Luke 22:7-12

Transcript

00:00:00:14 – 00:00:24:06
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Happy Monday. Hope you’re doing well. Hope your weekend, Super Bowl or otherwise was good. And we’re grateful to have you start the week with us as we continue through the Gospel of Luke and in the 22nd chapter as we move through Holy Week. And I would say that we’re in the part where most of what we think of as Holy Week is coming up.

00:00:24:07 – 00:00:47:43
Clint Loveall
Although Luke does give us some dialog that kind of extends the narrative. But today we are talking about the Passover supper. There’s first a moment of preparation, so I’ll just read here beginning in verse seven for a couple of verses and then we’ll talk it through. Then came the day of unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.

00:00:47:43 – 00:01:06:25
Clint Loveall
So Jesus sent Peter and John saying, Go prepare the Passover meal for us so we may eat it. They asked him, Where do you want us to make preparations? Listen, he said to them, When you’ve entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house. He enters, say to the owner of the house.

00:01:06:25 – 00:01:33:36
Clint Loveall
The teacher says, Where is the guestroom? Where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? He will show you a large room upstairs already furnished. Make preparations for us. There. So they went and found everything as he had told them. And they prepared the Passover meal. If if this is familiar to you and it should be if you’re growing up in church or been in church for a while.

00:01:33:41 – 00:01:58:37
Clint Loveall
There’s an interesting thing about the stories of Passover that each of them that several of them have this moment where there’s a kind of question about what they’re doing. We saw a little bit of this with where you’re going to get the donkey, But but there’s a almost a covert kind of feeling to this. Go ask us. You’re going to see a person.

00:01:58:51 – 00:02:26:39
Clint Loveall
He’s carrying water. Say this to the the homeowner and they’ll show you to the room. It seems it seems complicated. It seems. It feels like Luke could have just as easily told us. They went and found a room and. And prepared it. I don’t know what’s at stake in that, Michael. It’s not clear to me that this is particularly educational.

00:02:26:43 – 00:02:54:13
Clint Loveall
Maybe in its day it meant something. Maybe people knew who these characters were. Or maybe the idea of secrecy mattered to the early church, who it was. In often case in hiding. But this this hasn’t this has a strange feel to it that I don’t think of many other stories having in the Gospel, and Luke maybe makes it the most mysterious.

00:02:54:18 – 00:02:58:48
Clint Loveall
There’s some of this in the other gospels, but this seems odd to me.

00:02:58:53 – 00:03:30:05
Michael Gewecke
You raise a really interesting point. I don’t have an answer, but I want to I want to maybe point us towards the Passover meal and remind us that what the Passover is doing is this. It’s reminding Jews, practicing religious people of their salvation from Egypt. And the Passover is a is a moment in which God gives very clear and specific instructions to those ancient Israelites that God says, you need to do these things.

00:03:30:05 – 00:03:49:12
Michael Gewecke
And if you do them, then you will. Your house will be passed over, you will be spared. And part of if you go back to Exodus and you read that text, part of the value that God communicates to Moses is you need to eat bread that’s not leavened. You need to eat food that is ready to be picked up and go.

00:03:49:13 – 00:04:20:22
Michael Gewecke
It’s a very kind of not comfortable meal because the idea is that it’s a mobile meal. It’s a meal that you could very quickly get out if that is what you’re called in purpose to do. What I think is interesting about a story like this is it it sets a similar kind of tone in the text. There’s a kind of maybe to the reader, it sounds a little bit like a mystery, but there’s a kind of God will provide what you need, even though it’s not going to be all laid out perfectly.

00:04:20:22 – 00:04:41:11
Michael Gewecke
It’s not planned 60 days ahead like a master would plan a party. No, this is a work. When you trust God and all of the things are going to come together and there will be what we need for Passover. I’m not saying that’s what Luke’s trying to show us, but I just think there is a a kind of connection there to the spirit of the Exodus and the Passover itself.

00:04:41:11 – 00:05:00:31
Michael Gewecke
There’s a kind of readiness that was required of the ancient Israelites. And here there’s a kind of faith and trust and readiness that the disciples are being asked to practice as well. And of course, if you’ve been in the church for some time, you know that that language actually lives today in our own practice of the Lord’s Supper.

00:05:00:31 – 00:05:22:53
Michael Gewecke
And I don’t want to rush ahead to that. But some of those themes see practice in the church all the way through history, up to the present day. And I just think in a in a master storytellers account like we have from Luke, these details do spark our interest and rarely, if I think we might argue, never were they unintentional or not thought through.

00:05:22:53 – 00:05:33:34
Michael Gewecke
So even if we don’t know exactly what’s going on here, I assure you that Luke is give it great thought to have it tell the story. And I think there’s some elements in here that strike me as really interesting.

00:05:33:39 – 00:06:02:18
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it is intriguing. Does Jesus know this man? Does he just know there’s going to be a guy there with water? Is there some plan? The disciples. It seems like a lot of secrecy for an event that nearly every Jew in Jerusalem, if not every Jew in Jerusalem, would have been celebrating and preparing for? So let’s let’s focus let’s kind of turn that dial in and focus for a minute on this idea of Passover.

