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.”