An object of the Passion
The Bread and the Cup
The bread and the cup were the ordinary food of the Passover table that Jesus made the signs of His own death. Taking bread, He said it was His body given for them; taking the cup, He called it the new covenant in His blood. A shared meal became the memorial of the cross.
“And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.”Luke 22:19
The object
This was a Passover meal, the yearly remembrance of Israel's rescue out of Egypt, and every element on the table carried meaning. The bread was unleavened, flat and plain, baked without yeast because the people had fled Egypt in haste. The cup was one of several cups of wine drunk in the course of the Passover, each with words of thanks and remembrance. Bread was broken by hand and shared; the cup was blessed and passed. None of this was invented that night. It was the deep, familiar liturgy of a people who told their children, year after year, how God had brought them out with a mighty hand. Into that ancient, well-worn ceremony Jesus spoke something startling and new.
Its part in the Passion
During the supper Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying it was His body given for them, and telling them to do this in remembrance of Him. In the same way, after they had eaten, He took the cup and said it was the new covenant in His blood, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. The meal that looked back to the lamb slain in Egypt now looked forward to the Lamb about to be slain in Jerusalem. He gathered the whole weight of what was coming, His broken body and shed blood, and placed it into their hands as food, so that His death would be not only witnessed but received.
What it shows us of Christ
Jesus reads Himself into the Passover as its fulfillment. The lamb whose blood once turned away death now sits at the table as the true Lamb, about to be slain so that judgment passes over all who are His. The broken bread is His body, willingly given, not taken from Him but handed over. The cup is a new covenant, sealed not in the blood of animals but in His own, promising the forgiveness that the old sacrifices could only foreshadow. He does not merely command us to admire His death; He gives it to us to eat and drink, His life becoming ours. The Living Bread offers Himself so that whoever feeds on Him will live.
Questions people ask
what do the bread and the cup represent
Jesus said the bread was His body given for His people and the cup was the new covenant in His blood, poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Shared at Passover, they reinterpret Israel's rescue from Egypt around His own coming death. He gave them so that His followers would not only remember His sacrifice but actually receive its benefit, His life becoming their food.
why did Jesus use Passover to institute communion
Passover remembered the lamb whose blood spared Israel from death in Egypt. Jesus timed His death to that feast and identified Himself as the true Lamb whose blood turns away judgment for good. By reshaping the bread and cup around His body and blood, He showed that everything Passover pictured was being fulfilled in Him, the deliverance it foreshadowed finally arriving.