My pastor’s sermon on Easter introduced a nice bit of new information concerning Jesus’ claims of divinity. He did make other, more verbal claims to Godhood but this one is more powerful if you understand the context.
During the Last Supper, the seder meal* that He shared with His disciples:
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”
The bread mentioned here is most likely the afikomen bread:
The afikomen is a piece of matzah, (unleavened bread) that is broken before the Passover meal. Part of it is wrapped in a cloth and hidden. At the end of the meal it is brought back, distributed to the participants and eaten as the final morsel.
In today’s Jewish celebration, the second or middle of three pieces of unleavened bread is taken from a special bag called the matzah tosh. The bread is removed, broken, and the portion that is wrapped in the cloth becomes the afikomen that is then hidden from view.
From the same Jews For Jesus link, it explains why the afikomen bread is significant (I took the superscripted references out):
Rabbi Hillel (who was most active between 30 BC-10AD) drew special attention to the afikomen as he led people through Passover celebrations. And, in the first century, Rabbi Gamaliel said that the bread pointed to the speed at which salvation came to Israel in Egypt. Further, we know that by the first century, some Jewish people viewed the bread as symbolic of the people of Israel and the hidden piece, the afikomen, as a symbol of the Messiah, who remained hidden from view.
Jesus, quite deliberately, through His words at the Matthew 26 consecration, is claiming savior status. Given the tradition in which His disciples were raised, there was little room for doubt to what He was saying. Non-Jewish minds will pass over (heh) this little sliver of context that adds a lot of meaning.
* There’s some dispute as to whether the Last Supper was actually an official seder or something else. I’m calling it a seder here for brevity’s sake.
2 Comments
Question. Was the bread wheat, mixed, or one of the other allowed non-leavened grains?
Hi JT. Good question, but I’m not really sure. Given that the house they were in had enough stock on hand to support Jesus and the 12, they probably had a single-grain matzo and didn’t have to rely on mixing grains to have enough matzo on hand. This is also assuming that it’s preferred and/or easier to make the bread with one grain and not many.