After Pentecost Devotional - Day 48

“Jesus told them to go to a certain man in the city and tell him, 'Our teacher says, “My time has come! I want to eat the Passover meal with my disciples in your home.”’” Matthew 26:18

As Passover was a special celebration in the Old Testament texts, so it was a special celebration in Jesus' own day. Historians tell us that for Passover, Jerusalem's population swelled in the First Century from 200,000 to 1,000,000. There was a huge influx of Jews from throughout the Roman Empire who strove to be present in Jerusalem if at all possible. Some would make the journey in order to spend their last days in Jerusalem in order to have the opportunity to participate in the expected Messianic banquet upon the coming of Messiah.

This was a full dinner celebration that included a host of rites of significance pointing back to the origins of the nation in the Exodus from bondage in Egypt. Passover was the defining moment of their identity as the people of Yahweh. Still today, in many circles of Judaism one cannot be fully Jewish without participating in the Passover celebration and identifying oneself with the event of the Exodus and thus personally redeemed from Egyptian bondage by Yahweh's personal intervention.

Interestingly enough, we do not find any trace of Jesus celebrating any other Passover meal with his disciples. It is only this final Passover celebration we find specifically recorded in Jesus' ministry as celebrated with the Twelve. It is also this third Passover that Jesus chooses to restructure from a celebration of God's redemption from Egypt to what God was doing through Jesus in his upcoming death and resurrection.

It is now in these final moments in which Jesus had attempted to prepare the disciples for his death that he could speak more freely about the new significance he was giving to the Passover Seder. He was placing new parameters of understanding on it in regard his death and resurrection. He spoke of bread and wine as symbols of his own flesh and life he was offering in redemption. More than the redemption of a people from bondage and slavery, he was offering a new redemption that would transcend boundaries of nationality, race, ethnicity, language, and culture in a deeper way.

We should have expected Jesus to have celebrated the Passover with his disciple twice already. There is here no indication that was so. This is instead the only such celebration, and it is a new, unexpected manner in which they celebrated. The focus was not upon a redemption from an Egyptian bondage long passed. This was a new event with a new focus tied to the themes of a past redemption. Rather than leaving bondage to Egypt, the disciples would be embarking upon a new journey with God that downplayed any sense of geography and political structures.

That night, he spoke of betrayal. He spoke of his body and lifeblood being given for reconciliation with God. He spoke of rejection, forgiveness, restoration, and reconciliation. He spoke of entering a new life with God. Then he was carried away to become the means of that redemption. He was celebrating the redemption he was making a reality, a redemption for us to continually celebrate.

Celebrate what God has done for you, finding new expressions for God's grace.


"Lord, help me recognize the depths of your redeeming love, that I might celebrate fully."

—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon

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