What happens at the Lord’s Supper?

At the Last Supper, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples one last time. The Passover commemorated the “gospel event” of the Old Testament: God’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt. This was the event that established Israel as the people of God. By participating in the meal, every Israelite was spiritually participating in the Exodus. They could legitimately say, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.” (Deut 6:21).

But Jesus redefined the meal on the night before his death. He had previously pronounced judgment on Israel, including its leadership and its temple. So now he forged a new covenant that established a new people of God—a people no longer gathered around Moses and the Law, but gathered around himself and his sacrificial death. And this final meal Jesus ate with his disciples enabled them to participate spiritually in the new foundational event of this new people.

Jesus used the bread and the wine of the meal to point to his body and blood. Through the centuries there has been considerable debate about how exactly these elements relate to the physical body and blood of Jesus. The Roman Catholic Church has taught that the elements change (“transubstantiate”) into the actual body and blood of Jesus—something Martin Luther also maintained. Other churches have taught that Christ’s body and blood are united (“consubstantiate”) to the elements, or that the elements are purely symbolic and only prompt the believer to reflect on the death of Jesus.

So what is actually going on during the Lord’s Supper?

If the Passover meal enabled the Israelites to participate in the Exodus in a spiritually real way, the Lord’s Supper does something similar for Christian believers. By faith, this token meal is able to bridge the historical gap between the believer and the foundational event of the Christian faith.

No Israelite thought the lamb they sacrificed and ate morphed into one of the lambs slaughtered that first Passover. But it was an apt way to commemorate and participate in that first Passover. Similarly, the bread and wine that Christians consume don’t change into Jesus who suffered and died in the early first century. But there is a significant spiritual thing happening that is more than just a solemn reflection upon Jesus’ death. Just as the lamb took the Israelite back to the Exodus, so the bread and the wine take the Christian believer back to Jesus’ death.

The elements are a bit like an actor in a film. The actor takes on a particular character for the film, and makes that character come alive for the viewer. The better the actor, the more vivid the presentation. The actor makes the character present to the viewer, who accepts the actor as the character. But at no point does the actor stop being himself and actually turn into the character. On the contrary—he always remains who he actually is. He is merely taking on a role for the benefit of the viewer, who also realizes how the acting role works.

In a similar way, the bread and wine never stop being bread and wine. They do not actually become Jesus, just as Claire Foy does not actually become Queen Elizabeth II, and Robert Downey Jr. does not actually become Iron Man. Nevertheless, in the Lord’s Supper, the elements present Christ to the believer who accepts them by faith. They are fitting symbols—a sacrament—so they present Christ vividly. It’s not that Christ is being crucified all over again. That happened once in the first century, and will never happen again. But they enable the believer to participate spiritually in that foundational event of Christian faith. It’s as though the believer is spiritually transported to the foot of the cross, so that by faith they can say, “Christ body was broken for me, and his blood was shed for me.”

If the Israelite participating in Passover could legitimately say, “I was a slave in Egypt but the Lord brought me out of Egypt with a mighty hand,” then participating in the Lord’s Supper allows the believer to say, “I was a slave to sin, but Jesus saved me by his body and blood.” That’s the essence of the new covenant.

Why did Jesus die?

Here’s a piece I wrote a few years ago, and which I’ve touched up slightly. In the lead up to Easter, I hope you find it informative and thought provoking.

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I really enjoy the “rock opera” Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.¹ Despite its somewhat apocryphal take on the events leading up to Jesus’ death, one of the things it tries to do is explore the reasons why Jesus, about whom there was so much excitement, ended up dead on a Roman cross. In the climactic title song, Judas asks of Jesus,

Did you mean to die like that — was that a mistake?
Or did you know your messy death would be a record breaker?

There are a numbers of ways we could answer the question “Why did Jesus die?” On the historical level, we can say that Jesus was caught between the crunching gears of apocalyptic messianic expectation, Jewish temple politics, and Roman imperial intrigue. On the theological level, there is so much more to say.