00:06:02:18 – 00:06:32:13
Clint Loveall
So as Michael mentioned, Passover is the Jewish remembrance and celebration of what we call that final plague. When the Israelites, the Hebrews, are slaves in Egypt, the Angel of death comes and those whose door posts are marked with the blood of the sacrificed lamb and the language is important because in the instructions they’re given, it is to be a lamb without blemish.

00:06:32:18 – 00:07:02:24
Clint Loveall
And that that sacrificed lamb whose blood is on the door post, causes the angel of death to go over, pass over the house. And so the Egyptian sons are sacrificed, are killed, but the Israelites are saved. And in the aftermath of that, God through Moses Institute, meets this annual celebration of the Passover, where they are to retell the story.

00:07:02:24 – 00:07:36:09
Clint Loveall
And if you’ve not, if it’s not something with which you’re familiar, it would be worth your time to Google Seder Supper, SPDR or Passover meal. See if you could find the liturgy. It is a very scripted meal. There is salt and water to symbolize tears. There’s horseradish to symbolize bitterness, there’s unleavened bread to symbolize the Russian to escape Egypt.

00:07:36:14 – 00:08:10:12
Clint Loveall
Every part of the meal is designed to retell the story of deliverance. In fact, and I won’t get this, this may not be exactly right, but the Passover meal starts with a liturgy that begins with words very close to when we were slaves in Pharaoh’s Egypt. And so each time they celebrate the Passover, they relive and retell that story of God’s deliverance and this becomes an important backdrop for the gospel story.

00:08:10:12 – 00:08:47:58
Clint Loveall
And we’ll talk about that in a moment. But I don’t know, I don’t know what the the Christian equivalent of this is. My God, in some ways we could liken it to communion, but it’s less occasional. It it it is more infrequent. Most Christians celebrate communion monthly or quarterly. It would be maybe Easter like in terms of its importance on the calendar, but that the tone would be very different.

00:08:47:58 – 00:09:01:53
Clint Loveall
I’m not sure we have a good equivalent that helps us make sense of this, but it’s very hard to understand the nuance of the crucifixion and resurrection stories if you don’t have a working understanding of the Passover.

00:09:01:57 – 00:09:19:37
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. So to that end, I just want to we’re not going to linger here, but I want to put this up so that you will see this. This is Exodus chapter 12, and we would definitely recommend as part of the study this week, it would be worth your time going to Exodus Chapter 12, seeing this language about verse five here.

00:09:19:37 – 00:09:50:15
Michael Gewecke
LAMB Without blemish, which Clint just mentioned, the door posts, verse seven, we’re going to have talk about what what you should do with your leaven and your bread. All of this is in there. And all of that is to say that while for us that may need some education and we have to remember that the people who received this book from Luke, the first disciples, were worshiping in synagogues.

00:09:50:15 – 00:10:32:19
Michael Gewecke
They were a part of Jewish families and Jewish practice in Jewish life that the earliest Christian church grew up alongside that religious tradition. So these themes and this knowledge, this practice that Clint is talking about, he would have been known to most Christians, certainly as the church was close to its center in Jerusalem and then as it extended out beyond that time and of course, became more and more gentile, then it became more, more and more difficult to sort of pass on some of those previous traditions because the Christian traditions themselves began to take root in the church, began to have its own practice, liturgies in worship and in church.

00:10:32:24 – 00:10:58:08
Michael Gewecke
But it’s worth all that to say. It’s worth recognizing that the new Testament is full of allusions and references and and foundations built upon the Old Testament. And those stories that God’s salvific work for the people of Israel. And that is a a huge precursor to the text that we’re going to read. And this supper that Jesus has with his disciples.

00:10:58:09 – 00:11:17:45
Michael Gewecke
I don’t know that we could overstate how important the Passover context is to the meal that Jesus has with His disciples. It matters. And and sometimes we need to sort of educate ourselves or get up to speed to sort of get all of the senses of that.

00:11:17:49 – 00:11:46:23
Clint Loveall
Well, I think we I think we drastically undervalue it, Michael. I mean, I don’t think it occurs to a lot of Christians that when we talk about The Last Supper and for us that becomes the occasion of communion. Jesus Last Supper is a religious feast. That is a that has a very scripted liturgy, including the ingredients and the menu.

00:11:46:28 – 00:12:19:52
Clint Loveall
And Jesus is eating the Passover meal, the Seder supper with his disciples when when it says tomorrow, when we read he took bread and broke it. That bread snapped because it wasn’t a loaf. It was a way for because he was using and love and bread. When it says cup, that was the cup that held the salt water and then the herbs are dipped in it and then it’s filled with wine that this is all the context out of which we get our own story.

00:12:19:57 – 00:13:04:58
Clint Loveall
And I think far too often we we under appreciate the context. Jesus is in Jesus institutes what we call the Last Supper at a religious supper. And there’s layers. And I think again, knowing that, especially for Matthew, for Luke, Mark, John does his own stuff, but that the Jewishness and Jesus own religious context help tremendously to to clarify and understand the subtext of the stories.

