Congregation Shema Yisrael

Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.” “Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked. He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Rabbi asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make preparations there.” They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.
-Luke 22:7-13

This Shabbat (Saturday, January 23rd), Torah Portion Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16) will be read in Synagogues all over the world. This part of the Book of Exodus is the culmination of a prophesy and a dream: the release of the Children of Israel from brutal slavery in Egypt and particularly, the establishment of the Holy Festival of Passover.

Over a thousand years after faithful Jews painted their door posts with the blood of a slain lamb to insure that God’s angel of death would “passover” their homes and not take the lives of the firstborn within, a small group of men were having their last meal with a person they called “Rabbi” and “Master” and “friend”; the man whom John the Baptiser once called “God’s Lamb, who has come to take away the sins of the world”. But what was being commemorated during this last meal at the Master’s table?

The Execution of Yeshua (Jesus) is largely considered in the Christian/Messianic world as a symbolic Passover lamb sacrifice. If you read D. Thomas Lancaster’s excellent book King of the Jews, Chapter 16: One Long Day, provides a heartrending account of the crucifixion with the counterpoint of the mass sacrifice of Passover lambs in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, bringing in sharp relief the meaning of Yeshua’s death in a way the film The Passion of the Christ couldn’t even begin to touch.

Yet was that fateful supper, the day before his death a Passover Seder? How could it be?

Take care of them (the lambs) until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. -Exodus 12:6-8

The Passover lamb each year, was to be sacrificed in the Temple on the 14th day of Nissan and then eaten roasted just after sundown on 15 Nissan (on the Jewish calendar, a day begins at sundown, not at sunrise or midnight). If Yeshua was hung on the execution stake the morning of the 14th and died at about 3 in the afternoon on the same day, as thousands upon thousands of lambs were being offered up to God in the Temple, then the meal he had with his disciples the night before (early on the 14th if they ate after sundown), couldn’t have been a true Seder. The Seder meal wouldn’t take place until after he was entombed, since he had to have died and been buried before this festival; this special Shabbat, began.

If we in the Messianic community continue to insist that what Yeshua and his disciples were eating was the actual Passover meal, we are proposing something untrue. But what does the Bible call the date the meal occurred on? The day of Unleavened Bread? What does that mean?

As it turns out, any product with leaven (yeast) in it is to be purged from the home of any observant Jew (or anyone who chooses to obey the commandments) prior to the 14th of Nissan, which means prior to sundown on the day before, the 13th…the date when Yeshua arranged to have this meal.

In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. -Exodus 12:18

Leaven is symbolic of the sin in our lives at this time of year, and the act of searching our homes completely and cleaning it out, represents the act of searching our hearts thoroughly and preparing to present ourselves before our Master and our God. When the meal occurred, no one was to have any leavened product in their possession, let alone be eating any leavening. When Yeshua broke bread with this disciples on the night before his death, it was unleavened bread; matzoh.

So what? Why is this important? Are we just splitting theological hairs, so to speak? Yeshua wouldn’t be alive on the night of the Seder, so what did this meal mean to him and to his disciples? More importantly, what does this meal mean to us?

On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn – both men and animals – and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. -Exodus 12:12-13

Imagine eating at your Passover Seder in Egypt, huddled in your homes, lit perhaps only by your cooking fire, eating hurriedly, dressed and ready for a sudden trip, as you feel the tremor of death in the air, hovering over each house, looking for the blood and only passing on when it is seen. That is what is supposed to be in our hearts when we eat the Seder meal today. Imagine what it was like for the disciples of Yeshua, his body laid in the tomb scant hours before, eating their meal in the shadow of his death…remembering another very similar meal eaten with their living King only 24 hours before.

There’s no direct command in the Torah to eat a special meal before the Seder, but Yeshua knew he would not be with his followers for the Seder this year (though he certainly must have been in the two years prior). This was a meal to prepare their minds and their hearts for the true Passover challenge; the challenge of faith. The meal prepared late on the 13th of Nissan and eaten in the early hours of the 14th was a meal to prepare their hearts to be cleansed of sin and to enable them to experience a greater faith. It’s a challenge Peter and the disciples would fail, at least in the short run.

Passover is about faith and obedience. It isn’t about a sacrifice to atone for sin. Surprised? Shocked? Look at the Torah. There were other sacrifices to atone for both willful and accidental sin; Passover wasn’t one of them. When Moses told the Children of Israel to perform the examination of a young lamb starting on the 10th of Nissan and to kill it on the afternoon of the 14th, use its blood to paint the door posts of all their homes, and then eat the lamb as a meal after sundown (the start of the 15 Nissan), it could have sounded ludicrous. Yet the consequence for not obeying God’s command was the certain death of every firstborn family member in their homes.

Obedience meant life and disobedience meant death. The obedience could only have been enacted out of faith in God. After all, why do we obey God today? We can neither see God nor hear him (at least audibly). We experience God not through our five senses but through the “sense” of faith…our “spiritual sense”, as it were. That’s the meaning of Passover for us…an act of faith that will save our lives. Faith in Yeshua HaMashsiach; Jesus the Christ.

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: 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.

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have died. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment. -1 Corinthians 11:23-34

Paul very aptly describes the self-examination I’ve been talking about; the preparing of our hearts before eating at the Master’s table. He also describes the consequences of an unexamined heart. We are to examine ourselves just as the Children of Israel were to have examined the Passover lamb starting on 10 Nissan, to verify that it was without defect.

Yet, according to everything I just said, Paul couldn’t have been talking about the literal Passover meal, could he? The Messianic community doesn’t have a meal every year late on the 13th or early on the 14th of Nissan as Yeshua and his disciples did the night before his death. Like our traditional Jewish counterparts, we eat our Seder meal on the 15th, in accordance with the commandment of God through Moses in Exodus. However, we do so in remembrance of events beyond those in Egypt and hopefully with the words of Paul in mind.

We also eat in remembrance of that fateful night before the Passover, when Yeshua was preparing the hearts of his students, his brothers, and his sons…and all of us, man and woman, anyone who longs for his return. We eat and remember him and his last Earthly meal with those who loved him, but we also eat and remember his being in agony, hung by spikes on a piece of wood, slowly suffocating as the weight of his body pulled him down, collapsing his lungs. We remember his last cries as he surrendered his spirit, the spilling of his blood at the hands of a pagan soldier and the rending of the Parochet.

Most of all, we eat and remember his body, laid upon cold stone, only partially prepared for burial and death; a death he suffered so that we could live. We are reminded that 3500 years ago, a group of slaves on the cusp of freedom, remained alive only through the shedding of innocent blood, so that death would pass over them. That’s what the meal does for us; it reminds us of all that has happened so that we can live under the grace and mercy of God.

“Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.” Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. -John 6:34-35

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. -Revelation 22:14

While the “Last Supper” wasn’t a true Passover Seder, it holds a great deal of the Passover message for us, including the drive to prepare our hearts before the Passover comes, the love of the Master for us that he would be the lamb of sacrifice and die in our place, and that he would give us the right, as sons and daughters of God, to eat of the bread of life, with the promise of someday also eating from the Tree of Life.

Untold ages ago, man and woman were evicted from the Garden of God for disobeying the one thing God asked of them. Passover, and the meal we eat every year “in remembrance of him”, reminds us that through obedience, we have the right to eat the bread of life, and in the life of the world to come; we’ll eat of the Tree of Life in the Garden renewed.

For more on this topic, see Part II and Part III of this series.