On the Sunday before his death, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding a donkey to the frenzied cheers of his followers. It was a provocative messianic stunt, aimed at fulfilling the image of the returning Davidic King in Zechariah 9.9. And his followers were not blind to its significance. Their cry of ‘Hosanna in the highest!’ was not an exclamation of praise, the way it is often used today. Rather, it was a slogan. ‘Hosanna’ means ‘To the rescue!’ ‘In the highest’ does not refer to people’s praise reaching the highest heaven, but rather an urging of Jesus to reach for the highest echelons of power in his rescue of Israel. Here was the Davidic messiah coming to his royal capital to overthrow the current order, free his people, and establish the new Kingdom of God.

The following day, in a brash act prefiguring the end of the old order, Jesus marched into the temple complex and overturned the tables of the moneychangers and opened the pens holding sacrificial animals for sale. A small riot seems to have ensued. By doing this symbolic act, Jesus was clearly stating that he believed the temple and the authorities that ran it were no longer in favour with God. Time was rapidly running out — the time of judgement and the dawn of a new era were now imminent. Jesus was, in other words, playing the part of an apocalyptic prophet. And by claiming the right to bring the temple down and rebuild it, he was making a clear claim to be the rightful Davidic king of Israel—the son of David who builds the temple and establishes a permanent kingdom (cf. 2 Sam 7:11–13).

Visualisation of the Jerusalem Temple. Credit: Courtesy of The Western Wall Heritage Foundation

To the Jewish authorities, for whom the temple was their institutional power base at the heart of Jewish identity, Jesus was dangerous. For the remainder of the week, they worked to arrest Jesus. After trying unsuccessfully to discredit him publicly, and fearing the incendiary riot that a public arrest would spark, they managed to arrest him on the sly by bribing Judas Iscariot, a member of Jesus’ inner circle—one of his twelve commissioners (i.e. ‘apostles’) responsible for the dissemination of Jesus’ claims and for gathering people around him. The arrest occurred at night, as Jesus and his other eleven commissioners were trapped in an olive grove in the Kidron Valley, just outside Jerusalem’s walls. Jesus gave himself up to his captors, and successfully pleaded for the release of his followers, who then abandoned him.

Jesus was taken under arrest, questioned and tried overnight. In fact, it was probably an illegal trial, since it was held during the midnight hours within the houses of former High Priest, Annas, and his son-in-law, the incumbent High Priest, Caiaphas. It seems that they tried to pin the charge of treason on Jesus by implicating him for threats against the temple, the institution that stood at the heart of Jewish identity and piety. This would be akin to charging someone today with a plot to blow up the White House. Given events earlier in the week, one would have thought it would be easy to implicate Jesus. However, the Gospels tell us that the witnesses brought forward could not agree, and therefore Jesus could not definitively be found guilty.

However, the High Priest, Caiaphas, used another strategy. He asked Jesus if he was the Son of God. In asking this, Caiaphas was probably not asking Jesus whether he believed he was the second person on the Trinity. Rather, he was asking Jesus whether he believed himself to be the messiah — the son of David who was to sit eternally on the throne of Israel, for the son of David in the Hebrew Bible was also seen as the ‘son of God’ (2 Samuel 7.14). Jesus’ response implied that he did believe this. But even more than this, Jesus appealed to the image of the Son of Man in Daniel 7 — an apocalyptic image of God’s chosen one who would bring about the end of the world order and establish God’s eternal kingdom. In the eyes of the authorities, this was an admission of revolutionary intent. Jesus was found guilty, given a beating, and sentenced to death.

Since the Jewish authorities at this time were unable to exact the death penalty (it had been revoked by Rome a few years earlier), Jesus was hurried off to the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate. If they wanted Jesus dead, they would have to ask Pilate to enact the death penalty.

