, it's like celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve, which some people do. So that's a bad example. It's like celebrating Thanksgiving on Wednesday. Are you with me? It's just kind of odd, but the calendar technically allowed him to do that. Why would he do that?

What does Jesus know is going to happen to him? He said it multiple times. He knows he's going to get arrested and executed. What does Jesus know he's going to be experiencing in 24 hours? know he's going to be experiencing in 24 hours. He's going to be, have been hanging on the cross. Jesus doesn't have 20 more hours. He's got about eight. And so what he does is he brilliantly, I think, and a lot of people are smarter than me, ends up doing a Passover meal like a Thanksgiving meal on midnight on Wednesday. That's what Jesus is doing. And all the elements of the meal are there, at least except one, I think we'll see. But here's what Jesus is trying to do. Only one other time has Jesus tried to explain why he was going to die. It's very interesting. You'd think for how important this event is, Jesus would have talked

about it more. And he talked about it that he was going to die, but only one other time did he say what it meant. He said he was going to die as a ransom for many. That's what he said back in chapter 18. And so we're left wondering, like, why did Jesus ever, like, write a book about why he had to die? book about why he had to die. Now he didn't. You could fill about on less than one page the amount of words of Jesus that unpack the significance and meaning

of his death. And to me this is really significant that when Jesus wanted to give his disciples a rich understanding of why he was going to die, he didn't write anything. He gave us a meal, a symbolic meal

that was already rich in symbolism, the Passover meal. It was a meal that by Jesus' day was already over a thousand years old. And that every single year his people retell this story through all of these symbolic elements of the meal. And what we're going to watch Jesus do is take up these ancient symbols and give them new meaning.

He's going to shift them and transform these symbols to find their fulfillment in him and in what he's doing. Let's keep reading. Verse 18. So Jesus replied, Well, why don't you guys go into the city to a certain man and tell him, The teacher says, My appointed time is near.

I'm going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house. So the disciples did, just as Jesus directed them, and they prepared the Passover. This is one of my favorite moments in the story. This is the second of what I call the spy movie moments in the story. Do you remember the first? The donkey, right? Go into the town and you're going to find a donkey there and say to the guy with the donkey, the teacher has need of it. It's like Jesus has prearranged all of this. And it's like, you, and say to the guy with the donkey, the teacher has need of it. It's like Jesus has prearranged all of this. And it's like, you know, go to the man with the donkey.

The teacher needs it. Oh, of course. You know, and it's like this. Like, so who's the certain man? Right? Like, it's somebody that they know, but that Matthew, it's too dangerous. Right?

To even reveal this person's identity. Right? Even like decades later, it's still, this person isn't mentioned. It's so fascinating to me. It's identity. Even decades later, it's still this person isn't mentioned. It's so fascinating to me. It's truly... And so the city's all packed full of alleyways and you can imagine Jesus.

He's been the most controversial figure in the city for the last week. He can't go waltzing out in public. He has eight more hours. So you can imagine him. He's got his hoodie on and he's going into the city and the disciples are up there and they find this certain man.

The teacher, the hour is near. And so on. Oh, yes, of course. Right this way. And then they go up to this little secret room. Are you with me? That's the scene. So Jesus knows what's coming.

He knows the storm that's about to overtake him. And he wants to lock down that he at least gets a couple hours with his disciples, not to give them a theology lecture, but to transform the meaning of the Passover meal so that they can have a new grasp of what's going to happen in the next 24 hours. So, they're there, prepared the Passover. When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the 12. Now, Jesus, Last Supper with the 12, do you all have a mental image here?

You do. Who gave you that mental image? Leonardo da Vinci. So we'll just, well, there it is. All right? And whether you saw the movie or read the novel, I don't know what you think about that. I don't think you should think very much about it.

But this is a really important painting in terms of Western art history and so on. Leonardo da Vinci, thank you for it. What I'm going to ask you to do is just totally erase this from your mind. Not because it's not important or beautiful, but because it's not at all the scene that you should have in your head. So people didn't sit at tables like that or like we do today. So let's just wipe it off the screen.

I mean, look at verse 20. What does it say? How did Jesus go to the table? He laid down. He laid down. And in many traditional Eastern cultures today, this is still the way you do it. So you have tables that are low to the ground. And they would be arranged in a large circle.

