We know that one very special meal took place in Holy Week. Tonight we especially remember that meal, the one that Jesus shared with his disciples on the nigh that he was betrayed. But Matthew tells us of another meal in which Jesus shared that very same week.

He had made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Yet Jesus did not stay in Jerusalem. He lodged in the village of Bethany, two or three miles to the east of the city, probably in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. It was in Bethany that this other meal took place, in the home of a man called Simon; generally known as Simon the Leper.

We do not know what was on the menu that evening, but as Jesus was at table with his disciples a woman comes with a jar of very expensive perfume. She takes the perfume and she anoints Jesus’ head. The atmosphere was fragrant with the beautiful odour. But almost immediately another atmosphere begins to develop, an atmosphere of criticism and dissension. The disciples do not like what the woman has done. ‘What a waste of money’ they say. ‘It would have been far better to have spent it on helping the poor.’

Jesus speaks up on the woman’s behalf. ‘She has done a beautiful thing to me.’ She had anointed Jesus. There was great significance in that act. There was a vital question about Jesus that had to be settled once and for all. It was a question that was to be settled that very week.

The question was ‘is Jesus the Messiah?’ This was the question everyone was asking. The Messiah was the person whom God had promised through the prophets. The Jewish people were looking forward to his coming, in the hope that he would bring them God’s salvation. But there was great significance in that name. The name Messiah is a Hebrew word that means ‘anointed one’. There is another name that the bible uses in a fairly interchangeable way with the name Messiah.

That name is ‘Christ’. Christ is a Greek word that means exactly the same; ‘anointed one’. By anointing Jesus, she was acknowledging him to be the Messiah, the Christ. It was a beautiful act.

As I have said, the question of if Jesus was the Messiah was settled once and for all that week. It was settled when God raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus is the Christ, God’s Son come in human form, crucified and raised from the dead, historical fact. Yet for individuals, it is not settled until they come to the point of believing and acknowledging it for themselves.

In this beautiful act of devotion, this woman was acknowledging Jesus for whom he was. She was giving of her wealth and her love in acknowledging her Messiah. There is no indication of whether she realized that Jesus was soon to be crucified. But in his words, Jesus affirms that death lies ahead for him. He will die and his body will be buried; the Messiah is also the lamb led to the slaughter.

For Judas, that is too much. This is not the Messiah he wants to follow. He rejects and betrays a Messiah who is going to walk the way of suffering and death. Yet Jesus is the true Messiah. There is no one else who can bring life and hope and salvation.


Matthew 26 v 17-35: The Lord’s Supper

Jews keep the Passover. They still do it today. Jesus observed the Passover too. His disciples didn’t ask him if he wanted to celebrate the Passover, they simply asked where it was to be. The time and the format were always the same, if possible the faithful came to Jerusalem and joined in the Passover there, and it was in the city of Jerusalem that the disciples prepared the Passover for Jesus.

Passover had its origins over a thousand years before. It went back to the time when the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt. They had been an ethnic minority in a foreign land. They had been enslaved and oppressed; they were helplessly at the mercy of a proud Egyptian nation. They had prayed to God for deliverance from their bondage, God had sent Moses to tell Pharaoh to let my people go.

God had demonstrated his power to Pharaoh, he repeatedly given signs to reveal his authority, but time and again Pharaoh had hardened his heart and refused to release his slaves. Finally God told Moses to arrange for the people together to prepare for a very special meal. They were to kill a lamb to eat, the blood from the lamb was to be painted onto the doorposts of the Israelites’ homes, and they were to cook and eat the lamb along with unleavened bread.

On the night they ate that meal, God would punish the Egyptians for their cruelty and stubbornness. The oldest son in every family would die, but the Israelite families whose doorposts were marked with the blood of a lamb would be safe. God would pass over them, when he punished the Egyptians.

The Passover represented the birth of the nation of Israel. Every year the people celebrated the Passover. It affirmed their identity as God’s chosen people. It reminded them that they owed their existence to God’s mercy and deliverance. The Passover commemorated the event whereby God brought them out of slavery, the decisive first step to their coming to the Promised Land and becoming a nation.

The Passover reminded them that they were God’s chosen people. The Passover had become a sacred celebration. But as Jesus met with his disciples in that upper room, there was not an air of celebration. In fact the atmosphere was probably more reminiscent of that first Passover many years ago in Egypt. There was apprehensiveness. There was insecurity and suspicion. Jesus had told his disciples that one of them would betray him. This troubled the disciples.
But then Jesus does something that changed the Passover forever for those disciples. He takes the bread, gives thanks to God and breaks it. Then he gives it to his disciples and says ‘Take and eat this is my body’.

Then Jesus takes the cup of wine and offers it to the disciples saying, ‘Drink from it all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’

The Passover was part of the old covenant. It was to do with God taking the people of Israel into a relationship of loyalty with himself. The new covenant was to be similar, but different. God’s covenant with Israel was to be superseded by a new covenant that would be open to all mankind. Just as God had done for his people what they could not do for themselves when he rescued them from slavery in Egypt, so Jesus was going to do for mankind what every person is powerless to do, deal with the problem of their sin.

He was about to die; his blood would be poured out for the forgiveness of human sin. But that would not be the end. He would triumph over sin and death. He would go through death and come out the other side, and he would be united with his disciples again.

The disciples couldn’t grasp all this; they couldn’t accept it. They felt that they had some part to play in the coming events that would prove their devotion. They would never leave Jesus; they would go with him to the death if necessary.

What they didn’t grasp was that they, along with everyone else could not do what was required; they had to discover that only Jesus could be the sacrifice for sin. Only he could conquer the power of death. The disciples did have a role to play, they were to be witnesses, they would have good news to share. They would not be shining examples of heroism and virtue; they simply were witnesses to Christ’s purity, his love, his sacrifice and his resurrection.

And so are we. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot stand as shining examples of courage and loyalty. When the going gets tough, we are just as likely to forsake Christ and flee.

But Christ died for you and me, just as he did for those with him in the upper room, and invites us to take the bread and wine in memory of what he has done for us.
 

Amen.

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