Politically, Pilate was fighting battles on two fronts. On the one hand, Pilate was probably a protégé of Aelius Sejanus, who had been running the Roman Empire for a few years while the emperor, Tiberius Caesar, enjoyed a leisurely lifestyle on the Italian isle of Capri. However, in October, AD 31, Sejanus was executed for conspiracy against the emperor. Anyone connected to him was now also under suspicion. Pilate, therefore, would have had to watch his steps very closely to demonstrate unambiguously that he was loyal to Tiberius Caesar. On the other hand, though, Pilate had to maintain face and an air of authority over those he governed. In the years before Sejanus’ ignominious death, Pilate had thrown his weight around in various displays of power. Amongst those he needed to keep in check were the Jewish temple authorities. One of the ways he had managed to do so was to plunder the temple’s treasury for public works, and to keep the High Priest’s ceremonial garments under lock and key in the Antonia Fortress. These measures were belittling to the Jewish temple authorities and told them in no uncertain terms who was boss.

So, on the morning of Friday, April 3rd, AD 33, the Jewish authorities brought Jesus to Pilate to seek the death penalty for him. Normally, it would appear that the Jewish authorities were in the position of grovelling subordinates, and thus for Pilate to agree to the death penalty would simply be a show of his own authority. However, Pilate also had to contend for his own reputation now that he was in the spotlight after Sejanus’ death. He could not afford to show any weakness before those he governed, and acquiescing to their request could now be interpreted as just such a weakness. And yet, he could not be seen to be letting a potential revolutionary go free either. That would endanger his standing with the emperor. Accordingly, Pilate attempted to hand the decision over to someone else — to Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, who was in Jerusalem at the time. However, the move backfired. Jesus was returned to Pilate, who now had to make a decision. Not wishing to imply that he was vulnerable or susceptible to weakness, Pilate himself questioned Jesus, flogged him in a display of Rome’s discipline, and was then on the verge of releasing him. Pilate seems to have been convinced that Jesus was harmless. Jesus had been separated from his followers, was unarmed, and did not really hold any human power. By thus overriding the request of the Jewish leaders for the death penalty, Pilate was stamping his authority over them.

However, Caiaphas and his comrades were not stupid. They now held the trump card. John’s Gospel tells us that the Jewish authorities said to Pilate, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend” (19.12). They were implying that if he were to release Jesus, Pilate would be letting an insurrectionist go free to destabilise one of the imperial provinces that Tiberius governed directly (as opposed to consular provinces, which were governed via the Roman Senate). This would implicate Pilate as a traitor to the emperor. To put it another way, the Jewish authorities were asking Pilate, “Whose skin do you want to save: this nuisance from Nazareth’s, or your own?”

Checkmate!

Pilate summarily ordered the execution of Jesus. He was led outside the city walls of Jerusalem with two other condemned criminals, stripped naked, and barbarically nailed to a cross where he was left to die a searingly painful death. The charge against him? Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews.

On the surface of things, it seems that Jesus was in the wrong place at the wrong time — a victim of circumstance, crushed by political machinations that were far bigger than he could humanly control. Some have pointed to the apocalyptic outlook that Jesus had, in wanting to draw the old order to a close and establish a new order, concluding that it was idealistic, unreal, and fraught with danger — that his beliefs and motivations just got him in too deep. Indeed, one can understand why most of his followers abandoned him and became so disillusioned by his death. He was an apparent failure. All the expectation surrounding him had come to nought, and like so many others before him, he fell foul of theauthorities and lost his life because of it.

But history also tells us something else. It tell us that not long after these events, Jesus’ followers—his eleven remaining ‘commissioners’ and other hangers-on—reassembled and began boldly proclaiming that on the Sunday after his death Jesus had emerged from his tomb alive again. And despite attempts to silence them by the very same authorities who had arrested Jesus and ensured his execution, they continued to proclaim the resurrection of their master. He had not been a failure. He had been a fulfiller. He had indeed brought the old era to an end and inaugurated a new one, but had done so in a way that no one had anticipated: through his death. The Acts of the Apostles tell us that on one occasion, after being reprimanded by the Jewish authorities, Jesus’ followers prayed to God affirming, “In this city, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, conspired against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, doing what your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4.27–28). This had been no accident of history. In fact, this was what God had been mobilising all of history towards: the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was a moment of supreme fulfilment. This was the central moment of human history that held significance for every man, woman, and child who has ever lived or ever will live. The final bell on the old order, characterised by sin, death, hate, hostility, and human failure, had sounded. The new era of forgiveness, life, love, peace, and reconciliation was now dawning. Jesus had not only met expectations, he far exceeded them.

