The Table

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.

“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. “Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
- Mark 14:22-25

The seder feast dating back to the first Passover involved unleavened bread and wine. The bread reminded them of the haste they had to leave Egypt, the wine reminding them of the joy of liberation. Jesus made connections between his new Christian ceremony and the whole of the Hebrew past. Jesus lifted up something from their past (the Exodus) and extended it. He set up something new, something for the future (for the new community).

Even briefly looking at a few of the many themes that Jesus packed densely into this feast can be overwhelming. These things are there not with the expectation we will all understand everything immediately. It is a call to meditate on these words during the week, meditate on Easter, think of Jesus' passion so that as we come to the table our experience will become richer. This table is a place we can come back to again and again for a lifetime knowing that in every weekly cycle there will be another beauty to see, more depths to gaze at.   

Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take it; this is my body.’

We must stop and  make ourselves aware of a sense of sacredness at this point, of something that must be treated with utmost respect, we must position ourselves properly to be in the presence of a holy God.

‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,’ he said to them.

Here we have a link to a core theme of the Hebrew bible: covenant. This goes all the  way back to the first pages of the bible, to Noah and Abraham, the people at Mt. Sinai and King David  - a formal partnership between God and humanity. 

The first Passover feast was celebrated before the Exodus, before the liberation of the people because their identity was to be the people who were liberated from slavery by Yahweh. This table is to form our identity. We become the people who participate in the feast. It must form our past and become our future. 

Many years ago I read a Jewish saying and ever since it has stuck with me and become a formative part of my life. It goes “The Jews didn't keep the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept the Jews.” In other words the Sabbath formed their identity as the people who kept God’s Sabbath. And through this formation they endured. It is the same with this table. We need the table. It is through the table we are formed. We don't do God a favour by keeping this table. But the table forms Christ in us and keeps us.