00:13:04:58 – 00:13:29:41
Clint Loveall
And so this idea about preparation that they’re there making, that they’re not just showing up there, they’re preparing the Passover meal and it’s in the hands of Peter and John that, you know, there is a solemn ness to this that I think we can miss if if we don’t try to put a little work in understanding the context.

00:13:29:46 – 00:13:54:18
Michael Gewecke
So there’s a temptation for me in this conversation that Russia had to the next conversation, which is the meal and all of its theological significance. But we would be a missed to do that if we failed to pause long enough to see to to your point, Clint, that this meal is a somber meal. It’s a remembrance of God saving.

00:13:54:18 – 00:14:24:32
Michael Gewecke
Yes, God’s might and God’s perseverance of his people, Yes. But also of death, of being spared from calamity of the reality of needing to be rescued from subjectivity, of being made subject to Taffaro. And by the way, in Jesus’s day, doing so at the in Jerusalem, which is captive to Rome, once again, the people are experiencing captivity in their own way.

00:14:24:32 – 00:14:51:59
Michael Gewecke
So these themes were powerful. The night that Jesus gathered before the church came to realize the other layers of which there’s an infinite. But before even we got to that, there was already a kind of depth to the preparation for this meal. It is a solemn meal, and we especially may be busy Americans. If that’s the camp you find yourself in, we find ourselves often rushing from table to table.

00:14:52:13 – 00:15:20:16
Michael Gewecke
Sometimes we we we fail to recognize this substantial providential kind of theological ideas of preparing a feast of God, giving us what we need for that meal. This particular observance would have made that explicit that that we we need to prepare, but also because in doing so, God has prepared God’s giving us what we need. We need to trust God is the God who rescued us then.

00:15:20:31 – 00:15:44:16
Michael Gewecke
Ergo, Exodus is the God that we call and recognize to be present with us in the now all of that’s happening in the preparation of this meal. And and we should see that because it will provide really valuable, important, essential frames to then also see what Jesus does that is absolutely unique to his observance of that meal and how Christians come to understand it later.

00:15:44:31 – 00:16:20:12
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think in order to understand the new thing Jesus does that we’ll look at tomorrow, it is just helpful to understand the old thing that Jesus has done, you know, in in rough numbers. Jesus is in is in his early thirties at this point in the story. And that means for probably 30 times, Jesus has celebrated this Passover with his mother and father, later with his mother, when when Joseph dies, probably already more than once with his disciples.

00:16:20:16 – 00:17:00:09
Clint Loveall
This is not new for Jesus. This would have been a part of his annual spiritual life. He He would have He would have known the liturgy. He would have understood that this is something that he has done multiple, multiple times. And yet in this context, he approaches it and gives it new meaning, a new life, new direction. And for those of us who inherit those new things, new, new at the time, I do think some understanding of the previous things helps deepen our own appreciation for what it is that that we inherit and receive.

00:17:00:14 – 00:17:30:09
Michael Gewecke
A detail that strikes me I don’t have an answer to this, Clint, but you know my love for the Gospel of John, it’s hard for me to read this text and not have this small what may be a small detail in verse ten, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you, follow him into the house. And one of the things that my imagination goes to is, of course, in John, there’s a wedding in Qana where water and wine play a very important role in the beginning of Jesus’s ministry.

00:17:30:09 – 00:17:48:00
Michael Gewecke
Now, that’s not to say that that’s exactly what’s happening here, but these are some of the imaginative places I think that we go when we read the scriptures will you might see a detail and wonder, what is that? And for me today in this reading, if I was going to do some further study, I think it would be on that detail.

00:17:48:00 – 00:17:52:17
Michael Gewecke
I’d be interested what’s going on? Why follow the person with the jar of water? That’s an interesting.

00:17:52:17 – 00:18:12:18
Clint Loveall
Well, and I mean, I think strangeness abounds in those couple verses, Michael, because first of all, you have a man carrying water. Why is that happening? Secondly, he carries the water into the house, but he’s not the owner of the house because you’re supposed to say to the owner of the house, so is that a servant? Is it what?

00:18:12:23 – 00:18:17:35
Clint Loveall
There’s just there’s nothing but question marks in that. And and if they mean something.

00:18:17:40 – 00:18:18:51
Michael Gewecke
Yeah.

00:18:18:55 – 00:18:30:27
Clint Loveall
I don’t know what they are. Maybe. Maybe there’s a Luke Scholar out there who will one day find this and help us. But I, I think those are head scratchers for me.

00:18:30:32 – 00:18:50:34
Michael Gewecke
Head scratchers are most often, I think, opportunities to enter into the text deeper and I certainly hope that, you know, we can all avail ourselves of those. Thanks for being with us here today. In many ways, this is a beginning note of a much deeper song, so I hope that you will join us for the continuance of this study tomorrow.

00:18:50:34 – 00:18:53:22
Michael Gewecke
But until then, be blessed and we’ll see you soon.

00:18:53:22 – 00:18:54:07
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.