The Eucharist and the Kingdom | S4 E11

Welcome to The Extraordinary Story.

Today, we’re going to look at the institution of the Eucharist and the institution of the priesthood and the foundation of the whole sacramental system.

Here is where Jesus Christ brings the life of God in eternity, and unites it with our lives here in the maze.

Here is where God makes us his family, so that we can live in a new way, starting now and lasting forever.

Everything that’s happened in the story to this point has led up to this moment.

And this is what he has spent the last days of Holy Week preparing us for.

And this is what he has spent the last days of Holy Week preparing us for.

And everything that follows will be in service of this.

This is The Extraordinary Story, a podcast that tells the story of the life of Jesus Christ.

God himself entered the confusing maze that is our world to transform it into a path that leads to him today and always.

The Extraordinary Story is brought to you by Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

I’m Tom Hoopes.

I’m writer in residence here at Benedictine College.

Let’s start by reading briefly from my favorite Gospel account of the institution of the Eucharist, in the Gospel of Luke.

I love how it starts out saying that his hour has finally come.

And then I love how Jesus says, well, okay, let’s just listen to it.

This is from Luke 22.

And when the hour came, he sat at table, and the apostles with him.

And Jesus said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

For I tell you, I shall not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this and divide it among yourselves.

For I tell you, that from now on, I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

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.

And likewise, the cup after supper, saying, This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

I love that opening statement of Jesus.

I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

The apostles were told that he was going to suffer, and that he had been heading resolutely toward Jerusalem for that purpose, and now he’s making his last supper with them a key moment of his life.

I can picture his face as he says it, his eyes growing with intensity, with a bright light behind them, as he says, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

It must have made the apostles catch their breath with anticipation of what was going to come next, and what did come next.

He said, Take this cup and divide it among yourselves, for I tell you, from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

Jesus is talking about the Eucharist, and he immediately connects it with both the new Passover meal and the coming of the new kingdom that the Jewish people have expected to follow since David.

He also gives it to his apostles so that the miracle happens in their hands, not just his.

He is making them priests.

This is a life-changing meal that will bring the kingdom.

In other words, Jesus is here inaugurating the new Eden he has been telling us all about for the last several days.

It is the wheat and wine of the garden, the labor of sowers and harvesters, and those who turn their products into bread and wine.

And it all leads up to a new way of organizing society, a new power dynamic in the new kingdom.

Quotes, 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.

End quote.

So let’s look at the basics here.

Why bread?

Why this saving meal?

Why is he saying that this bread is his body?

Jesus is combining three big realities in Jewish life here and transforming them.

One is the manna, which was a key part of the Jewish story about God’s care for them in the desert.

A second is the Passover sacrifice that brought them out of slavery to start with.

And the third is the bread of the presence, the loaves of bread that were kept in the holiest part of the temple and were displayed every Sabbath day and then consumed by the priests.

In his book Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Brant Petrie uncovers startling parallels between what most Christians from the early church to today believed about the Eucharist and what Jewish people believed about these three model meals.

So we’ll get to the three model meals, but first let’s review what we’ve already seen with bread and manna in the Extraordinary Story.

We first talked about his new manna at the midpoint of the Extraordinary Story when Jesus revealed who he is and said that he would bring the Kingdom of God to earth not by violence, but by suffering.

At the same point in the story, he announced that he was the bread of life.

He was himself the bread from heaven that the Jewish people were expecting.

He harked back to Moses and the way God first began to reestablish his kingdom when he rescued his people from slavery.

They escaped Pharaoh thanks to him, and then they were in the desert starving.

Moses himself had promised that God would send another prophet just like him, a new Moses.

And right before announcing the Eucharist in John 6, we heard the people proclaim about Jesus, this is truly the prophet, the one who is to come into the world.

Their prayer to him then was, give us this bread always.

And he wants to do just that, but on his terms, not theirs.

He said, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

And he set the stage in John 6 by performing three signs, if you recall.

First came the miracle of the loaves, where, through the apostles, in their hands, once again, he fed the multitudes with six barley loaves, then filled twelve baskets with the leftovers of those same six loaves.

It’s not the miracle of the multiplication, it’s the mural of the multi-location of the bread.

This miracle demonstrated that the same Eucharist would be available in many places, and that he would work through his priests to do so.

Then he walked on water to show that the body of Jesus isn’t bound by physical laws, another preparation for the Eucharist.

Then he miraculously crossed the Sea of Galilee in a flash, revealing that he isn’t bound by time and space either.

Now he’s here with the apostles, putting his body, the bread of life, in their hands.

He’s opening the heavenly storehouses, and he is making them priests who can keep those storehouses open.

I love how Petrie traces what Jewish people believed about the supernatural origin and purpose of the manna, and of the new king that would come in David’s line.

Petrie summed up his findings in the title of his fourth chapter, and he called it the manna of the Messiah.

So here we are finally receiving the manna of the Messiah, there in the upper room on Holy Thursday.

And this doves tales very nicely with what I’ve been discovering about Jesus, how he wants not just to help us escape from the maze of space and time, but wants us to be in the front lines of his invasion of space and time, transforming our lives in the maze with his grace.

In the introductory episode to this season, I talked about how our father prayer describes exactly what God is trying to do in re-Edenizing the world, so that, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

That’s a situation that existed in the Garden of Eden and that he wants to bring back.

And what’s the very next line?

Give us this day our daily bread.

Which is also translated, give us this day our super-substantial bread.

In other words, give us this day the bread from heaven, the new manna.

In that opening episode of this season, I also talked about how influential the Anglican bishop and theologian NT.

Wright has been on my thinking about the effects of Jesus Christ’s resurrection.

Brant Petrie quotes him at this point in his book about when God sends manna.

Wright says, Quote, Manna was not needed in Egypt, nor was it needed in the promised land.

It is the food that is needed because the kingdom has already broken in and because it is not yet consummated.

The daily provision of manna signals that the Exodus has begun, and also that we are not living yet in the land.

In other words, we get this new manna as nourishment because the time has come for us to build the kingdom of God.

This harks back to the very beginning of history.

God made mankind in his image, spiritual creatures like him, that are in bodies like animals, and have to eat just as animals do.

And eating became a channel to the divine.

We talked about the fig tree, and how it’s an image of that tree of knowledge of good and evil.

It’s also an image of another tree, a tree that was put out of reach of mankind until now.

In Genesis, after Adam and Eve sinned, we hear, quote, And the Lord God said, Now that the human has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he may reach out and take as well from the tree of life forever.

And the Lord God sent him from the Garden of Eden to till the soil from which he had been taken.

And he drove out the human and set up, east of the Garden of Eden, the cherubim and the flame of the whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life.

End quote.

Eating from the wrong tree in this symbolic way barred us from the way to eternal life.

With the Eucharist, Jesus has become the new way to the tree of life.

He has dismissed the angel guard, and paradise is open for us to return to innocence and permanence once again.

That was why Jesus was so eager to eat this meal, because God the Father was eager for him to eat it also.

God wants to undo what we did in the fall, and because we are both spiritual and physical, God provides this new manna to do so.

He also provides a new Passover meal, our second model meal.

The Passover meal that rescued the Israelites from the fate of the Egyptians was the heavenly meal par excellence, before the Eucharist came along.

When Jesus was first introduced into the world, he was heralded as Behold the Lamb of God by John the Baptist.

And in the oldest books in the New Testament, St.

Paul heralds him in the same way, saying less than 20 years after Jesus’ death, Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Let us therefore celebrate the festival.

Later in that same letter, he explained how to celebrate this festival of Christ, the Passover lamb.

Quote, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way, also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

End quote.

So in the original Passover sacrifice, you had to mark your home with blood and then eat the Passover lamb.

In the new one, you have to eat the bread and drink the cup, Paul says.

Jesus prepared his apostles for this at the midpoint of his ministry also, back in John 6, when he said, Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.

He also said, My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.

And he said, The one who feeds on me will have life because of me.

