As they ate,
Jesus was taking and blessing the bread,which he broke and gave them. He said,“Take it. This is my body.”
Jesus was taking and giving thanks for the cup,which he gave them, and all drank from it. He told them,“This is the blood of my relationship, poured out for many. Amen: I promise you I’ll never, ever drink of the fruit of the vine—till that day when I drink it new, in God’s Kingdom.” —
During the Passover seder, there’s a stack of three matzot on the table, and the middle matzo is taken out and broken. The smaller piece is put back in the stack; the bigger, called the afikomen (from Greek epíkomon/“after dinner”), is wrapped up and set aside till after dinner. (Usually it’s hidden, and the kids go find it.) At that point, the afikomen is broken into pieces and everyone has some, hence the last taste in their mouths at dinner is matzo.
Christian Jews love to say this was when Jesus broke the bread: The stack of three matzot represent the Trinity, the broken piece represents the Son; the hiding represents being in the grave three days; and eating it afterwards is when Jesus gave his students communion.
It’d be really cool if it were true. It’s not. According to the Mishna, the afikomen is a substitute for the Passover sacrificial lamb. When the temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70, the sacrifices stopped, and today’s custom is to not eat lamb or goat for Passover. So breaking the afikomen, hiding it, and eating it, didn’t exist in Jesus’s day. Jesus didn’t repurpose an old thing. He invented a new thing.
But—considering Jesus is our Passover sacrifice, and how the afikomen custom lines up so well with the practice of holy communion—it’s a heck of a coincidence, isn’t it? It’s almost like the Holy Spirit planted this idea in the Jews’ heads, to prepare them for the day they discovered their Messiah and followed him. And maybe he did.
Eucharist.
The older churches call this the Eucharist, from where Jesus had evkharistísas/ “given thanks” for the cup. Eucharist means thanksgiving. Protestants call it “holy communion,” or just “communion,” or “the Lord’s Supper.” Regardless of what you call it, this is where it originated: Jesus tacked it onto the Passover dinner, and told them (in the other gospels and 1 Corinthians) to repeat it, and remember him by it.
This which I pass on to you, I received from the Master. On the night when Master Jesus was turned in, he took bread. Giving thanks, he broke it and said,
“This is my body, given for you all. Do this in my memory.” Likewise the cup after dinner, saying,“This cup is the new relationship, in my blood. Whenever you drink, do this in my memory.” When you eat this bread and drink the cup, you announce the Master's death till he comes.—Paul and Sosthenes
The new relationship is also translated new covenant or new testament—and of course that’s where we get the name of the Christian scriptures. Covenant means a committed relationship, formally agreed upon: It’s not casual, not temporary, not come-as-you-please, go-when-you-will. It has obligations, for both parties. Jesus promises, in this covenant, that he’ll return again, bringing God’s Kingdom with him. He promises his body would be broken for us—a promise he’d fulfill later that day. And we promise to remember him by eating this bread and drinking this cup… and everything that “remembering Jesus” includes. It’s not a small commitment we make.
Like the afikomen, this was the last thing Jesus’s students ate for Passover. Which means it’s the last thing they ate before their Lord died. They still had the aftertaste of communion on their breath when he was arrested, tried, and crucified. And when he was dead, and they were in hiding, and mourning, and possibly fasting, this may have been the last thing they ate for a very long time. Nothing like that experience to cement this ritual in your mind.
But it also meant they’d go over and over the words he’d spoken: