Congregation Shema Yisrael

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.

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

What meal is Paul talking about? I thought I had offered a fairly credible answer in my recent blog article Eating at the Master’s Table but I still get questions about it and of course, not everyone agrees with my conclusions. It’s OK for people not to agree with me, but it always makes me re-check my information to see if I could have erred (and I’m certainly capable of making mistakes). I hadn’t planned to explore the issue further at this point, but then I read the FFOZ article What is the Meal of the Messiah?

Actually, the article is in three parts, so I’ll have to provide links for each: Part I, Part II, and Part III. I suggest you read each of the parts in turn before continuing here.

I had hoped that Boaz Michael would have more definitively answered the question regarding the meal described in 1 Corinthians 11:23-34, but he didn’t. I doubt it was his intent to do so. So what do we have? On the one hand, it seems like Paul is describing the last meal Yeshua ate with his talmidim (disciples) the night before his death. We already know it couldn’t have been the actual Passover Seder, because that meal wouldn’t take place until after Yeshua was dead and entombed. Yet the Master himself said:

When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” -Luke 22:14-16

In fact, if you read all of Luke 22, you’ll find this meal is referred to as the “Passover” six times. It’s completely impossible for it to have been the actual Passover meal, since the Lambs for that meal wouldn’t be sacrificed in the Temple until the following day, while the Master was slowly dying on the execution stake. So what did he mean?

The most likely possibility is that he intended the meal to be a Seder with his disciples since he knew he wouldn’t partake of the actual meal with them 24 hours later. Also, how many of them would be eating the actual Passover meal in obedience to the commandment? Would they really walk away from Yeshua hanging on a tree to take their lambs (had they even chosen lambs for the occasion?) and sacrifice them at the Temple? In their grief over the loss of their Rabbi, how many would recline at the table right after he was entombed and recount with joy the release from slavery? The “Lord’s Supper” then, could have been Yeshua’s way to celebrate as close to the appointed time as possible, and to provide some final comfort to his followers and friends before his awful, bloody death.

But how does this figure in to the 1 Corinthians 11 meal and what does the FFOZ article What is the Meal of the Messiah? have to do with it? Consider the following:

In the seventeenth century the founder of the Chassidic movement, Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (the Baal Shem Tov) instituted a new custom for the last day of Passover. He called it the Meal of Messiah (Seudat Mashiach). It consisted of a special, additional meal on the afternoon of the last day of Passover, paralleling the traditional third meal of Shabbat. The Baal Shem Tov emphasized that the main component of the meal was matzah. After all, it was the last meal on the last day of Chag HaMatzot, the feast of Unleavened Bread. A few generations later, the Rebbe Rashab (1860-1920) added the custom of four cups of wine, mirroring the Seder of the first night. Some Chassidic Jews still celebrate this special Messiah Seder on the last day of the festival. They gather together to end the festival with matzah, four cups of wine, and a special focus on the Messiah. -From What is the Meal of Messiah? Part 2

I know, this is a meal on the last day of the Passover festival, not the day before it starts. Also, the meal wasn’t instituted in Judaism for many centuries after the Master’s death and resurrection, so it couldn’t figure into that “Last Supper” nor the 1 Corinthians 11 meal, could it? Let’s take a closer look.

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. -1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Paul is clearly citing the last meal of that the Messiah ate with his disciples and, while not the actual Passover Seder, we certainly see that Yeshua called it the “Passover” and that it was specifically tied to the Passover, rather than a meal that you can have at any time. Let’s back up a bit to get more context.

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not! -1 Corinthians 11:17-22

What is the “Lord’s Supper” that Paul is referring to? Apparently, from context, it’s the same meal he mentions in the same chapter in verses 23-26. If we keep the context and tie it back to the original event, can this be just any old meal at any old time? Can it be what the modern church calls “Communion” and thus, disconnected from the original event which Yeshua himself directly tied to the actual Passover festival? To turn the question around, can we tie the concept and event which the traditional church calls “The Lord’s Supper” or “Communion” to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians? Look at this:

“Roman Catholics (and Anglicans) view the Eucharistic feast as a sacrifice (albeit an unbloody one). This term is found as early as Gregory the Great (c. AD 540-604), who was elected pope in AD 590. Gregory held that at every mass Christ was sacrificed afresh and consequently ‘This notion of the mass as sacrifice eventually became standard doctrine of the Western church — until it was rejected by Protestants in the sixteenth century.’ [quoting Gonzales, Story of Christianity]….The early church had considered the Eucharist a fellowship meal….Thus, the Lord’s Supper — which the early church viewed as a fellowship meal — became a sacrifice. The remembrance of a sacrifice becomes a new enactment of that sacrifice.” (Geisler/MacKenzie, page 266, emphasis author) -Found at Evangelical Protestant Critics on the Eucharist and the Fathers

I suppose this opens a whole can of worms, but the Lord’s Supper or Communion as a sacrament of the church was a created event, according to the historical records, that didn’t occur until hundreds of years after the death of Paul and the original disciples of Yeshua. Prior to the “sacrament” of the Lord’s Supper, according to the above-mentioned source, the meal was considered a “Fellowship Meal”, which sounds somewhat less formal, in remembrance of the death of Yeshua. I have no doubt that the basis for the sacrament and fellowship meal are the verses we have been discussing, but was it Paul’s (or Yeshua’s…or God’s) intent to create a separate and new “festival” for the “church”? What about Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer and his institution of a “new custom for the last day of Passover…called…the Meal of Messiah”? Is this any different?

Both Communion and The Meal of the Messiah have a particular and special meaning to those who partake of those events, but are they desired by God? On the one hand, you could say “no” since they are not directly commanded by God as seen in the Bible. On the other hand you could say “yes” if you believe that you can take Biblical events (and both ceremonies have at least loose ties to events in the Bible) and weave them into a formal part of worship.

We can’t truly obey the commandment of Passover today for the simple reason that there is no Temple and no Levitical Priesthood as required.

” ‘These are the LORD’s appointed feasts, the sacred assemblies you are to proclaim at their appointed times: The LORD’s Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. On the fifteenth day of that month the LORD’s Feast of Unleavened Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. On the first day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work. For seven days present an offering made to the LORD by fire. And on the seventh day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work.’ ” -Leviticus 23:4-8

The Lamb was to be sacrificed in the Mishkan in the desert or later in the Temple in Jerusalem, neither of which we have current access to, so we certainly can’t obey the command of God in the Bible to commemorate the Passover. Also, according to Leviticus 23, a burnt sacrifice was to be made in the Temple for all seven days of the festival. Somewhat impossible without a Temple and a Priesthood. What we do now is the best we can, in part by tradition, to honor the Father’s wishes until we can eat the meal in fulfillment of Messiah’s return.

When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” -Luke 22:14-16

“For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” So Yeshua will eat of it again…when it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. I don’t know if anyone can really say what the phrase “fulfillment in the kingdom of God” means unless it refers to the Messianic age, but in any event, Yeshua won’t eat of it again until then and perhaps neither will we.

Since the destruction of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., no one has truly celebrated Passover. What we do have is the Passover Seder which is a wonderful and meaningful way to connect to God and the Messiah and we perform this celebration once per year, in our attempt to remember the commandment we cannot completely obey.

Perhaps Paul and the congregation in Corinth, Pope Gregory in or around 590 C.E., and Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer in the 17th Century were all trying to do what we’re trying to do…honor God and the Messiah as best we can in connection with the Passover “until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” Most of us in the Messianic movement choose to honor the Passover and the sacrifice and resurrection of Yeshua on the 15th of Nissan; the day of the Passover meal. Others choose to hold Communion services one Sunday out of every month to try and do the same thing. Certainly Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer was trying to make this connection when he added Seudat Mashiach, to the Passover and Week of Unleavened Bread observances, linking Messiah to Pesach.

We’re all looking for the same thing, the coming of the Messiah. Whether you consider yourself a traditional observant Jew (though most Jews don’t celebrate the Meal of the Messiah), a Christian, or a Messianic, it seems impossible to unplug the Messiah from the Passover. From our different perspectives we are all attempting to honor God’s wishes while infusing them with our own creative insights. If we can honor the coming of the Sabbath by lighting candles on Erev Shabbat, which is not commanded in Torah, can we not have traditions and practices that bring honor to both the Passover and the Messiah in our own different and varied ways?

Afterword: Our congregation’s community Passover Seder will be held on Monday, March 29 near Boise, Idaho. You can find the full details on our website. If you can and by God’s will, I hope you’ll join us and learn more about the Passover and the Messiah.

For more, see Part I and Part III of this series.