Well, it must have been a huge relief to them that it’s in the form of bread and wine, that they have to do this eating and drinking.

I know it’s a huge relief to me.

But it is a true Passover all the same.

In the past, the Passover lamb delivered God’s people from slavery in Pharaoh’s work camp with the hope of the promised land.

Today, the new Passover lamb, Jesus, delivers us from slavery to sin from Satan’s work camp and gives us the hope of heaven.

This means the Eucharist, the mass, is the new Passover that makes our highest hopes possible.

Jesus says, Do this in memory of me.

Petrie’s job does a great job of revealing how when the Jewish people celebrated the Passover every year, they didn’t merely remember the original Passover sacrifice.

They participated in the original Passover sacrifice.

God is outside space and time, and so he makes this a reality for them.

Petrie also pointed out that Jewish tradition said the Messiah would come on the night of the Passover.

And the conclusion here is inescapable.

Jesus is the Messiah, the sacrifice for sins.

He gives his people a new Passover, the Eucharist, as a participation in his own sacrifice.

Just like in Old Testament times, the Church believes that we are not constrained by time and space, but that God gives us participation in the one sacrifice on Calvary through the celebration of the Eucharist.

Jesus the Lamb of God unites the manna of the Messiah and the Passover to offer salvation to each new generation.

Receiving communion is our entry into the new life Christ promises.

It is the tree of life for the new Eden.

This means that the institution of the Eucharist and the Mass also make good sense of the shocking words that lost Jesus so many followers.

Eating the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus in the Eucharist is not gorgeing on blood.

It’s a saving meal in the form of bread and wine.

But just as Judas lost faith in Jesus over the Eucharist back in John 6, now we hear Jesus continue in the very next verses of the Gospel of Luke after instituting the Eucharist.

But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me at the table.

For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to the man by whom he is betrayed.

And they began to question one another.

Which of them it was who would do this?

And then this follows, right after this, in Luke.

This is fascinating.

Luke writes, quote, A dispute also arose among them.

Which of them was to be regarded as the greatest?

And he said to them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors.

But not so with you.

Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest and the leader as one who serves.

For which is the greater, one who sits at table or one who serves?

Is it not the one who sits at table?

For I am among you as one who serves.

You are those who have continued with me in my trials.

As my father appointed a kingdom for me, so I appoint it for you, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Well, wow, this is a new kingdom where the twelve apostles will sit on thrones, he says.

But the virtues of this kingdom will be family virtues.

Jesus says, The greatest among you become as the youngest and the leader as one who serves.

For which is the greater, one who sits at table or one who serves?

Is it not the one who sits at table?

Then he adds, So those who sit on thrones of the new kingdom will be those who serve.

He says, it’s literally after washing their feet and giving them his body and blood to eat.

This is the new kingdom, not a kingdom of worldly power, of violence, force, and control, but a kingdom of the Beatitudes.

Think of the way the failure to live the Beatitudes is at the heart of our deepest problems in society.

Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom.

But greed drives people to constant strife, and drives us to constant depression and sadness.

Jesus says, blessed are the sorrowful, those who mourn.

But too many industries are calloused to the suffering of the most vulnerable, as they seek to entertain us, to stop us from mourning.

And Jesus says, blessed are the meek, but nations and corporations and individuals are instead busy jockeying for power.

This new kingdom wants to take these family virtues and apply them to all of our brothers and sisters under God.

It is a kingdom of mutual care and concern, and the gospel brings it up again here because Jesus is trying to inaugurate the kingdom right now in the Eucharist.

In fact, he’s doing more than asking us to model our interactions after family love.

He is literally establishing a new family.

In inciting the Eucharist, Jesus is re-establishing the Garden of Eden, the wheat and the vine, the labor and the law of love.

But remember, what is the most important thing about the Garden of Eden?

Adam and Eve, the first marriage.

Remember, God said, And for this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Paul quotes those words from Genesis and adds, This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church.

In the days leading up to the institution of the Eucharist, Jesus has been talking incessantly about this marriage banquet, about waiting for the groom.

