After this night, there will be no more Passovers

The Last Supper is a Passover like no other. It is the Last Passover. Its Lamb will make the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. Its firstborn son will satisfy God's justice for all firstborns.

Luke 22 is the beginning of what theologians call the Passion narrative. This is where the story of the last hours of Christ’s ministry begins. In fact, the gospel books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all build their storylines around these events. The entire gospels are centered on the passion story, so that here in Luke, the first 21 chapters are setting up what is about to take place. Luke, the Christian historian, has been chronicling for his friend Theophilus and the early church the unfolding of the great redemption of lost Adam and his posterity by one called Christ. This man is no mere man. This man is the expected Son of Man of the Old Testament, whose glory is in His suffering. This Son of Man has come eating and drinking (Luke 7:34) with the outcasts of society, the demon-possessed, the blind, the poor, the lepers, the sinners and the tax collectors. It is not the noble, the great, the wealthy, the evangelically religious who validate this Wisdom come from God, but these outcasts (Luke 7:35). It is this Son of Man who has come to seek and to save the Zacchaeus’s of his day, *the lost* (Luke 19:10).

And it is this Son of Man who comes proclaiming the arrival of God’s kingdom that Luke presents as Israel’s promised Messiah. This, to Israel’s consternation, is not the Messiah that it, the wayward son of God, had envisioned. Israel wanted glory. Israel wanted deliverance from political repression. Israel had its eyes on material power and earthly glory. And this is not the kind of Messiah it was looking for or wanted.

Israel was not the only group of people having a hard time coming to grips with an upside down kingdom with an ironic Messiah. It soon will be apparent here in Luke 22, that those closest to Jesus are themselves struggling with perspective and unmet expectations. When, after Christ’s death, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus tell the stranger walking with them “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21), they were surely speaking for all of the disciples. For years, the disciples listened to Jesus not only speak of the coming of the kingdom, but they had watched him bind the wounded, healed the sick and the lame as if that kingdom was indeed present among them. But things were not turning out the way they had expected. In Luke 9:51, Luke tells us that “when the time came near to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Throughout the rest of Luke, Christ is on this death journey to Jerusalem (Luke 13:22). Christ is the beloved Son being sent to the vineyard Jerusalem where the wicked tenants will give him a certain death. And along the way, the hopes and dreams of the disciples in this Messiah are about to be challenged beyond belief. So much so, that Christ warns them at the end of Luke 21 to “watch themselves lest their hearts be weighed down...” (Luke 21:34).

And if a Gentile such as Theophilus was himself wondering about these things, the opening passages of Luke 22 begin to answer the question: if Jesus was really truly the divine Messiah, why did he go and get himself killed? If it didn’t make sense to the Jews, it certainly didn’t make sense to the Gentiles, the Greeks and Romans, whose god Zeus mocked the weak and vulnerable and the servant minded. What kind of a divine being would willingly succumb to mortal men on behalf of other mortal men? No "god" would intentionally, in weak humility, place himself at the disposal of inferior "man". But this was no ordinary "god". This is the I AM of the burning bush. This is the I AM that led his people, in the wake of the first Passover, out of Egypt.

In Luke 22, we see Christ is resolute in his intention to observe Passover with his disciples and interpret for them the events that were to transpire in short order after the meal. And, along the way he is going to feed some needy, weak, and destitute souls.

Luke 22: 7 says, "Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. 8 So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.” 9 They said to him, “Where will you have us prepare it?” 10 He said to them, “Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters 11 and tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 12 And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.” 13 And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. 14 And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him."

It is in Deuteronomy that Israel is told that the Passover feast is to be celebrated “at the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it.” Here it is unmistakable: Christ is choosing and orchestrating these events. Just as Christ had set his face toward Jerusalem, Christ is setting his face toward the Passover. And just as Christ sends two disciples to find the colt that will carry the Messiah-King into Jerusalem and to the Temple, here Christ sends two disciples to find a room and prepare Passover for a Lamb that will be slaughtered.

Luke notes that Peter and John are sent on the day “when the Passover lamb was to be slaughtered”. Josephus tells us that this usually happened on the day leading up to Passover, between 3 and 5 in the afternoon, and then the Jews would begin eating the Passover at 6:00pm, which was the start of a new day. This is in keeping with God’s directions to the people at the very first Passover: kill the lamb at twilight, and eat the meat the very same night. The idea was for Israel to eat the lamb almost immediately because the people were supposed to be ready to leave on a moment’s notice.

There were three tasks typical of the Passover in Jerusalem: a site had to be chosen where the family could eat the meal, the house had to be purged of impurities, and the Passover lamb had to be inspected by the priest and then slaughtered in the forecourts of the temple. The Passover is the only Old Testament sacrifice prepared by the worshipper outside of the tabernacle and temple. The worshipper was responsible to come up with his own lamb for his family and he was to sacrifice the lamb without aid of a priest. And, by this time in Israel’s history, the residents of Jerusalem were obligated to provide rooms for those visitors coming to Jerusalem for the Passover. This included Jesus and his disciples. Thus, Peter and John accomplish their task, but in doing so have prepared a Passover that will be far more than a meal around roast Lamb. They are preparing a meal at which another, far greater Lamb is being prepared for the slaughter.

More than *just* the Passover is in view with Luke here. Luke uses the word “hour” to describe this moment in time. For Luke, use of the word “hour is more than a chronological reference”. Luke, wants us to see what Peter and John apparently don’t: that a huge moment of salvation history has arrived. This isn’t just *a* moment in salvation history. THE moment in salvation history has arrived.

God’s people are again on the precipice of a New Exodus and here in Luke 22 it is unfolding right in front of our eyes: "And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood."

While the disciples are oblivious to the monumental occasion, Christ, the divine orchestrator of this event is not. This isn’t just a Passover. This is the Last Passover. Christ earnestly, or more literally, intensely desired to eat this Passover with his disciples because after this night, there will be no more Passovers. For one last time, this feast commemorates God’s great act of redemption for his people in the original Passover and exodus. Because Christ is fulfilling the Passover, it is becoming obsolete. Not only is this the Last Passover feast, Christ is the Last Passover lamb. -- crb; "Banquet in the Wilderness: The Last Supper", mp3