INTRODUCTION

With the plotters closing in on Him, Jesus celebrates the Passover with His disciples, but in the process He transforms it into a meal centered on the gift of His body and blood and celebrating the cutting of a new covenant.

THE TEXT

“Now on the first day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him, ‘Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?’  And He said, ‘Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, The Teacher says, My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at your house with My disciples’” . . . (Matthew 26:17-30).

THE TIME OF JESUS

Judas has already approached the chief priests and elders to deliver Jesus up (26:14-16), but the other disciples stay with Jesus and seek to serve Him by preparing the Passover (v. 17).  The disciples obey Jesus’ instructions and prepare the Passover (v. 18), just as the sons of Israel follow Moses’ instructions about keeping the original Passover (Exodus 12:21-28).  Jesus announces, “My time is at hand” (v. 18).  While Judas searches for a “good time” to betray Jesus (v. 16), Jesus knows that it is His hour.

LIFTING THE HEEL

While Jesus is eating, He informs the disciples that one of the Twelve will deliver Him up (vv. 20, 23-24).  In fulfillment of Psalm 41, the betrayer will be one who shares a table with Jesus (v. 23).  We’ve known the identity of that disciple since he was first introduced (Matthew 10:4), but this is the first the other disciples have heard and they are grieved (v. 22).  Their question is desperate: “Surely not I, Lord?”  That’s the right response, in contrast to Peter’s later assurance that he would never deny Jesus (vv. 31-35).  True disciples know how vulnerable they are.  Judas’ question (v. 25) is superficially the same, but he calls Jesus “Rabbi” rather than “Lord,” implicitly demoting Him to the status of another teacher.  Judas cynically imitates the other disciples, because he has already set his betrayal in motion.

BODY AND BLOOD

In context, Jesus’ radical alteration of the significance of Passover answers the fears of the disciples.  They worry about whether they are traitors, and Jesus assures them by offering Himself to them.  Jesus’ words at the last supper are the only explanation He provides for the multi-layered significance of His death.  He revises the meaning of the Passover, which indicates that His sacrificial separation of body and blood on the cross constitutes a new Passover, a new deliverance from Egypt.  The bread becomes “My body,” Jesus’ own self given to the disciples as food (v. 26).  The cup contains the “blood of the covenant” (v. 28), an allusion to Exodus 24:8, where the blood of sacrifices seals the original Sinai covenant.  Blood “poured out” would not only remind the disciples of temple sacrifice, but would call up Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant pouring out His life to death (Isaiah 53:12).  That Servant “bears the sins of many” (Isaiah 53:12), and Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant promises forgiveness of sins (Jeremiah 31:34).  Jesus’ table fellowship with His disciples will be interrupted by His death, but He looks forward to the resurrection when He will again drink the fruit of the vine with the disciples (v. 29).  Ultimately, He will recline at table with His disciples in the consummated kingdom (v. 29; cf. Matthew 8:11-13).