On the night in which he was betrayed

On the night in which he was betrayed…

You know the words. The beginning of the words of institution that mark the Lord’s Supper are as familiar to us as anything else in the worship liturgy. Every time we have communion there they are, but their gravity often eludes us. We like remembering Christ; we like receiving his body and blood; we like the promise. We don’t so much care for the betrayal. If we think about it, we assume the betrayal is referring to Judas, and so we move on. Nothing to see here. Yes, Judas is that awful disciple; now give me some Jesus!

Of course it’s rarely that simple

When the disciples gathered around the table on that fateful night it was to celebrate the Passover meal, and in doing so, beyond their knowing, Jesus declared himself to be the new sacrificial lamb. We can’t understand the Lord’s Supper if we don’t understand the Passover, and we can’t understand the depth of the betrayal if we don’t understand the need for the sacrifice. So with that in mind, let’s rewind back to Exodus and the last of the plagues—the killing of the firstborn.

For those of you who may be a bit hazy on your Exodus history, God sent ten plagues upon Egypt while the people of Israel were in slavery there, the last of which being the killing of the firstborn. God required that the Israelites kill a lamb and spread its blood on their doorpost so that when God came upon the land during the night he would pass over their houses, refraining from killing their firstborn children. That night all the firstborns in Egypt, human and animal alike were killed, apart from those who had the blood of the lamb on their door post. This became known as the Passover, and was celebrated every year by the Jewish people.

But here’s the thing about the Passover: it only makes sense because the people were in captivity in Egypt. If the people were happily in the land of Israel and God decided to send some plagues, the sacrifice of the lamb would be a means of appeasing divine wrath rather than a step toward freedom. The reason why the Passover was necessary at all was because of the captivity—because the people of Israel were in slavery.

Fast forward a couple thousand years to the Last Supper and the parallels are obvious. The lamb that must be slaughtered is Jesus and he will be killed to save the people. His blood will save us from death, just as the blood on the doorpost saved the firstborn children of Israel from death. OK, we got that—simple enough.

The thing that's easy to miss is that Jesus needed to become the Passover lamb because things weren't going so well. The people were still in captivity; a different kind of captivity, and in many ways, a more challenging captivity. It's an indiscriminate captivity that we, too, experience today. From the wealthiest and happiest of us all to the poorest and lowliest, we are all subject to the human condition that is our bondage. I once stumbled upon a survey of lottery winners and amputees five years after their respective bounties and tragedies, which discovered no measurable difference in the happiness of the two groups. Let me say that plainly: people who were surprised by the good news of winning millions of dollars in the lottery and people who were surprised by the bad news of losing a limb (either by accident, cancer, or diabetes) were equally happy five years later. I can think of no better example of the universal nature of our bondage to sin.

Part of the reason it is so important that we realize relative wealth and freedom are not means of getting us out of our captivity is because we have an abundance of both living in America in the 21^st century. There has hardly been any moment the history of the world when have we had as much of wealth, freedom and opportunity as we do today, and yet in many ways we are the same as those Israelites. We are very much human, we are convicted of not being good enough; we have mid-life crises, we experience grief, we betray those we love in small ways or in big ways. In fact, because we live longer and have more things our betrayals only seem to multiply. To err is human, it is said, and that is why the Last Supper fell on the night in which he was betrayed.

We are all Judas. The only difference between us is that we rarely have the necessary gumption to show it openly. Our bondage does not look like a Pharaoh ruling with an iron fist, but instead it is our own selfish intentions that betray us and betray Christ at every opportunity.

The modern-day plague is not death of our firstborn children but pointlessness, a lack of meaning. Our burden is a general malaise; the feeling of heading nowhere. We don’t know why anything matters. We don’t know why we do what we do. Even those things that have great importance to us are hard to put into words. Whenever anybody asks us why our faith matters we are speechless and quickly become defensive. Some days we throw our hands in the air and give up because there doesn’t seem to be much of a promise at all. It is those days most of all that we need to hear, “On the night in which he was betrayed,” and in hearing that we must remember the need for the sacrifice in the first place.

We remain in captivity. That is why Jesus had to come. It is why we gather around the table to partake in communion. We receive the body and blood of Christ some days as a reminder of the sacrifice, but just as often as a reminder of our need for it. It is the night in which he was betrayed—by you, by me, by every one of us. And he gave himself all the same