We often begin in the wrong place. Too many begin eucharist discussions with the debates between the Lutherans and the Catholics and the anabaptists, and ask how Christ is present (and they disagree and miss the point). It turns eucharist blurry instead of offering clarity.

The place to begin is when God walked between body parts in Genesis 15. He made the covenant with Abraham by doing something that put the promises into reality. He enacted the promises.

That solemn ceremony was when God made it clear that the divine promise and divine commitment were so reliable that God said you can dismember me if I am unfaithful to my promises.

The Lord’s Supper then is first and foremost an act of God’s promise to you and to me, an offer to take and eat and accept and participate in and enjoy the promise of God to be with us, to be for us and to make us God’s people. The Lord’s Supper, and so also baptism, is a “performative utterance” by God to us. It says “You can count on me. I’ve got your back. Dine with me because I’m dining with you. This is my promise. I do this for you.”

So A.C. Thiselton in his new book, Life after Death. What Thiselton does here is offer to those who are doubting, those who wonder if there’s more beyond death, to listen to what God says in offering the essence of divine promise and commitment, God himself, to us in the eucharist. We can face death with the eucharist in our hand and say to God “I’ve counted on you.” [Read more...]

Brant Pitre, in his new book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper, explores the Jewish roots of the Christian faith and, in particular, the Jewish roots of eucharist. We have sanitized, de-historicized, and problematized the Lord’s supper in Christian discourse. To get behind these problems, one we can do is revisit the Lord’s supper in its Passover context. Which is what Pitre does in this book.

Today is Triumphal Entry Sunday. Which means today marks the beginning of Passover week for Jesus and his table companions and family. It’s a good time to look again at Pitre’s book. In his 7th chp he sketches the big ideas of the book.

The Lord’s Supper emerges in a Passover meal. The best place to study this is to open your Bible and read Exodus 12 all over again. What needs to be seen in the Last Supper is that Jesus reconfigured the passover meal into a meal that memorialized his passion. Jesus identified himself with the passover lamb.

Notice these verses in the NT:

⁷ Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸ Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor 5:7-8).

⁶ Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits^[a] of God sent out into all the earth (Rev 5:6). [Read more...]

A close reading of Luke’s account [see after the jump] of the last supper reveals that Jesus and his table companions drank more than one cup of wine. Brant Pitre, in his new book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper, sees the Lord’s Supper as a new Exodus, a new Passover, the Bread of Presence, and — today’s reflection — as extending all the way to the Cross where Jesus drank wine a final time.

Brant Pitre’s argument is this: there are four cups (kiddush, haggadah, berakah, hallel) in a Passover seder. Luke mentions cups two and three. When Jesus says he will not drink another cup of wine until he drinks it anew with them in the kingdom, he chose voluntarily not to drink the fourth cup — and that cup was hinted at in Gethsemane (“let this cup pass from me”) and then only on the cross both refused and then later consumed (from a sponge). Thus, “it is finished” means at least that the Passover seder is now officially over.

Pitre, assuming that the Passover Seder we know today was basically in force in the 1st Century, opens up a more concrete way of seeing the Last Supper, and in particular he shows how their singing of the hymn would have been from the hallel hymns (Psalms 113-118). These would have been evocative for Jesus as he contemplated his own death.

Pitre’s point about Jesus waiting to drink the 4th cup works on the assumption of the Passover Seder.

Passover then must be tied to the death of the Jesus on the cross. Jesus saw his own death in terms of the Passover sacrifice — he was the Passover lamb. [Read more...]

One of the most important themes in the last supper is Bread. Brant Pitre, in his new book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper, sees the Lord’s Supper as a new Exodus, a new Passover, and — today’s subject — the new Bread of Presence.

In this chp Brant Pitre is seeking an answer why if this is a new Passover that Jesus pointed to “bread” and not “lamb” as that which they were to eat. And he thinks resolution to this can be found in the biblical (and post-biblical) teaching about the Bread of Presence.

What is the Bread of Presence? The “shewbread” or “showbread” of the Tabernacle, which was flanked by utensils used to pour out wine in a sacrifice made by a priest. The texts are found in Exodus 25:23-30; Leviticus 24:5-9 as well as at Luke 22:19-20.

Here are the parallels Pitre finds between Bread of Presence and the Last Supper:

1. Twelve cakes, twelve tribes and twelve disciples, twelve tribes.
2. Bread, wine of Presence and Bread and wine of Jesus’ presence.
3. Everlasting covenant and a new covenant.
4. Remembrance and Remembrance.
5. Offered by high priest, eaten by priests and offered by Jesus, eaten by disciples.
6. Eaten at Golden Table in Temple and eaten at Jesus’ table in the kingdom. [Read more...]

One of the most important themes in the last supper is Bread. Brant Pitre, in his new book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper, examines “I am the bread” through the filter of the manna miracle and manna expectation in Judaism.

The Bread of the last supper is not Passover bread, but Manna bread. This makes all the difference in the world for Pitre.

He studies Exodus 16, the manna story, and finds four themes:

1. It was a miracle.
2. It was a double miracle: bread and quail, bread and flesh.
3. It was placed in the Tabernacle.
4. It had a distinctive flavor – the flavor of the Land (honey) because it anticipated life in the Land.

In the Jewish world the manna had three themes:

1. Protological: the manna was there before creation.
2. Heavenly: it was kept in heaven.
3. Messianic: when the Messiah came, manna would be provided.

What then about Jesus and the New Manna? The move here is critical. For Pitre to establish his case he examines the Lord’s Prayer (supersubstantial bread) and John 6, which he takes as Eucharistic. [At no place does he show that the Lord's supper narrative itself is manna-shaped.] [Read more...]

The Last Supper, or our Lord’s Supper (communion, mass), was originally a passover week meal or Passover itself. I’ll avoid that debate for now. Brant Pitre, in his new book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper, examines the Lord’s Supper in the context of Passover, and this chapter is an exceptional one — worth purchasing just for this chapter. (I so wish pastors could use each eucharist service to build a full theology of eucharist, and Passover is at the heart of it all.)

What occurred at Passover?

1. Choose an unblemished, male lamb.
2. Sacrifice the lamb — there is a priestly dimension here, but the original passover had the father as priest.
3. Spread the blood of the lamb on the door with hyssop
4. Eat the flesh of the lamb
5. Keep the Passover as a “day of remembrance”

By the time of Jesus, though, there were changes:

1. The Passover sacrifice occurred in the Temple only.
2. The lamb’s sacrifice in the Temple had the appearance of a crucifixion (Justin Martyr)
3. The celebrants were participating in the original passover.
4. Using later sources, there was some belief that Jews anticipated the return of the Messiah at Passover.

Thus, the last supper was: [Read more...]