From Background Notes [BN] for April 21st & 22nd written by Pastor Bob Brown:
Once a year that story gets told in Jewish households, and has been for thirty-five hundred years. “What makes this night different from every other night?” The same question is posed by the children and the same answers are given, declaring the love of God for His people and His commitment to rescue them from sin and death. Therefore…
…when Jesus met with his followers in the Upper Room, they behaved together like a family — a new family, celebrating Pesach as they had before. Oddly, this night became, in its own way, unlike the other nights of Pesach celebrated in the past. Reclining at the table, handling the familiar symbols of Passover, praying the same prayers and engaging in the same symbolic actions, Jesus led his followers in what looked on the surface to be a normal Pesach. However, something was wrong. At crucial moments in the traditional Passover Seder, Jesus started saying things about a piece of bread and one of the cups (there were several used during the Seder) that sounded new, different.
“This is my body,” he would say. “This is my blood,” he ominously declared as he passed these particular symbols to the disciples. The story seemed to change — the old, old Passover story underwent a major reworking that night as it passed through the hands and lips of Jesus. He was known for changing the ordinary stories and making them end in surprising ways. He had done it with the parables he told, shifting the plot or altering the climax, and making the wrong characters say and do all of the right things. Remember the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan? In many ways, what Jesus did that night had the force of a parable, introducing in the story of Passover a fresh element. Suddenly Passover was no longer the story of just national Israel — it
was the story of Israel as it reached its climax in the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God who had come to take away the sin of the world.Paul had reason to comment about the Eucharist in his letter to the Corinthians. Most of his audience were not Jewish and had to be taught by Jewish-Christian teachers the old stories of Israel and what the stories had to do with pagan Gentiles like them. Actually, the Corinthians were no strangers to religious meals since most of the temples built to the Greek and Roman deities had rituals involving bringing food and offering it in sacrifice. Sometimes the devotees would share in these meals, believing that something magical might happen because the food had been influenced by the temple surroundings or by the gods themselves. When some of these
Gentiles became Christians, they had to re-learn the stories which they had once heard told by Homer or Hesiod or Virgil. Now they had new stories, taken from the Jewish Bible but applied to them. Having a special feast to celebrate the central story of the Christian faith made sense to them. Of course, it required a little explaining when they heard the words “this is my body” or “this is my blood.” From a pagan perspective they had a whole different meaning. In Christian terms, this simply meant sharing in the life of Jesus. [BN, 6]Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at ChicagoFirstChurch of the Nazarene –
* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am, 5:30pm
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