What, establish a new covenant? Yes. You think not?
Every Shabbat we eat the challah and share the wine...
OK. But that's Shabbat ... this is something entirely different.
This was SOP for jews, nothing new...it was part of their ceremony....with their prayers.
I know. But the point is, what Our Lord did was
not Shabbat, it was something new.
He instituted a New Covenant, and moreover, said 'do this in remembrance of
me', not in remembrance of the Creation or the Exodus, or Passover – as the traditional Shabbat requires – not the remembrance of the God who saved Israel, but, in His own words, the remembrance of 'me', so in that sense the whole thing, from a Jewish perspective, is a blasphemy, and not SOP at all. It, once again, to a Jew, was a declaration of divinity.
Not wanting to sound facetious, but this was clearly a Pesach, not a Shabbat. And in celebrating the Pesach, the Jews don't remember the sheep they killed to daub over their doors.
He did this as well, take this bread....it is my body (earthly material)...
Given up for what, though, that's the point.
Judas took it and Jesus sent him off to do what he must do...an implication that Judas only understood Jesus on a material level?
Well ... we can speculate on that ... I have my own views. But yes, I think we can say that Judas had no idea what was about to happen.
I find it interesting that, despite the Scripture accounts of Judas' fate, Papias (c125AD) says: "Judas walked about in this world a sad example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out."
There's a curio to ponder ...
... was it for them, or for us?
According to Him, for many. Them and us.
Did he say do this for the next millenia to come?
Well yes, surely?
"Amen, amen I say to you: If any man keep my word, he shall not see death for ever" (John 8:51).
"Jesus answered, and said to him: If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him" (John 14:23).
"But that on the good ground, are they who in a good and perfect heart, hearing the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit in patience" (Luke 8:15).
"But he said: Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it" (Luke 11:28).
The Jews recall the Covenant and the Passover not just to remember those who were materially saved, but rather to 'bring to mind' the promise made to those who survived, but the (spiritual) salvation of those who survived, and the generations that follow.
And in the same way, His followers 'keep' the Last Supper as the centre of their Liturgy.
Or do this now and every shabbot from now on you'll remember to take in the material (be in this world) and the spiritual (but not of this world)...
No. He wasn't rewriting the Shabbat, that stands inviolate. The Shabbat is about the Covenant between God and Israel. This was not an adendum to the Shabbat, or the Pesach. It was the institution of something 'new'.
He explains the nature of this new covenant, and it's a repetition of the old. It's a covenant with Him, not with the Father. (Another claim to divinity.) That's why His followers chose the resurrection day on which to celebrate their Shabbat. If they were 'over-writing' the Shabbat, the Christian Sabbath would be on Friday?
But really, I think the emphasis is on the fact that Jesus presents Himself to the disciples as
the sacrifice – His body is given up, His blood is shed – to consecrate a 'new covenant' (Matthew 26:26, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, 1 Corinthians 11:24). It's not about memory or morality ... it signifies much more than that.
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In every religious tradition, it's axiomatic that the invocation of the 'Divine Name' invokes the presence of the Divine, it does not simply remember the Divine at a distance.
"For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20).
