Hello and welcome to the sixth session of Bishop Joe's course 'Six invitations to Dinner with Jesus'. Press play above to watch and listen and/or you can read the script below...

Hello, I’m Bishop Joe and this is the sixth and final part of our series on invitations to dinner with Jesus.

Here is today’s story. It’s from Chapter 22, and we’re beginning to read at verse 7.

Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us that we may eat it.” They asked him, “Where do you want us to make preparations for it?” “Listen,” he said to them, “when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him into the house he enters and say to the owner of the house, ‘The teacher asks you, “Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?” ’ He will show you a large room upstairs, already furnished. Make preparations for us there.” So they went and found everything as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover meal.

When the hour came, he took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves, for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” Then he took a loaf of 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 he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table. For the Son of Man is going as it has been determined, but woe to that one by whom he is betrayed!” Then they began to ask one another which one of them it could be who would do this.

This sixth meal, then… Jesus tells us that he will not eat bread or drink wine – that is, he will not have anoter meal – again until the kingdom of God comes. This is his last meal until the. Until he has risen from the dead.

Jesus has longed to eat this Passover meal with his disciples before he dies, he tells us. And we can see that he has made the arrangements in advance.

The Passover is one of the ‘pilgrimage festivals’, when Jewish people, if they are able, are invited to travel to Jerusalem. So the city is filled to overflowing for the festival – even the city boundaries had to be expanded, in a pious fiction, to fit everyone in.

The larger houses in Jerusalem in those days had two rooms – a large downstairs room where the family lived, and a smaller ‘upper room’, accessed by an outdoor staircase, which functioned as a guest room.

At Passover, all the guest rooms in the city (all those upper rooms) were filled with pilgrims. And Jesus too has made arrangements to have use of one of these upper rooms in somebody’s house. He tells Peter and John to meet up in advance with the owner of the room which they are going to be using. The agree signal is this: the man makes himself known to the disciples by carrying a jar of water. Usually only women did this – so he would have stood out in the crowd.

The Passover meal is an annual commemoration of the Exodus – the going out of the Hebrew People, away from slavery in Egypt and towards the freedom to be God’s covenanted People in the Promised Land. It’s a meal full of symbolism – the bread unleavened to remember that they needed to leave in a hurry; the herbs bitter to remember their servitude; and many other symbols too.

Now Jesus gives this meal a new meaning.

He took the bread, and gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you.”

In Jewish thought, your body represents your whole self, all that you are. So Jesus gives to his People his whole self in this bread. This was what Jesus did at the first Christmas, when he was born for us. It was what he did throughout his ministry, when he spent himself for us. It was what he did on the Cross when he died for us. Now, at this meal, he gives us himself to us sacramentally.

And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

Covenants in the Bible are pacts between God and human beings. After the Exodus, there was a pact. Now Jesus creates a new pact, modelled on that old one.

Just as the Hebrew People had been slaves to Pharaoh, so we are all born slaves to sin (that’s what the bible tells us) – unable to free ourselves by our own efforts.

Just as God had freed the Hebrew People from their slavery to Pharaoh, so now Jesus will free us from slavery to sin – by paying our debt and taking our punishment at the Cross.

Just as the Hebrew People, once freed from slavery, committed themselves to a covenant with God at Mount Sinai, so now Jesus invites us to commit ourselves to this new covenant in his name.

“Do this in remembrance of me,” says Jesus. And so we do. At each Communion Service, each Eucharist, we accept again Jesus’ invitation to sit with him at the Last Supper, and to stand at the foot of his Cross. As, in faith, we eat the Sacramental Bread and drink the Sacramental Wine, we become more fully part of his body, and share more fully in his eternal life.

So our Lord prepares us, more and more, for that final meal to which he will invite his People – the eternal, heavenly banquet which he will prepare for us, in the world which will know no end.