And now the moment has arrived.

The marriage banquet has begun.

And here we have the groom.

The early Church took this analogy very literally.

The Church is the bride of Christ.

Each Christian is the bride and Christ is the bridegroom.

As one early Christian writer in the 400s summed it up, Just as Eve was fashioned from Adam, so were we from Christ the Lord.

We are buried with him in baptism.

We rise with him.

We eat and drink his blood.

When we unite with him in communion, we are the bride receiving the body of Jesus Christ the bridegroom.

Just as a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife, Jesus the bridegroom leaves the father’s house in the incarnation and cleaves with us in the Eucharist, becoming one flesh.

And like brides, we leave our former family to make Christ our highest priority and our new identity.

From the early Church on, Christians have said, in the words of another early Christian writer, any soul that cleaves faithfully to Christ is like a wife living faithfully with her husband.

And what an amazing husband.

He loves us more than himself, St.

Paul says.

He handed himself over to save us.

And in baptism, he cleanses us by the bath of water and the word.

In order to restore his bride’s beauty without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, to be holy and without blemish.

So this is what Jesus offers us in the Eucharist.

And now we have a decision to make.

Will we join him in building his new family kingdom?

Will we work for the family vineyard with him?

He has spent Holy Week preparing us to answer this question, and he’s looking at us each, waiting to see what we will decide.

And he’s looking at the apostles, too.

The very next thing that happens in the Gospel of Luke is that Jesus predicts Peter’s denial.

Quote, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he may sift you like wheat.

But I prayed for you, that your faith may not fail, and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.

And Peter said to him, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.

Jesus said, I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day until you three times deny that you know me.

End quote.

So Peter is going to fail the test, he predicts.

The verbs are really interesting here, as they often are.

Right after giving them himself in the form of bread, Jesus says, Satan demanded to have you, that he may sift you like wheat.

But I have promised for you that your faith may not fail.

Fulton Sheen points out that the first you is plural.

Satan has demanded that he sift you, all you apostles like wheat.

The next you is singular.

Jesus says he has prayed that Peter’s faith will not fail.

Peter brags that he won’t leave him, saying, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and death.

But Peter is still relying on his old self, his old way of seeing things.

Like before, when he was criticized that he wasn’t thinking like God, but like what men think.

Jesus tells him the bad news.

I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day until you three times deny that you know me.

Peter’s refusal here, like I say, is of a peace with his refusal when Jesus first predicted his passion.

Back then, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, saying, God forbid, Lord, no such thing should happen to you.

And Jesus famously said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan, you are an obstacle to me.

You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.

Pope Enoch the 16th about this passage says, Peter must learn that even martyrdom is no heroic achievement.

Rather, it is a grace to be able to suffer for Jesus.

End quote.

Peter has to learn a new way, a new way of seeing things, a new way of doing things, a Eucharistic way of seeing things through Christ’s eyes.

A Eucharistic way of doing things in the church.

He has to learn to be nourished by the new Passover, by the manna of the Messiah.

But remember, I said there were three model meals that Brant Petrie writes about in his book, Jesus and the Jewish roots of the Eucharist.

I mentioned two of them.

One was the manna in the desert.

The other was the Passover.

Well, the third is the bread of the presence.

This was the holy bread that was central to Jewish ritual ever since God commanded his people with detailed instructions on how to offer it with reverence in Leviticus and elsewhere.

This bread was the weekly Sabbath offering that was set in order before the Lord continually as an everlasting covenant.

It consisted of twelve loaves, stand-ins for the twelve tribes of Israel, and it was kept on a golden table just outside the Holy of Holies, a visible representation of God’s presence among the people in his covenant.

A menorah was kept continually lit for the bread, much like a sanctuary lamp by the tabernacle in a Catholic church.

The Hebrew word for bread of the presence literally means bread of the face.

But for many years, it was very unhelpfully translated show bread in English texts.

It was veiled and only rarely seen by the people, but was shown to them, thus show bread, at special feasts.

