Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it.
The Passover, an annual commemoration of the Israelites' deliverance from Egypt, is a high point of the Jewish calendar. In Jesus' day, all males older than 12 years of age travel to Jerusalem for the holiday, filling the city with many thousands of pilgrims. Passover festivities culminate in a solemn meal at which family and close friends remember the Exodus, the time of liberation. They taste morsels of food, sip wine, and read aloud the stories from the Hebrew Scriptures. They also select a lamb to take to the temple and offer as a sacrifice to God.
Jesus has entered the city in a moment of triumph on Palm Sunday, but soon a sense of doom steals in. Death is on Jesus' mind. When a woman splashes him with expensive perfume, he calls it a form of burial preparation.
Outside the room where Jesus celebrates the Passover, his enemies are stalking, waiting for an occasion to seize him. Inside, the disciples swear loyalty to their leader, even as he insists that all of them will soon forsake him. It is at this somber meal that Jesus makes a profound declaration. "This is my blood of the covenant," he says as he pours the wine. "Take it, this is my body," he says, breaking the bread.
Though the disciples do not fully understand, a dream is dying, their dream of a mighty nation. Jesus is announcing a new covenant, sealed not with the blood of lambs, but with his own blood. The new kingdom, the kingdom of God, will be led not by Jewish generals and kings, but rather by this scared band of disciples gathered around the table.
Today, virtually all Christian churches continue the practice of Communion (or Mass, the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper) in some form. This solemn ceremony dates back to the Passover meal when Jesus instituted the practice.
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After centuries of celebrating this Passover; Jesus reveals to the disciples that He is the fulfillment of the picture of blood sacrifice that actually started in the Garden of Eden when the man and woman had to cover their nakedness of sin before God's holiness. He is the Once-for-All Sacrifice that puts us safe in God's presence.
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