The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Friday evening we had a triclinium meal. A triclinium in the Greco-Roman world was a low table set up using three sides with the fourth side open to servers. (a small example is a simple table; a larger example is a U-shaped table as we had) Guests would recline at the table, which we find Jesus doing several time in the Gospels. The goal of the evening was to reproduce what Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples looked like. This is drastically different from what a traditional Passover celebration looks like today.
Passover remembers the people of Israel being freed from slavery in Egypt. Jesus celebrated it with his disciples the evening before he was crucified. After all they’d been through, what was going through his disciples’ heads that evening? It must have been very moving for Jesus, too, recognizing what was going to happen in the next 24 hours. That evening he taught them, adding new meaning to Passover that they would come to understand: just as the original Passover celebrates Israel being freed from slavery in Egypt, so Jesus would free the world from slavery to sin. Just as the sacrifice of the original Passover lamb protected them from the angel of death, so Jesus’ death on the cross protects us from eternal separation from God.
His death is remembered on Good Friday, which doesn’t sound so good unless you understand how good it is that he paid the price for our sins. It is up to us to accept the forgiveness he offers.
