I meant to post this just before Holy Thursday…better late than never. I hope everyone here is having a wonderful and prayful Easter season.
Holy Thursday is the special commemoration of the Last Supper, which was a Passover meal. My husband is a Jewish Christian and we are both very interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity, so in our household, we have a Passover seder of sorts on Holy Thursday. This usually is close to the first night of Passover according to the Jewish rabbinical calendar – this year the first night of Passover was the Wednesday of Holy Week.
Most Christians are familiar with the basics of the Passover story. The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt, and God delivered them, sending ten plagues to the Egyptians. The last of them was the death of the firstborn in the land of Egypt; God commanded that the Israelites to slaughter unblemished male lambs, and to sprinkle the blood on their doorposts. Houses with this blood would be passed over, hence the name Passover. God also commanded the eating of unleavened bread, or matzoh, as they left Egypt in haste and had no time to let bread rise, so Passover is also known as the Festival of Matzoh. The Passover seder is a retelling of these events of the Exodus, in the context of a celebratory meal and the observance of various commandments and traditions.
Seen through Christian eyes, the Passover story is a foreshadowing of Christ’s sacrifice and our salvation. Christ is our paschal lamb and we are saved, brought out of Egypt, by his blood. The unleavened bread of the Passover meal became our Communion when He told us, “This is My Body”.
Bread
One of the things that I found fascinating about the seder was the afikomen, which can be seen as having Trinitarian Christian symbolism. The Passover table is set including three pieces of matzoh. Just before the Passover story is started, the second piece of matzoh is broken in half. The larger half is called the afikomen. It is hidden away, and there are various customs usually involving the children of the family trying to find it by the end of the seder, when the leader of the seder “ransoms” it back. The leader then breaks the afikomen into small pieces which are distributed and eaten by all present, and no more food may be eaten afterwards.
Wine
The Passover service mandates the drinking of four cups of wine at specified points in the seder – often associated with the four expressions that God makes in Scripture of Israel’s redemption. They are also known by various individual designations.
It seems likely that the cup that Jesus named as the cup of His Blood was the third cup, also known as the cup of redemption or the cup of blessing (depending on who you ask); the third cup comes after the meal but before the singing of the psalms of praise. But that cup is also when he said, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." And when they had sung a hymn [presumably the psalms of praise], they went out to the Mount of Olives.” (Mark 14:23-26).
So what happened to the fourth cup of wine, the one that comes after the praise psalms? It has been suggested – and this makes intuitive sense to me – that the fourth cup was the sour wine of John 19:29. “Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’ And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” (John 19:30).
That is the completion of the Passover seder sacrifice of the Lord.
