Behold the Lamb: An Original Messianic Celebration of Passover

This may be because. Remarkably, even Moses is absent from the prayers, stories, and biblical passages of the Passover Haggadah. Jesus sharing the Last Supper with his disciples. This meal has been called the Last Supper.

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John alludes to the Last Supper, but he does not call it a Passover meal. Pascha throughout his gospel. Many scholars believe that the meal that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion was a Seder. Jonathan Klawans suggests that the Seder as we know it today developed only after the time of Jesus. Hymns were a part of the Seder of this period. Matthew and Mark record that Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn at the end of the Last Supper, presumably from Psalms to Matt. Days begin at sunset, early evening, according to Jewish thinking.

Jonathan Klawans suggests that Seders could be held near the time of Passover, and not just on the actual night, much the same as we can have Christmas dinners and parties on any day during the Christmas season and not just on December the 25th. His disciples would have understood Jesus to be associating himself with this messianic symbol which was eaten as part of a Passover meal cf. Jesus and his disciples probably were sharing a Seder in the upper room. But even if they were sharing a regular Jewish meal with its usual customs, it is clear that Jesus did something new and unusual within the established format.

The unique details, and not the ordinary details of the meal, are what the Gospel writers record. A formal meal was an important family and social ritual for the Jews. The typical, formal meal began with a prayer of thanksgiving, where bread was broken and passed around, and it ended with a prayer of thanksgiving. The first Christians were Jewish, and it seems the prayers of blessing and thanksgiving that were traditionally said at Jewish meals were adopted by the Early Church for their communal meals. After he had said a blessing for the bread and had given it to his disciples to eat, Jesus gave thanks for the cup of wine.

In the Didache, a church manual that seems to have been used widely in the second century, there are instructions for observing the Eucharist. Interestingly, John introduces the narrative of the feeding of five thousand in his gospel with a pointed reference to the Passover John 6: After telling the story of the feeding the five thousand, John continues with Jesus teaching the crowd on the theme of bread:.

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Jesus, as the True Bread, is both the bread of the Passover meal John 6: This term is taken from 1 Corinthians For we being many are one bread, and one body: The first Christians were all Jewish and they continued to celebrate the Passover once a year for many years, at least until the Temple at Jerusalem was destroyed in around 70 AD.

This was especially true for the church in Jerusalem. Other Christian groups incorporated elements from both Jewish and Greco-Roman culture into their communal meals. The Greco-Romans held their evening banquets in two parts. The first part was called the supper and the second part was called the symposium, or table talk. And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles [Gospels] or the writings of the prophets [Old Testament sriptures] are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.

Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.

The twofold pattern of supper and table talk is also attested to by Tertullian in Carthage CE who describes the weekly community meal as consisting of a supper and then an after-supper session devoted to the singing of hymns taken from the scriptures as well as new compositions, and prayer. While the main meeting of the church, which included the Eucharist, was held on Sunday evenings, there is also evidence that eucharistic meals were held at other times, even daily.

In the Apostolic Constitutions 7. Some Christians, however, continued to follow at least some Jewish customs and observed an annual Passover feast. Most churches today continue the traditions which began centuries ago, but they have adapted and altered them. One thing that is missing from some versions of this re-enactment is the unleavened bread which is still a prominent feature of Jewish Seders.

While some churches do use unleavened bread, many other churches use bread with yeast for the Eucharist. In some denominations, the bread has been given new and extra meanings. In the Roman Catholic Church, for example, the bread is thought to become the actual body of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, the bread continues to be the focus of the Eucharist, along with the wine, and the association of the Eucharist with the deliverance of first Passover is not entirely lost.

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Therefore let us keep the feast. Hannah in 1 Samuel 1: David Daube is a Jewish biblical and legal scholar at Oxford University. However, these fourteen features could also have taken place in a regular Jewish meal. Regular and festive Jewish meals had rituals associated with them. However, while Jeremias concludes that the Last Supper actually took place at a Passover Seder, Daube prefers to leave the question open.

