Happy Easter!
Or Happy Central Mystery of the Christian Faith!
We will celebrate HIs rising at a sunrise service on the beach–in about an hour–put on by the good people at the Trinity United Methodist Church.
Not Catholic, not Baptist, but Methodist–but the message will be the same, essentially.
Today marks the transition of the Church from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant.
From the Jewish Passover to Easter.
And Jesus very pointedly marks this transition in Luke 22:
Luke 22:14-16 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”
The disciples are stunned.
Jesus knows what’s coming at the Last Supper, the foreshadowing of Jesus on the cross.
They do not.
Their minds are blown, I think, because to not eat Passover, AT PASSOVER, was almost as shocking as Jesus’ introduction of the Eucharist that comes next.
The hits, for the disciples, just keep coming and they are reeling.
Jesus is willing to endure immense suffering for the sake of His followers and the Eucharist, that He establishes (in verses 19-20) is a powerful symbol of the New Covenant (leading up to His death, and His resurrection, which we will celebrate in about an hour).
But the disciples don’t know this.
They certainly don’t understand the scope of what Jesus is doing, the fervent desire He has for THIS Passover because this Last Supper will impart the mysteries of the New Covenant.
The essential mystery that all of humanity is delivered from death and sin through the power of Jesus on the Cross.
But His disciples don’t know any of this yet.
They had to be puzzled–what suffering? What the absolute heck is Jesus going on about?
And then Jesus says, in verse 21, that He will be betrayed by one of them at the table, (this is the exact moment that is depicted in Leondardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper mural).
From this moment on, the Old Covenant is swept away, ushered in by the new way to commune with Jesus.
And it's not until much later, that the disciples understand ANY of this.
Randolph Dunn explains the changeover from Old to New in Worship God in Spirit and Truth:
“Jesus’ plea for the removal of the cup was neither the bread nor the container and its contents. It was His sacrificial death by crucifixion, His cup of suffering. When one recalls the cup Jesus desired to have removed, one remembers, gives thanks and praises God for Christ’s blood sacrifice required for the remissions of their sins. Jesus’ act of offering Himself as the only sacrifice that could remove sin. It also established the New Covenant which is why His suffering and sacrifice could not be removed.”
And all of this is put into motion at the Lord’s Supper, where the Lord does not sup.
Because He knows.
So when we receive the Eucharist on the beach this morning, as HIs 2025 disciples, we will be reminded of our salvation through His suffering on the Cross for us and even though we have looked backwards all week with how Passover and Easter converge;, we are to now look forward.
In Spurgeon on the Lord’s Supper, Charles Spurgeon describes what the New Covenant means to him:
“I would have the image of the Lord printed on the palms of my hands, that I might do nothing without him; and I would have it painted on my eye-balls, that I might see nothing except through him.”
Rather than tattooing, as Spurgeon energetically suggests, we can remember our role in this life, in this world, as Christians bound by the New Covenant, simply by communing with Jesus as often as we can.
Our faith is bound up in mystery and the supernatural and really, most days, we are as befuddled as the disciples were at Jesus’ Last Supper.
His last Passover.
But we can start anew each day, not on a march to Canaan, but to our place in Heaven, with Him, with all of the saints and disciples.
Today is as good a day as any to renew our spirit in His.
Let’s go!
Happy Easter!
Lord, we are humbled by the love and purpose in Your holy meal where Jesus established the New Covenant through His body and blood.
Lord, guide us to live in the light of this New Covenant, sharing Your love and grace with others.
Amen.
PS. As I bounced around in the historical background of Passover, I realized I’m woefully illiterate about the prophets of the Old Testament, (which is not to say I’m not ignorant about a lot of things in the Bible), so I’m going to start a brief study on Hosea tomorrow.
Why Hosea?
Because I read somewhere about Hosea’s relationship to God as a husband and as a father and those are two roles I can certainly identify with.
I have no idea what I might find. 🙂
Onward!