Sunday April 17, 2010 Matthew 26:14-27:66

Welcome, winter is trying to come back but I hope summer wins. This springtime tug of war can be trying at best. Our text for Sunday is chapters 26 and 27 of the Gospel of Matthew. While I could go through the whole thing, it would be a very long read for you and consume a lot of time for me so I am going to focus on a few things. This Sunday we celebrate Palm Sunday; when Jesus road over the Mount of Olives, paused and viewed the city of Jerusalem that had rejected him and wept while the people waved palm branches and placed their cloaks on the ground for him to travel over. He is deliberately entering from the east, as they thought the Messiah would, on a donkey, to fulfill the prophet Zechariahs words. He is demonstrating with his actions that he is the Messiah and the people understand this, hence they go wild with joy. Finally God will visit his Temple, the Messiah will take over the Temple and establish correct worship and over throw the oppressive Roman yoke. All of this happened but not in the way they were expecting. In the God-man, Jesus, God visited his temple and attacked it deeming it too corrupt to repair; Jesus became the cornerstone of the new temple with each of us as living stones to be used in a new “building”. God’s location wasn’t confined to one place anymore. Correct worship was established in faith and truth, not empty ritual, although we turn it back into that at times. The oppressive Roman yoke wasn’t thrown off but the evil behind it was defeated on the cross. Jesus does what we want him to do just not in the way we expect him to do it.

What I want to focus on is a festival ritual that Jesus reinterpreted for his new community. Jesus chose the festival of Passover to come to Jerusalem for his last days. Passover celebrated the exodus from Egypt, when God rescued his people and made them into a nation with the covenant at Mount Sinai. Note in the book of Exodus, first God rescued and saved a motley band of people then made a covenant with them, not the other way around. They didn’t have to do anything first, except cry out to him, to be made his own. (We have switched that around and expect people to change before we accept them.) When the Jewish people eat the Passover they not only celebrate their rescue but actually place themselves into the story. They are a part of the group leaving Egypt, they are a part of the group at Mount Sinai and they have been rescued; they join themselves to their ancestors such as it happened to them it is happening now. So it wasn’t only a celebration but a rejoining to their people, an identification of themselves in the story too, not just an observance.

At the foot of Mount Sinai, God made a covenant with this group. A covenant was a solemn thing to enter in to. In this case, it was an agreement between a more powerful party, God, and a weaker party, the people. The powerful party set the terms of the agreement and the lesser party agreed to abide by them. These had been used for years throughout the ancient Near East by powerful Kings conquering weaker Kings and their subjects. There have been copies found of Hittite and Assyrian covenants in the ruins of these once great societies. God used this type of known agreement with his people so they would be able to understand what they were doing.


When they finally reached Mount Sinai and God presented them with the covenant, they accepted its’ terms, they said “yes we will enter into a covenant relationship with you” Exodus 24:3. Moses then sacrificed a bull, collected its blood in a basin and preformed a covenant ratification ceremony to seal the covenant. Half of the blood he threw against an alter he had built and the other half was sprinkled on the people while he said “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” Exodus 24: 4-8. Unfortunately the people went on to break the covenant and were exiled in Assyria and Babylon.


Passover was celebrated by a special meal. There were specific foods to be eaten in a specific order with a liturgy recited during the meal. We have experience this at our church by participating in the Seder meal. Each of the foods eaten has a specific purpose and memory to accompany it. It commemorates the final night in Egypt when a lamb was slain and its’ blood was placed on the door of the home so the angel of death, who was sent to kill the firstborn of everything, would pass over that household and that family would be spared this horrible happening. It involved unleavened bread (bread with no yeast for there wasn’t time to let the bread rise) because when told to leave by God they had to leave fast. They were to be dressed and ready to go, alert and awake, waiting for the signal. This is what Jesus is celebrating in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 26 verses 17 through 29. They were eating a Passover meal.

V 17-19 Jesus had prearranged a room for him and his disciples to eat the Passover. A few of them went ahead to find the room, buy the food and prepare it for the meal later. After sundown Jesus and the rest of the disciples came.

