Then [Jesus] 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.”
When celebrating the Passover meal with his disciples, Jesus reinterpreted its symbols, making them about his own giving of himself for others. This boldness – or as a speaker of Yiddish would say, chutzpah – might have seemed to some who heard it to be way over the line of acceptability. But Jesus was letting his followers know that his death would be for them and their salvation. His astounding boldness was an expression of his astounding humility, his willingness to give his own life for others.
Jesus showed what looked like chutzpah in the Passover meal we know as The Last Supper. Those of us who have grown up in church might easily miss this because what Jesus said is so familiar to us as “the words of institution” uttered during Communion. I must have heard at least 500 times in my life some version of “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” As a pastor, I’ve said this a couple of hundred times as well.
But it was brand new to the disciples of Jesus who had gathered with him for a final meal. This meal, a Passover meal, was filled with traditional actions and meanings. It was, above all, a time to remember how God had saved his people from slavery in Egypt. Yet, while serving as host for this meal, Jesus inserted himself in a most daring and unprecedented way.
To understand how that might have felt to the disciples, imagine yourself in church one day. When it’s time for Communion, your pastor or priest stands up, breaks the bread, and says “This bread is really all about me today. In the future, when you celebrate Communion, remember me most of all.” That would be utter egotism, right? Blasphemy, really. It would be chutzpah of the worst kind.
There’s only one possible justification for such language. If God is in fact doing a new thing, if God is going to save in a whole new way, and if God is saving through the person who is speaking, then it’s more than okay for that speaker to make himself or herself the meaning of the meal. It’s also helpful. And it’s wonderful.
By radically redefining the meaning of the bread, and then the cup, Jesus was creating a new way to signify God’s new act of salvation. God was about to do something even more astounding than the exodus from Egypt. Through the broken body of Jesus, which would be given for his dinner companions – and for you and me – God was saving all of humanity from slavery to sin and death. This wondrous act of salvation would be remembered every time followers of Jesus share together in the bread, broken and given for them.
So, yes, what Jesus said was amazingly bold. It was chutzpah of the very best kind. What Jesus communicated was anything but arrogant. He was offering himself for others, his life for our lives. He would soon fully assume the role of the Suffering Servant of God in Isaiah, the one whose suffering and death bring life and freedom for others. Jesus’s chutzpah was borne, not out of an overblown sense of himself, but rather out of utter humility and sacrificial servanthood. That is surely something worth remembering . . . often.
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