New Passover

“Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover must be killed. And He sent Peter and John, saying, ‘Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat.’”

(Luke 22:7, 8)

Fifteen hundred years old by the time of Christ, the observance of Passover was wrapped deeply into the corporate psyche of all Israel and, due to the Dispersion, was present to some degree in the soul of every other civilized nation as well. Each year Jews from all over the world made the pilgrimage back to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast that marked the birth of their nation out of the dark womb of slavery in Egypt.

Indeed Jesus, Peter, John, and the other disciples had participated in or performed this same function every year of their own lives: “Go and prepare the Passover.” In the minds of Christ’s disciples, as in the minds of all other Jews at the time, this was a special time of the year, yes, but nothing new—the same Festival they had always known: the same giving of thanks, the same unleavened bread, the same wine blessings, the same lamb, the same psalm-hymns sung at the close of the meal, the same stories told.

Jesus alone knew this Passover was different. Jesus knew this Passover corresponded with a new and truer Passover that marked the new beginning of a renewed nation of God, a nation of God that would include all nations. From this Passover on, the giving of thanks would be for one Lamb of God, the Passover who takes away the sins of the world. This Passover and all future “pascha” celebrations would center on the bread of His own Body and the wine of His Blood. This night the psalm would hardly pass from their lips and the lips of every Jew before its fulfillment was set into motion: “The stone which the builders rejected/Has become the chief cornerstone. . . This is the day! . . . O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!/His mercy endures forever.”

Now for two thousand years, not only once a year but every first day of each new week, those over whom the death angel has “passed,” those whose doorposts have been marked with the blood of the Lamb, those whose feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, have celebrated this Feast given to us new by Jesus Himself. Only now no new Passover must be killed—one Sacrifice has been slain once for all! Let us go with joy to the Table set before us, that we may eat once again in celebration of the freedom that has been won for us by our Lord.

“Lord God, Heavenly Father, we give You thanks for our Lord Jesus Christ and His gift to us in the Supper handed down to us from the eve of His sacrifice on the cross for our sins. Look upon His blood that marks our ‘doorposts and lintel,’ and grant to us eternal life through Him, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”

Love Stoops

“Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

“And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded.

. . .

“So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.’”

(John 13:1–5, 12–17)

Jesus is the perfect host. The night before He lay down His life for His friends, He prepared a place, he prepared a meal, and he planned for the entire evening. He broke bread with them, gave them wine to drink, and led them in the richest conversation imaginable. He did far more than this, however. The thing that makes Jesus the perfect host is that He gave Himself entirely to His guests. He gave Himself in the wine and the bread. He gave Himself as He gave them His Word and the promises of His Word. He gave Himself as He humbled Himself to perform the most menial of all tasks for them, to wash their feet. The following day, of course, He will give them—and us—the greatest example of this love and service and sacrifice and humility as He gives Himself away to us and for us as He hangs upon a cross paying for all of the sins and misery of the world.

Jesus gave Himself in all of these ways because it is in the character of the Trinity to do so. All that He is and has and has done has always been in the form of a gift to His Father, just as His Father has always loved and served and given to Him. He is a servant to His disciples because He is a servant to His Father and because this is what He has seen His Father do for Him.

And so now He teaches His disciples explicitly that this is what it will always be to be a disciple of Christ: not simply a “washer of feet”—that, yes—but rather a “giver-away-of-oneself.” No place left for pride here. No place left for self-serving or self-preservation. There is no thing too low to which love will not stoop. No reservations, no holding back in the service of Christ. If Christ who created all things and rules over all things and owns all the glory in the universe can stoop to clean out the gunk between my toes, how much more willing should I be to do that and anything else to which love calls me.

“Dear heavenly Father, thank You for giving Yourself away for us, for inviting us to be Your guests at Your great banqueting table, for feeding and nurturing us and serving us with the hand of God in Christ. Thank You again for Christ’s sacrifice for us. Make us like Him—make us His disciples indeed—and teach us to wash feet and serve and sacrifice and give ourselves away with the same joy that leads You to do all of this for us. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”