V 20-22 When it was evening Jesus took his place at the table with the twelve. They would have been reclining on their left side around a u-shaped low table. They ate with their right hand while using their left elbow to support themselves. They would have looked at the back of the person in front of them. To speak to the person behind them they would roll back resting on the chest of that person. Jesus as the host would have been reclining at one leg of the table not in the middle of the u-shaped table. He comments that one of the twelve will betray him. The disciples become concerned as to whom it will be and began to question him and each other.

V23 The one who has dipped his hand into the common bowl of food with him will be the one to betray him.

V24-25 It would have been better for the one whom is to betray him to have never been born. Judas said “surely not I Rabbi”? All in the room at this point had dipped their hand into the common bowl of sauce so it could have been anyone. To share a meal in this culture conveyed many things. It meant you were family and would protect each other with your lives. You were a community; you had each other’s backs in times of trouble. To share a meal with someone and them betray them was the height of disloyalty. The words “as it is written” refer back to the suffering servant songs in Isaiah (42-53). Jesus will be that suffering servant spoken of so long ago.

V26 Up until this point the meal and its liturgy have been progressing as always. These men know it by heart; they have participated in it since birth. Now suddenly Jesus picks up the bread but says different words. All ears would have perked up, what is he doing? He isn’t saying the prescribed liturgy. He is telling them to eat it but it represents his body not the haste of leaving Egypt. So they do but are confused. He then picked up the third cup of wine, the cup that stood for redemption which corresponded to Gods third promise in Ex. 6:6: “I will redeem you (from Egypt) with an outstretched arm (my power) and with great acts of judgment. He gave thanks and told them to drink of it as it was “my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”. What in the world was he doing! This wasn’t the correct liturgy. The key is the “covenant”. Jesus, as God, is enacting a new covenant with his people. The covenant is in Jeremiah 31: 31-34. God states that he will do a new thing, make a new covenant with his people, not one written on tablets like the one they broke but one written on their hearts. They will know God and be his people and he will remember their sin no more. Go back to the covenant ratification ceremony above where Moses sprinkles the blood of the bull over the people and says “the blood of the covenant” now Jesus is saying “my blood of the covenant”, what is going on? To ratify this covenant something will have to be sacrificed and its blood shed for the people. Moses used a bull; Jesus is using himself as the sacrifice in place of the bull. He will be the servant whose blood is shed, this time it isn’t an animal. This time it is God, in the humanity of Jesus, as the sacrifice. God will use himself to ratify the covenant. Jesus is performing a covenant ratification ceremony but using symbolic actions from the first rescue of God’s people to perform another rescue of God’s people. This time they aren’t being rescued from an evil pagan nation but from the evil that lies behind it, from the evil that lies behind the people’s sin, from themselves. We sin and we can’t fix it, only shed blood can restore the relationship and Jesus did that for us. We are to eat the bread and drink from the cup to enter into a new covenant with God and remember what it cost God to ratify that covenant, his Son hanging on a cross outside of His city; Jerusalem. Each time we partake of communion we ratify and remember this covenant. This is a solemn commitment; we have been forgiven at the price of Jesus broken body and shed blood. This is also joy and celebration; we can enter into the presence of God by ourselves, we have been forgiven! We place ourselves into the story when we commune. We are a part of that first group but we also look forward to something.

V29 Jesus said he wouldn’t drink wine again until he drank it with them in his Fathers Kingdom. The rabbis taught that at the end of the present evil age when the kingdom of God came there would be a Messianic banquet where God would provide the finest of food and wine and the people would be invited to sit at his table and eat this fantastic food and drink. This is what Jesus is referring to; the Messianic Banquet. We are invited to this meal with Jesus and God. When we share in communion this is a foretaste of that banquet. We are preparing ourselves to sit at God’s table and share a meal, to be members of his family with Jesus as our brother. To protect each other and accept each other, to become what we eat and be a light for God in this world.

Do you accept the covenant and all the sacrifice that it cost? Do you look forward to a day when you will sit at the table of God, with your brothers and sisters, and eat the finest food in his kingdom? All are invited; will all accept?


This is my last blog for awhile. It is being retired for the summer and may reinvent itself in the fall. Pastor Matt and I have talked and may use it in a different format or alongside something else. Thank you to all that have taken the time to read and engage with the text. Thank you for the comments you have taken the time to make. Have a great summer and even though the blog is going away for a while I am not so if you have questions just ask and I will try to get you the answer. Next fall may be new and exciting in our walk together.

Shalom Kim