Or a large half circle. Or a mini circle, like what I have here. And they start eating the Passover meal. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to just do a little one right here. How many of you remember that we did this a couple years ago? Yeah. And if you're like, yeah, I've kind of seen this before. Exactly.

And if you're like, yeah, I've kind of seen this before. Exactly. And if you're, I mean, think if you're a Jewish person, you've grown up with this meal since your first memories of consciousness. The point is repetition. Are you with me? There are many points in the Jewish Christian tradition where innovation is not a virtue. The point is, this is our story.

This is the oldest living religious meal in human history. Some 3,500 years. Every year, people have been doing this meal continuously without a break for over three millennia. And so this is an absolutely crucial meal, both for understanding Jesus and also understanding why we take the bread and the cup in our gatherings too. So here's what we're going to do. It takes about two hours to do one. We're obviously not going to do that.

But, you know, we can give it a crack in about 30 minutes. Are you with me? So this is participation required. One man, one woman. Right? Just, you didn't even hesitate. Come on up. And you're going to, we're going to be reclining here, so be't even hesitate. Come on up, and you're gonna, we're gonna be reclining here, so be comfortable laying down. Dude, come on. Oh, don't make me pick. Oh, okay, I was gonna

pick you, Joe, so there you go. All right, come on up. Good job. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna recline together. Would you guys introduce yourselves, everybody? This is Stephanie, and this is? You're getting comfortable, Joe, right here. Yes, let's do it. Welcome to my table. Yes. Oh, could you grab my notes right there?

Right there. Cheers. Thank you. All right. All right. So the Passover meal. A traditional Passover meal. How many of you have been a part of one before? It's called a Seder, Passover Seder. Yeah, so a number of you. So odds are the form in which you experience the meal, it's what you would call a modern form. Just like Christmas, the way we celebrate it now would be unrecognizable to someone 200 years ago. Similar kind of thing.

So as far as we can tell, in Jesus' day, it was very simple. Very simple. Most of the things that are done today have maybe their roots in ancient practice, so I just stripped it to the bare bones for this one here. But the common denominator for any Jewish feast is good wine. Good wine. But I didn't know who would be 21 or not, so it's Welch's Concord Grape, Jason.

That's alright with you. Yeah, it is a little not even noon yet. So, now the meal is broken up into four parts. And so you're going to want to take four drinks of that. Actually, you probably want to take a couple more. You'll see.

And, no, I'll give you your cue. Yep. I'll give you your cue. So, in each cup, before you drink each cup, the head of the house says a blessing over it. And I'll sing it, and then y'all will say it, because the words

will appear on the screen. Baruch atah danaylo enu melech haolam borei peri ha-akafen. May you be blessed, Lord our God, King of the world, who creates the fruit of the vine. Cheers. So the meal's beginning, and Jesus is festive.

I mean, he's been trying to tell them that he was going to die. It doesn't seem like they got it. So, yeah, it's Passover starting. It's like early. It's the wee hours of the night, but whatever. They're having a good time. And leave it to Jesus to kill the mood. Yeah, the cup.

Yeah, this. While they began eating, Jesus said, you know, what's going to happen? One of you is going to betray me. And they were sad, we're told. And they began to say to him, to themselves, and to each other, surely you're not talking about me, Lord.

Just imagine the scene. All of a sudden, everybody's like, what just happened? Who is it? Could it be me? So think about what's going to happen in the story. Think about what's going to happen in the garden in just a couple hours.

Who's going to bail on Jesus? Who's going to run away and abandon Jesus? All of them. There's irony here. In a way, they're all going to betray him. Surely not me, Lord. But there's one in particular, because the story has been preparing us for it. It's Judas.

It's Judas. And so look at what Jesus does here. He says, listen, the one who dips his hand into the bowl with me is the one who will betray me. And we think, oh, everybody's going to know. He's going to pat Judas and do this. We think the game is up. But here's what's interesting.

How you begin, are you comfortable? It's not the most comfortable. Okay, you get Stephanie. All right. The first thing that you would do, it's all a symbolic meal. It's not like a normal meal. The first thing you would do,

you would grab the lettuce leaf and tear off a chunk. And in the white dish, just stir it up. There. Looks like water. Okay. And then we take a bite.

We take a bite. Okay. This has a lot of salt in it. A lot of salt. It's called the dipping of the karpas. And the karpas has to do with the lettuce leaf. There's a lot of interpretations of the karpas throughout history. Why do you begin Passover by dipping the karpas? The oldest interpretation, I think it's the most interesting,

it's that we're reenacting the story of Joseph and his brothers. So do you remember, there's Abraham, then there's Isaac, and then there's Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons, and the 11th son was kind of a punk and told on his brothers, and they didn't like him, and he had a special coat. Do you remember his name? Joseph. Just? Joseph.

Just say Joseph. Like, you grew up knowing these stories like you know the Lord of the Rings or something like that. So it's Joseph. And Joseph, you know, his brothers don't like him, and they don't like that he got the special jacket from Dad. And so they make a plan to murder him, and then they say, no, that's being too mean. Let's just sell him into slavery for the rest of his life. And so that's what they do. They sell him into slavery. And to convince dad to lie to him and make up a

story, do you remember what they do? They take his jacket, and they sell him. And then what do they do? They want to make up a story that a wild animal ate Joseph. So they kill an animal. What animal? They slit the throat of a lamb, and then they spill the lamb's blood, and then they dip Joseph's coat in it, and then they bring it to dad,

and they're like, oh, wild animal. Got him, or whatever. And so the oldest interpretation of the dipping of the karpas is to retell the dipping of Joseph's coat in blood. Because if you bite your lip and you bleed in your mouth, what does it taste like? It tastes like what you just put in your mouth, right? And that event is the event that began the story of the family of Abraham finding itself down in Egypt. Are you with me?

At this moment, after the dipping of the karpas, and we're telling stories about Joseph and Abraham and going down to Egypt and so on, and then the kids speak up at this moment in the meal near the beginning. And the kids are inquisitive.

You've got a five-year-old and a seven-year-old and a 13-year-old in there, so why are we doing this? Why are we here? Why do we have these different elements of the meal? And what do the symbols mean? So, we're going to designate these all to be the kids. We'll be the elders at the table, and we'll

let them be the immature ones who don't know what's going on. So you see the questions, and I want you all to read them, but read them like you're kids, and you don't care that you're talking over each other. You don't have to read it at the same time, because you're five, or you're seven. You got it? Okay, do it. Go ahead. I'm so glad you asked.

That's really great. Thank you. Like, planted them in the crowd. So, yeah, what's this? Why are we, what is this meal about? 3,500 years? Like what is this meal? It's about a story that began with Abraham and Joseph, but it's much bigger. And here's the story. At this point in the meal, we would open up the Torah and we'd read from three long chapters of Exodus. Takes about 40 minutes. We're not going to do that. I'll tell the version that's in Deuteronomy chapter 26.

So our ancestors come from the family of Abraham and he was a wandering Aramean, says Deuteronomy chapter 26. And God made these promises to Abraham that somehow through his family God's blessing would be restored back to all the nations of the world and so Abraham didn't have a big family

he actually didn't have any kids at all and so he went to this land that didn't belong to him other people were living there and it was the land that God promised would belong to his ancestors at some point and there was a famine in the land actually God promised would belong to his ancestors at some point. And there was a famine in the land, actually multiple famines, and these food shortages.

Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, the 12 sons, Joseph, the story that we just told with the karpas. And so because of another food shortage, the family of Jacob ends up wandering all the way down to Egypt to look for food. And who do they find as like second in command ruling Egypt? It's Joseph, that guy they tried to kill. And he forgives them and they kiss and make up. And so then they find themselves down in Egypt. And it's awesome because there's food and they have political favor because of their relative and power. And it's wonderful.

And lots of decades, decades, decades, centuries go by. And the family of Abraham explodes in Egypt. And then the story takes a turn. And it's a turn that's happened at many points in history. You have an immigrant group that goes to another culture and land to look for work and opportunity. And they flourish there. They actually become more numerous there. And the powers that be freak out. And so in the name of national security, the king of Egypt, what's his title?

Pharaoh. He begins a slow genocide of these people. Not so slow, actually. He enacts a decree that all of the boys, Israelite boys, be thrown into the river. A whole generation of Israelite men was wiped out and drowned in the Nile River as babies. And then all the rest of them, he starts grinding them into dust, building his pyramids and storehouses. And so our ancestors, they cried out to the God of Abraham to look on our suffering and

to fulfill his promises to Abraham. And God raised up for us a deliverer. Who's his name? What's his name? Moses. Moses. Moses. And through Moses, God confronted Pharaoh's evil. And through ten acts of justice, at each point, God would bring some catastrophic event and then say like, okay, back up. It doesn't have to go this way. Stop your evil. Stop your oppression. Pharaoh says, who's the God of Israel?