These were held perhaps weekly and are mentioned in Jude 1: The Corinthians also seem to have held love feasts but were doing it poorly. Whatever the correct interpretation, it seems the Corinthians may have combined Communion with the love feasts and were making an unholy mess of it. Justin Martyr, First Apology http: Studies in the History of the Christian Love Feasts. The Order of St Benedict Inc. Sumner, Paul, He Who is Coming: The Hidden Afikomen no date http: Marg Mowczko lives north of Sydney, Australia, in a house filled with three generations of family.

She strongly believes that if we are in Christ we are part of the New Creation and part of a community where old social paradigms of hierarchies and caste or class systems have no place 2 Cor. He says that Eucharist is the Jewish feasts of Passover and Yom Kippur rolled into one, adding that we Westerners tend to emphasize the Yom Kippur atonement component but forget about the Passover component.

Spong is quite liberal, but he knows his stuff.

I have enjoyed reading what little I have of his books as I think he provides a bit of a challenging, fresh perspective. Yes, Catholics believe it is the flesh of Jesus which is not only rooted in the words of Jesus This is my body but also in the passover ritual. Remember, the participants in the passover ritual needed to actually eat the lamb.

Today at any Catholic Church the priest will elevate the bread and wine now the body and blood of Jesus and repeates those same words. Your email address will not be published. A Jewish man reads from the Haggadah during the Seder reciting the blessing over one of the Four Cups associated with redemption. Even though the blood of the lamb played a central part in the deliverance of the Israelites on that dark night in Egypt, the lamb is strikingly missing from the traditional Jewish Passover celebration. Still, the Tanakh Old Testament makes it very clear that the cleansing of our soul can only take place through the shedding of blood.

Because of that proclamation from the Lord, ancient Judaism was a religion of blood sacrifice. In the Holy Temple, the blood of sacrificial animals flowed like rivers from the altar. In modern Judaism, blood sacrifice is no longer practiced. In fact, most Jewish people are repulsed by the very thought!

Even so, it is an essential element of the first Passover and reveals the role that Yeshua the Messiah plays in our personal salvation. Yeshua perfectly fulfilled the promise of redemption found in the Passover Lamb. Here are a few of those ways:. On the 10th day of Nissan, Yeshua rode into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey and was hailed as the King of the Jews.

Yeshua openly taught in the Holy Temple and synagogues until the 14th day of the month and no fault could be found in Him. Yeshua, Lamb of God, was delivered and publicly killed on a Roman execution stake as the Passover lambs were being slaughtered. That gift is by faith in the shed blood of Yeshua who is our Passover Lamb. We cannot be saved by faith in our own works or perceived goodness.

The good news is that the promise of Passover is still for today—for the Jew first and also for the Gentile. Yeshua gave Himself up as a Lamb to the slaughter so we could have freedom from sin and death. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth. Although machine-made matzah is square, handmade matzah is round. The matzah that Yeshua broke at His final Seder with His talmidim disciples was likely similar in appearance.

As the Passover Seder is celebrated, a three-sectioned pouch called the matzah tosh will hold three whole pieces of matzah unleavened bread. At one point in the Seder, the middle matzah will be taken out, broken, wrapped in a white linen cloth and hidden away until the children are sent to search for it later in the Seder. Once found, that broken and wrapped piece , called the afikomen , will be brought back to the leader of the Seder to be redeemed.

Most Messianic Believers understand that this broken middle piece represents Yeshua, whose body was broken for us, and who died and was wrapped in white burial linens, hidden away in a tomb for three days and nights, and then later resurrected to life! The origin of the three matzot in the matzah tosh and the afikomen remains shrouded in mystery. While its Messianic symbolism seems to have always been evident, its meaning is not discussed during the traditional Seder. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Yeshua gave His life for us. So we should give our lives for our brothers and sisters.

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It was not simply chance or coincidence that Yeshua chose to give His life for us on the very day Passover lambs were being slaughtered. He was clearly demonstrating that He is the fulfillment of the Passover for all of eternity.

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For Messiah our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the Feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. What Makes This Bible Unique? What Will This Bible Feature? What Languages Will Be Available? Does God Delight in Our Dance?

The Season of Joy. Special One Time Gift. Wills - Estate Planning. Israel Magazine Parasha Features Holidays. Added to your Bookmarks. The Signs on the Door , by James Tissot. Yeshua fulfilled the requirements of the Passover Lamb.