So why did Jesus die? There are so many things we could say to unpack the significance of Jesus’ death and his resurrection. The Apostle Paul puts it succinctly well, though, in Romans 4.25: “He was handed over for our transgressions, and raised for the sake of our justification.” And our response? Paul again captures it well in Galatians 2.20: “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Related: Why the Tearing of the Temple Curtain is a Bad Thing

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¹ This is not an endorsement of the ‘theology’ of Jesus Christ Superstar (in fact, I have major problems with some of it). It’s merely an acknowledgement that I enjoy it as a musical and thematic experience, just as someone might really enjoy a movie without endorsing all the action that occurs within it. Appreciation does not necessitate agreement.

There is a reason this terrible Friday is called ‘Good’

On the night Jesus was betrayed, he had dinner with his friends. But they would all abandon him later that night.

That same night, Jesus was trapped by his enemies, who wanted him dead. Having nowhere on earth to turn, he turned to God the Father. God didn’t come to his rescue.

Within hours, Jesus was violently hustled out of Jerusalem. He was nailed by the limbs to a cross—transfixed to a gibbet by hate and rejection.

And yet, as the shadow of death suffocated his life, he prayed for the forgiveness of those who harmed him.

And he was heard.

In the depths of human despair, when God seemed to be nowhere, yet God was acting to save. When screams of hate and betrayal seemed to drown out cries for love and reconciliation, God was listening. When God seemed callously absent, he was there in the One he had sent. At the moment Jesus seemed to have failed, he triumphed over all.

Things are not always as they seem.

There is a reason to celebrate the death of this man. There is a reason this terrible Friday is called ‘Good’.

‘Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.’

Forgiveness and the Tragedy of the St James Massacre

It was on this day twenty years ago (25 July, 1993) that armed gunmen broke into the evening church service at St James, Kenilworth, in Cape Town, and opened fire on the congregation of 1300 people. Eleven were killed, and 58 were injured. Hundreds more who survived still carry invisible wounds today. The death toll would have been significantly higher, as the attackers had intended to torch the building with petrol bombs to kill all who were inside. They were only repelled when one of the congregation members, Charl Van Wyk, who was carrying a revolver, fired back and scared off the attackers.

St James, Kenilworth, today

There are many stories of tremendous strength and compassion from that day. There was the selfless gesture of two young men who shielded the young women beside them from the grenades the attackers had thrown. One of these men did not survive the attack. After the deadly melee, Rev. Ross Anderson walked onto the church stage and urged people to stay put and remain calm, as many in the congregation believed more attackers were waiting outside. There was the man who looked down the barrel of the television cameras moments after his beloved wife succumbed to her wounds and told the attackers that, while they should turn themselves in, he forgave them as Christ forgave. And there was Rev. Dr. David Seccombe, who had just arrived in South Africa from Australia to take up the post of principal of George Whitefield College. He was due to take the pulpit that evening, but ended up sitting with the body of a Russian sailor who had perished.

The St James Massacre was an event of great significance in South Africa as it was coming out of the darkness of Apartheid. But the stories of forgiveness and reconciliation that came from this tragic event were not merely of political consequence. They were born of a deep Christian commitment to forgive in the face of horrendous sin and suffering.

We remember the fallen, salute the brave, and give thanks for those who survived.

St James, Kenilworth, is a thriving church today that continues to expound the gospel of Jesus Christ, calling men, women, and children of every background to put their trust in the one who laid down his own life to bring forgiveness.

Related Links

Where Splintered Pews Had Lain

St James Church Massacre