You're a punk. Get out of my courts. And he just keeps inviting the hammer. And the last act of judgment against Pharaoh's evil, well, we'll talk about that. But it was really intense. And this whole meal builds up to that event. But at its core, what we're telling is a story of freedom. This is a liberation story about how our ancestors were under the

oppression of evil rulers and how God rescued us and brought us into the promised land. And so that's why at the conclusion of the reading of the Exodus story, we raise another glass and we

together, pause, read Psalm 113. They would sing it but I won't ask you to do that so we'll just read it. Praise Yahweh. From the place where the sun rises to the place where it goes down.

For Yahweh is high above the nations. Who can be compared with Yahweh our God? Who is enthroned on high? Together. Together. May you be blessed, O Lord our God, King of the world, who creates the fruit of the vine. Now, Rabbi Gamaliel used to say, you know Rabbi Gamaliel?

You do, you do know him. you do you do know him uh you know him through one of his most famous students who was named Saul of Tarsus um whose name was changed well actually it wasn't changed he took on another name uh after becoming a follower of Jesus we call him Paul he used to say lots of different Jews all over the world. Passover is celebrated lots of different ways, but you have to do three things or else you haven't celebrated Passover. So one is eating the unleavened bread. The second is eating of the bitter herb, and I'm sorry ahead of time for that. And then the third is the Passover lamb. So you would, you know, bread, right?

The sustenance and the staple of every meal and still for most people today, it's their staple food as a part of their diet. And the whole part of celebrating Passover, the feature of it is that it's unleavened bread. So that's why it's thin and not a loaf of bread right here. What ingredient is this missing that it remains flat? Yeast. So why?

That's a part of the symbol of the Exodus story. So you put yeast into dough, and how long does that take? Yeah, a couple hours, an hour and a half, two hours, something. Maybe longer, maybe less, depending on the recipe. The whole point is that the Israelites ate this last meal with their backpacks on, like with their loins girded, so to speak, with their, you know, hiking boots on, with their bags packed, staffs ready. You know, we don't have time. We could go at any moment. And so there was a moment to wait for the bread to rise, right? There wasn't time. In Exodus story, it tells us that here in chapter 12,

with the dough that the Israelites brought from Egypt, they baked cakes of unleavened bread. And the dough was without yeast because they'd been driven out of Egypt and didn't have time to prepare food for themselves. So this is like power bars. It's like food for the road. Now this is where Jesus comes into his own. He's already kind of dropped the bomb of one of you is going to betray me. And then so Jesus took the bread, the unleavened bread. And we're told in chapter 26, they're eating, going on the meal, then Jesus took the bread, and he gives thanks for it.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, botzi lechem in haaretz. May you be blessed, O Lord our God, King of the world, who brings forth bread from the land. And then Jesus took the bread and he broke it. And he gave it to his disciples and they start eating. And then he drops another bomb.

He says, you're eating my body. I mean, look at what he says, you're eating my body. I mean, look at what he says. You know? Now that's horrifying in any culture. You're like, I'm eating flesh? Of course I'm not. I'm eating bread, Jesus. What on earth does this mean?

This is as clear as Jesus gets, by the way. So what? Put it together. What do you do with bread? You take the dough, you mash it, you knead it, you roll it up, you put it into the oven. And not only that, once you do that to bread and it bakes, like we're eating it. And this is what we eat every day. We've been eating since we were kids. It's our life. Like we live

by bread. And now Jesus is saying, this is my body. So what does Jesus know is going to happen in the next 24 hours? His body is going to be whipped. His body is going to be broken. And he's going to be thrown into his own furnace, a Roman execution rack. And somehow his broken body is going to become a source of life and sustenance. That's not just for him, like it's for sharing. It's for the benefit of others.

We live by bread. We live by the broken body of Jesus. So we're pondering this symbol. Perhaps you want some more now. I saved that for later, trust me. The next, this is the first thing. Remember, grab a gomel ale

unleavened bread. Second thing is the bitter herb. The bitter herb. Now, you can use a piece of bread or you could use a piece of lettuce, whichever you think will absorb the shock to your system. In the clear dish

is what's called the bitter herb. Maror. It's chopped, just shredded horseradish. So it's really, I mean, be, do what you need to do. That's going to be just fine, Joe. So the point is that you cry. The point is that we bring tears to our eyes. And this is where extra juice might come in handy. You with me? Ready to commit?

