Jesus: Taste and See...Part 1

 

 Taste and See  

Taste and see that the Lord is good. 

Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.  Psalm 34:8.

 

 A savory supper with a bitter twist

 

     Before Jesus’ death, his disciples prepared him a celebratory supper. Jesus climbed the steps to the upper room. A week earlier, He’d sent Peter and John to find a donkey for His kingly ride into Jerusalem. During the initial period of Unleavened Bread, these disciples encountered a city dweller carrying a water vessel, and they hired his upper chamber. While the nation prepared for Passover, travelers to Jerusalem could hire rooftop chambers, accessed by exterior staircases without disturbing the owner.

    Approximately fifteen hundred years earlier, Jehovah had delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Under God’s instructions, they killed a perfect lamb, roasted it in the fire, along with bitter herbs, and smeared the blood on the lintel and side posts. The warm aroma of freshly baked unleavened bread and roast lamb permeated their homes as they stood eating the savory supper, ready for a hasty departure. God promised to pass over the firstborn when he saw the shed blood on the doorframe, an offering and atonement for sin. The Egyptians, who had not sprinkled the blood, mourned the loss of their firstborn sons. Immediately, Pharaoh expelled the Israelites, pursuing them to the Red Sea. God parted the waters. Israel passed through, but the Egyptians drowned, and God’s people were delivered from Pharaoh forever. Every year, in the first month of Nissan, they commemorated this mighty rescue as the Feast of Unleavened Bread and Passover.

   And so, about fifteen hundred years later, Jesus and his disciples gathered at sunset, by candlelight, reclining on the floor, as was the custom of the day. They had prepared two or more cups and a bowl of unleavened bread. Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples.

 “Take and eat; this is my body.”

   Jesus was about to be crucified, the sinless sacrificial Lamb of God, and while preparing them for his death, he imbued fresh flavor into the Passover. His sacrificed body, scourged and marred, would be transformed into a pleasing aroma of sacrificial love, rising to God.

   Another disciple, Judas, his betrayer, attended the meal. He dipped his hand into the bowl with Jesus, but Jesus passed the bread to him, coated in fruit paste and bitter herbs. A bittersweet moment. Judas was about to betray Jesus to death, but Jesus was journeying to victory in power and love.

   Jesus looked straight into Judas’s eyes, into his very soul.

 “Do it quickly, Judas!” As Satan paraded the specter of thirty shiny silver coins, Judas departed, plotting to hand Jesus over to the authorities. He hurried to the temple while in the upper room Jesus clasped the cup, gave thanks and shared it with the eleven.

 “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for the forgiveness of sins.”

 Jesus knew his destiny, but for the disciples, his betrayal and his ‘death wine’ tasted bitter. Where had Judas gone, and what outcome awaited the Master and the remaining disciples? Why couldn’t he overcome opposition and deliver Israel from the Romans? The arrest, trials and crucifixion went ahead, and the disciples were scattered.

  As blood and water flowed from Jesus’ pierced side, he satisfied God’s wrath over sin. Remorse gripped Judas, and Peter was stricken with guilt. He denied his Lord and realized what he had done it when the rooster crowed, as Jesus had predicted. They, like us, sinned and fell short of God’s impeccable standards, but Jesus, the actual Passover Lamb, would drink the bitter cup of pain and immeasurable sorrow, tasting death to atone for the sins of the world. I am guilty, and so are you, but through a committed belief in Jesus, we receive God’s forgiveness.

  We remember His broken body, portrayed in the Lord’s Supper, and taste His suffering, but His love sweetens the bitterness of His death, since His victorious resurrection has given us eternal life, free from the penalty of sin. 

 A sour taste?… What does forgiveness 'taste' like? Let's meet in two weeks for the next episode, in which a savory meal grows sweeter than honey.

“He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5 NIV.