This Is My Body
Read Mark 14:22-26
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” –Mark 14:22
The central act of the Passover celebration is the Seder meal. This meal is highly ritualized, involving a fifteen-step process designed to tell the story of the Exodus. The meal is full of symbolic foods such as matzah (unleavened bread), maror (bitter herbs), and charoset (a paste made from fruits, nuts, and wine, symbolizing the “mortar” used by the slaves in Egypt). The meal also features four cups of wine, each with its own blessing.
At the center of the meal is the Maggid (the “telling”), in which four questions are asked, traditionally by the youngest person at the table, in order to pass the story of the Exodus from one generation to another. First, the child would ask: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” Then the following four questions would follow:
Why do we eat only matzah, unlike other nights when we eat leavened bread? The unleavened bread symbolizes the haste of the Exodus, when their bread did not have time to rise.
Why do we eat only bitter herbs tonight? The bitterness of the herbs reminds us of the bitterness of slavery.
Why do we dip our food twice tonight? Food is dipped twice, the first time in salt water to represent the tears shed by our ancestors in slavery, but then again in charoset to remind us that there is sweetness even in bitter times.
Why do we recline while eating? The reclining represents the freedom that God gave his people; only free people in ancient times reclined while dining.
While the disciples certainly reclined with Jesus at the Passover meal, this was not the fourth question they would have asked him. According to the Talmud, the fourth question was: Why do we eat only roasted meat on this night? The answer was to honor the paschal lamb, a perfect male lamb sacrificed at the temple as a reenactment of the sacrifice that kept the people safe during the final plague of Egypt. When the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, this sacrifice of the Paschal lamb ended, and so the fourth question was changed.
While the Seder meal has undoubtedly undergone changes since Jesus’ time (such as the changing of the fourth question of the Maggid), the meal the disciples shared with Jesus would have been very similar to the Seder ritual as we know it today. Jesus, though, introduced significant changes of his own. We are not sure when (there are multiple places in the Seder ritual when bread is broken), but during one of these instances, Jesus added the words: “This is my body, broken for you.” And during one of the four blessings over the wine, Jesus added: “This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
In these two simple statements, Jesus prepared the disciples for what was about to happen to him. He wanted them to understand that his death was intentional—that he was offering his life to become the “Paschal lamb” through whom all humanity would be saved. And then Christians made one more change. Instead of remembering this sacrifice once per year at the Passover, they began reenacting this meal every time they gathered for worship, remembering Jesus’ promise to be with them even unto the end of the Age.
Every family has traditions, and many of those traditions center around food. There are certain dishes that we enjoy only around the holidays. Some of these dishes “belong” to a certain family member—it is their special contribution to the feast. And sometimes, after that person has passed, a family member carries on the recipe in their honor. (In our family, for instance, Jamalyn’s brother always brings a sugar cream pie in honor of their grandmother.) We eat these foods not only because they taste good, but because they connect us to those who have gone before. In this way, we keep their memory alive in our hearts.
When Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples, they were celebrating their connection to the slaves of Egypt who had experienced the liberation and power of God. And when we share communion at church, we are connected to all those who have gone before, from generation to generation, all the way back to those twelve disciples sitting with Jesus in an Upper Room, on the Eve of the most important weekend in the history of the world.
Thank You, Lord, for the meals and the memories that connect me to those who have gone before. Thank You especially for the Eucharist, which reminds me of Your sacrifice and love. May I never forget, nor take for granted, the gift of Your grace. Amen.