Stephanie? All right, here we go. Here we go. Yeah. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. I'm fine.

Yeah. How you doing? Yeah, it's good. It's just shredded horseradish. I can show you the jar in the back. It's very strong. Yeah, okay. I could have got creamy, but that's diluting it. You can't get creamy. All right, so why do we do that? I remember the kids asked, why do we have to do that? You're five, and just needles up your nose. Like, why do we have to do that? Well, I'm a dad. Well, so here's why we do that. The Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal

slave drivers over them. The Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy. They made their lives maror, bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and to make bricks and to do all the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands. So the point of this meal and something we would all say together is that every generation of Israel, because of this meal, sees itself as the generation that came out of slavery in Egypt. This meal is a way of participating. It's not just a symbol, it's actually we relive and remember our actual roots in this story of God redeeming his people. And we cry because of the tragedy of the human condition. We cry because of the innocent deaths of our ancestors. We cry because if we read our own scriptures,

the story of our own people in the promised land, like Solomon and Ahab and Manasseh, like our own people became as bad as Pharaoh and killed innocent people as well. And so we grieve and we cry and we recognize like every generation is subject to Pharaoh's. Every generation becomes its own way of being Pharaoh.

And we all need the redemption that comes through God's grace. The last element of the meal would be the lamb. The lamb. There's no lamb on our plates. And that's not just because it would be gross and cold by now. I think it's clear this meal is abbreviated

in Matthew's account here. But the lamb's absence is conspicuous, isn't it? That Jesus we know he's celebrating, I think he's celebrating this meal before everybody else, so perhaps the lamb wasn't prepared, or perhaps it's Jesus doing his thing,

which is taking up these ancient symbols but transforming them. Because what's the lamb all about? Remember, so the lamb, it was the last act of judgment against Egypt. And so there would be a plague, a messenger of death that last night that would sweep through the land and every firstborn of every house would die as an act of God's justice on Egypt. Now that's so unimaginably intense to us, and it is.

It's matching Pharaoh's oppressive evil. He killed every Israelite boy. And the last act of poetic justice is for the firstborn of Egypt to die. But God provides something that Pharaoh never provided, and that's a way of escape, a way out. And it's through the symbol of the Passover lamb. And so anybody, right, Israelite or not, could take this lamb, a little one-year-old spotless lamb, and slaughter it for the meal, and you'd be eating it. But what you would have done is that before we sat down,

we would have taken the blood, some of the blood of that lamb, and painted it. You'll see an image here from a Bible project video. And it's painted up on the doorpost like that. And it's this symbol. And then anybody in a house whose blood is on the doorpost of the Passover lamb is spared. Now, it's a very strange symbol to us. But that's the story.

That's the story. That's the story. Somehow through the death of this lamb God takes out his justice on evil which is right and good. But at the same time he provides a way of escape through the blood of the lamb. And as far as we can tell Jesus' meal has no lamb. Put two and two together. Instead, what he does is he raises the third cup. In the same way, Matthew says, after they ate, he took the cup.

He would have blessed it. Baruch atah Adonai, lehenu melech ha'olam borei, puriach afen. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the world, who creates the fruit of the vine. And as we're drinking, he drops another bomb and said, This cup is the new covenant. It's my blood. It's poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. And I tell you, I'm not going to drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until the day when I drink it new with you all in my Father's kingdom. Do you see what he's doing? So the blood of the lamb, the blood of the lamb was a marker of this new family,

this new covenant family that God's forming with Israel. He's going to redeem them. And they're going to become his people and a beacon of light to bless the nations. And Jesus says what he's doing in the next 8 to 12 hours is his blood is going to be all over the place on the ground, on his body and on that cross that that's the blood of a lamb. It's like the blood of a lamb

which seals the new covenant family. It's like the blood of the lamb which is the substitute and absorbs the consequences of human evil and sin. And notice it doesn't end there. Jesus says, but that's not the end of the story because there's another Passover coming. It's a Passover that will come when everything's new. Jesus sees there's something coming on the other side of his death

that will mean the reunion of Jesus' people and a new celebration of the act of redemption from slavery that he's about to accomplish. And these few symbols are what Jesus gives you to help make sense of the horror of the next 12 hours. And that apparently is the end of Jesus' Passover meal. How you guys doing?