The priests would display the golden table of bread, saying, Behold, God’s love for you.

It was so holy that only priests could eat it, but the fact that David ate it in one Old Testament story makes it possible to call him not just a king and a prophet, but also a priest.

Jesus himself invokes the memory of David and the holy bread in Matthew.

That was one of two times Jesus intentionally evoked the bread of the presence before this night.

The other time was in the John 6th Discourse.

Both he and his listeners knew that the bread summed up all the ways bread was a sign of God’s presence in their history from the beginning of salvation to the end.

At the beginning of the Old Testament story, the mysterious priest Melchizedek offers bread and wine for Abraham, and his action has been honored by the Jewish people ever since.

At the very end of the Old Testament, Judas Maccabeus restores the bread of the presence to a rededicated temple and relights the menorah, the first Hanukkah, remembered in the Feast of Dedication.

But to understand just how seriously the Jewish people took bread as a sign of God’s love, you can look to the prophet Elijah.

When the catechism speaks about the bread of the presence in the temple, it speaks about Elijah.

The prophet Elijah was forced to flee an evil king and found himself far from home.

And he’s giving up and asks to die, saying, this is enough, O Lord.

God ignores his prayer for death and gives him the gift of life instead.

An angel gives him a hearth cake, a jug of water, and a command to go on his way.

And he does.

In fact, says the story, strengthened by that food, he walked 40 days and 40 nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.

This is the power of the bread of angels in the Old Testament.

It’s God’s pledge to help his people and to fortify them for their journey.

Even looking at this bread gives them new energy and purpose.

But Jesus says that the bread that he gives will last far longer than 40 days.

It will last forever.

In John 6, remember, he said, I am the bread of life, that one may eat it and not die.

This is no longer a barley loaf or a hearth cake.

This time, what is offered is Jesus himself, who says, I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

Whoever eats this bread will live forever.

So Jesus has taken his apostles and us from the Old Covenant Manna, to the Old Covenant Passover, to the Old Covenant Bread of the Presence of God.

And now presents himself as the fulfillment of all of it.

But they aren’t ready to understand it.

We need to read one last brief part of Luke’s Gospel, the very next verses.

And he said to them, When I sent you out with no purse or bag or sandals, did you lack anything?

They said nothing.

He said to them, But now, let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag, and let him who has no sword sell his mantel and buy one.

For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me.

And he was reckoned with transgressors, and what is written about me has its fulfillment.

And they said, Look, Lord, here are two swords.

And he said to them, It is enough.

So here, finally, Jesus throws the cold water of reality on the faces of the apostles and on my face also.

This is really a continuation of his comment that Satan has asked to sift them all like wheat.

Satan wants to sift you and me like wheat too.

The gospel virtues and the family kingdom are still in the future for us.

The kingdom is already, but not yet.

It is being built, but it is under constant attack.

Jesus reminds him of the time that he sent them out with no bag or sandals to beg for food.

That was a special time for them when they threw themselves into the arms of Providence and found that God would take care of them.

This time, he tells them, things will be different.

Persecution is coming.

They are being sent like sheep among wolves, and the wolves are about to circle and attack.

If you have a purse, take it.

You’re going to need the money, he says.

If you don’t have a sword, go get one.

He doesn’t want them to use this as an offensive weapon.

We’re not going to attack anyone, but we are going to need to defend ourselves.

The scripture is about to be fulfilled.

Jesus Christ, God himself, will be counted among the wicked.

His apostles misunderstand him and produce two swords, and he says, enough.

He stops them short.

We start out this episode noting that his hour has come.

And his first words were, I have eagerly desired to share this supper with you before I suffer.

Now he has shared the supper and fulfilled the longing of his heart to unite with them.

Now it is time for the next phase, the suffering.

And now it’s time to turn the page from the institution of the Eucharist to the final brutal chapter of The Extraordinary Story.

The Extraordinary Story is written by Tom Hoopes and produced by Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

Benedictine College is transforming culture in America through our mission of community, faith, and scholarship.

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