In
our study this week Jesus was celebrating Passover with those closest to Him,
the 12 Apostles. You might not know the very
first Passover was celebrated on the eve of the Exodus and still continues today
as commanded in scripture. God tells His
people in Exodus 12:14 "This is a
day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it
as a festival to the Lord - a lasting ordinance".
I have had the blessing and privilege of attending
a Passover Seder on several occasions.
Actually, 'attending' isn't really the correct word - 'participating'
would be much more accurate. The guests
are not just observers but are heavily engaged as they take part in the beauty
of the tradition. I have heard my friend,
who hosts this celebration, say many times why she loves this day. So many of the holidays we celebrate, even
'Christian' holidays, can take on a secular twist. Passover is about the Lord, plain and simple.
The
celebration of Passover centers on the reading of the haggadah. This means 'the
telling' and is the fulfillment of the commandment found in Exodus 13:8 "You shall tell your son on that day, 'It is
because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt'." There is no way I could do justice to the
richness of the Jewish traditions that surround the reading of the haggadah in a short blog post so I am going to focus on
just one aspect of the meal.
It
says in Matthew 26:26 "Now as they
were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to
His disciples". According to
the commentary I have been reading, the piece of bread Jesus took was a very
specific piece of matzah. (Matzah
is the unleavened bread commanded by God to be used during Passover.) The matzah
would have been taken from a ceremonial container called the matzah tash. What is special about the container is that
it has three distinct compartments. At
the beginning of the Seder the matzah from the middle container is
broken in half. One half is put back in
the matzah tosh and the other half is given a specific name, the afikoman. The afikoman
is wrapped in a napkin and hidden away for later in the meal. At a specific point in the reading of the haggadah the children who are present
are given the task of searching for the hidden afikoman. The lucky finder
is rewarded. This piece of matzah was the bread Jesus would have blessed and
broken and distributed to the disciples.
Without
doubt, the ceremony of the afikoman
is ripe with symbolism, not just to the Jewish people who have celebrated the
Passover for centuries, but to us as well.
Jewish scholars are not sure when this part of the ceremony was
incorporated into the haggadah but
the commentary I am using believes that the ceremony of the afikoman illustrates the full ministry
of Jesus, the Messiah. Jesus' appearance
- when the matzah first appears in
the meal. Jesus' death - when the matzah is broken in half. Jesus' resurrection - when the hidden matzah is found and revealed.
As
we have seen before, God is very deliberate.
There are many things that He has ordained in the past that the meaning
was not fully revealed until a later time. Some of what God had ordained in the Old
Testament has been revealed to us in New Testament times. Some will not be revealed until the age to
come!
"Praised are You, O LORD our God, King of the
Universe, who sustains the world with goodness, with grace, and with infinite
mercy. You give food to every creature
for your mercy endures forever."
(The Haggadah)
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