Feast of Life by Deon Crafford

1 Cor 5:7-8 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

When Jesus sits down with His disciples for what is now referred to as the Last Supper, it becomes a hugely significant moment for the Christian Faith (and in fact the traditional Jews). This last supper is the end of the pasach – the passover celebration of God’s “passing over” the houses of the Israelites at the death of the first-borns in Egypt. Then a lamb was sacrificed, the blood of which brought protection from death. At the last supper with the disciples, Jesus makes it clear that He now is the Lamb, whose blood will bring eternal salvation. In retrospect we can process this, but the disciples may have found this deeply confusing at the time. Jesus also introduces the Lord’s supper or communion, as the remembrance of the salvation power of the blood of the Ultimate Lamb. Passover now becomes Easter – or pasach (hebrew) becomes pascha (greek). No longer do we celebrate being saved from an earthly death, but we celebrate being resurrected into a heavenly life. This is why the supper with the disciples is so important in the road to the Cross. It becomes the moment in which Jesus confirms Himself as the Lamb of redemption and salvation. I have to constantly see myself at the table with Jesus, with Him holding out to me the Body and the Blood, looking me in the eye, saying “I do this for you”.

Love to all