Let's thank our volunteers, Joe and Stephanie. Thank you. So, I mean, this is just so Jesus. He's so wise. Like, he knows that he could unpack it logically, you know, and give a lecture. But instead what he does is he takes this practice that's already woven into the life of his people. And in the movement that he begins, he just picks it up,

he reshapes it all around the story of his death and resurrection and new hope. And then, of course, the point isn't that you just get the understanding of Jesus' meal and then you understand it. The point is that this is something Jesus wanted us to keep participating in. So every generation sees itself as the generation that came out of Egypt. And so every generation of his followers sees itself as the people who

were sitting with Jesus at that final meal. And we participate in it. Jesus doesn't just want us to understand what he did for us. He wants us to participate in it. Do you see that? And that's why followers of Jesus eat. We've distilled it down to wafers and the juice and so on. But that's what we're doing every week. And there's so many. Think of what it meant for thousands of years for these Israelites.

Like they hear stories of the Canaanite gods. They hear stories of the Babylonians and of the Israelites. And how their cultures are more progressive. And their technology and kings and so on. And then Passover comes around again. And then they root themselves. Here's who we are. We're the people of the God of Israel.

And he acted to save us. And he's going to save us again. It grounds them. And so in the same way, the people of Jesus, right? We live in our world, and there's lots of stories out there about who you are and where you came from and what your problem is and what your future could look like. And what we do every week is we come together as the people of Jesus and we root ourselves in this story.

We eat the story. We participate in it. And what is Jesus' view of the world? He thinks he's rescuing people. He thinks he's rescuing people by dying. Like, well, that's so strange. What does that even mean? So think of Jesus' view of the world.

Think of his view of people, right? And think of how the Passover story works and what he's doing with this meal. So this is the Passover story. Through the lamb, a very rich symbol, the lamb's death, Yahweh rescues the Israelites, his people, from the big bad Pharaoh and how he's enslaved them. That's the story that Jesus picks up here. But then Jesus picks up the story and he keeps it, but he swaps out all the players in the story, right? Think of what just happened in the meal here. All of a sudden, it's the Jesus is at the center of the meal, this body and blood. He's the lamb. And now his death is this rich image

of taking into himself all of the consequences of humanity's sin and selfishness and self-destruction. And somehow through that God's rescuing people. Who's he rescuing?

The twelve people in the room? Is Jesus just rescuing people. Who's he rescuing? The 12 people in the room? Is Jesus just rescuing Israelites? I mean, I seem to remember a story where Jesus actually provided healing for a Roman soldier, the enemy. I remember a story about Jesus providing and welcoming in to his followers tax collectors and Pharisees,

sick people and healthy people, religious people and irreligious people, Israelites and non-Israelites. Are you with me here? Like Jesus sees what he's doing, something transcends social, political, ethnic. It's something to do with humanity. Jesus believed that the human heart is in slavery to selfishness, to sin, to this self-preservation instinct where I'll do what's good for me and my tribe, even at

the expense of you and your tribe. And Jesus believes deeply that we're strangling from, being strangled from this, and that it's going to kill us. And so Jesus sees himself as taking into himself all of the train wreck of all of that into himself on the cross. And he believes somehow he's going to conquer it with his love because he's going to drink this cup

again with his people when the kingdom of God comes. So I don't know where you're at. I don't know what story you've been in all week about who you are. I don't know what ways you and I have all contributed to why this world is the way it is in the last seven days. Because we all participate in that story. And this meal, when we come to take the bread and the cup, it's about being called into the story of Jesus.

And the people group that he's making us into. And the new humans that he wants to make us into. The redeemed people. And so, I don't know if you remember, I said the Passover meal is about four cups that break up the meal. We did three, and the fourth one we're gonna take together right now

as we take the bread and the cup. And if you need to bring something to Jesus, some way that you became Pharaoh in last week, and you need to confess that and bring it to Jesus, some way that you became Pharaoh in last week, and you need to confess that and bring it to Jesus and to repent from it, then you need to do that. And there might be others of us who need to remember who we are because we've lost ourselves. And we need to be grounded again in the love and the sacrifice that Jesus performed on our behalf. Thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible. We will have another episode coming up where we keep exploring the gospel according to Matthew.

So we'll see you next time.