Take it;
this is my body. This is my blood
of the covenant, which will be shed for many.
Mk 14:12-16, 22-26
v. 12 - On the first day of the Feast of
Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb,his disciples said to
him, “Where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?”
Or, to bring out the force of the Greek
idiom, 'when it was customary to slaughter the Passover lamb'. The Greek verb
(thuo) can mean either' slaughter' or 'sacrifice', and it is difficult to say
how far sacrificial ideas were associated with the Passover in the time of
Christ. The offering of the lamb counted as a sacrifice and the meal was a
sacrificial meal, but the later tendency was very largely to subordinate the
sacrificial aspect of the meal to its aspect as a commemoration of the Exodus.
v. 13- He sent two of his disciples and said
to them, “Go into the city and a man will meet you, carrying a jar of water.
Follow him.
Jars, as opposed to water-bottles, were not
normally carried by men in the East, so the man in question could readily have
been identified; however, it is doubtful if St Mark, who viewed the incident in
terms of the supernatural, envisaged the need for such mundane means of
identification. Likewise he will have seen the householder's willing response
as supernaturally motivated.
v. 14 - Wherever he enters,
say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room
where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’
My guest room: the 'my' is rather strange;
if it means any more than 'destined for me' there is perhaps a hint of
messianic sovereignty in the word.
v. 15 - Then he will show you a large upper
room furnished and ready. Make the preparations for us there.
Furnished: The Greek word (stronnuo)
normally means to 'spread' or 'strew' but its meaning here is not certain.
English translators usually take it to mean' provided with the necessary
furniture' - particularly, divans and carpets, but it may be little more than a
synonym for, 'ready', or it could mean 'paved', 'floored'.
v. 22 - While they were eating, he took
bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take it;
this is my body.”
Bread: Better perhaps 'a loaf'. The Greek
word (artos) would most naturally suggest leavened bread, but Dr Jeremias has
produced abundant evidence to show that it could also mean unleavened bread.
Blessed: Or 'said grace over it'. The Greek
word (eulogein), when used by Jews in this sort of context, implied not so much
the hallowing, or consecrating, of the bread (though doubtless that was thought
to be effected indirectly), as a solemn blessing or thanking of God over the
bread. The form used would be something like: 'Praised be thou, O Lord our God,
king of the world, who causest bread to come forth from the earth', though
Jesus may have used a slightly variant form. This grace was said by the head of
the table, and when the company had replied with an Amen, he broke a piece of
the loaf for each person (at Passover it had to be at least the size of an
olive) and gave or passed it to them. It will thus be seen that the action here
ascribed to Jesus (both with the bread and the wine) is fully in accord with
the Jewish custom of his day. It is of course possible that in the Gentile
circles in which St Mark moved, the blessing had come to be understood as a
direct consecration of the bread.
v. 23 - Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and
gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
Gave thanks: The Greek word (eucharistein)
seems to be used simply as an alternative translation of the same Aramaic word
translated ‘bless' in v. 22. At the end of the meal it was customary to say a
long grace over a cup of wine. If this was a Passover meal, the cup will have
been the third cup, the so-called ‘cup of blessing’ but in any case, according
to Jewish custom, the meal will have intervened between vv. 22 and 23 (cf. 1
Cor. 11:25 'after supper' and Luke 22:20); the fact that no one would get that
impression from a simple reading of Mark shows how little concerned St Mark was
with the original setting of the incident, Passover meal or not. Indeed it is
difficult to think St Mark intended to give the impression of any gap here; and
in that he was surely influenced by contemporary Christian Eucharistic
practice, according to which the wine immediately followed the bread as it does
today.
One of the arguments for thinking the Last
Supper was a Passover meal is that ordinary Jews could not often afford wine
apart from Passover; on the other hand it is not certain whether in Jesus' time
a common cup was used at the Passover or whether each person used an individual
cup. Perhaps the emphatic words 'they drank of it every one' (so the Greek) are
directed to some in the early Church who objected to drinking from a common cup
at the Eucharist, or who, on conscientious grounds, were in the habit of taking
communion in one kind only.
v. 24 - He said to them, “This is my blood
of the covenant, which will be shed for many.
This is my blood of the covenant: For the
background see Exod. 24:8, Zech. 9:11, and cf Heb. 9:15ff . The words imply
reflection on the blood of the covenant at Mount Sinai, which, according to
ancient Jewish interpretations, had atoning power. As the blood established the
covenant of Moses, so the blood of Jesus established the new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34)
which had as its content perfect fellowship with God (Jer. 31:33) founded upon
God's forgiveness (Jer. 31:34b) in his kingdom. As Moses' sprinkling of the
blood on the people ensured their participation in the blessings of the old
covenant, so the disciples' drinking of the wine ensures their participation in
the blessings of the new.
However, the phrase which translates
literally 'the blood of me of the covenant' is very harsh in Greek and
virtually impossible to retranslate into Aramaic, and if the original saying
contained any reference to the covenant idea, it will have been in some such
form as that given in 1 Cor. 11:25 ('this cup means a new covenant which is to
be instituted by my blood, i.e. by my death'). But there are some grounds for
thinking that the covenant reference is an addition even in St Paul's version
of the saying, and probably in its original form the saying contained no
reference to the idea of covenant, though that of course leaves open the
question whether Jesus thought of his life's work in terms of the establishing
of a new covenant between God and man - an idea very prominent in St Paul's
thought.
For many: Commentators often refer to Is.
53:12, but the similarity is not really very close, and the occurrence of the
words for many in both passages is not as significant as it might seem, for the
words are a translation of a common Semitic idiom. Neither Hebrew nor Aramaic
has a word for 'all' in the plural, and this use of 'many' does duty instead;
the meaning is not exclusive (' some, but not all') but inclusive (' all in
contrast with one').
v. 25 - Amen, I say to you, I shall not
drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the
kingdom of God.”
The ideas and vocabulary are Semitic. For the
final state of blessedness pictured as a banquet cf. e.g. Is. 25:6, 2 Baruch 29:5ff.,
Matt. 8:11, Luke 14:15, Rev. 19:9. Amen (truly)’ and 'fruit of the vine' are
both Semitisms, and according to the version in some MSS. the verse contains
further Semitisms.
The fact that St Luke's version of this
saying occurs at a different point in his account (Luke 22:16-18 - before the
institution) suggests that it may have circulated at some time more or less
independently; but that this or some similar eschatological saying was associated
with the institution from the earliest times is suggested by the evidence of 1Cor.
11, where a similar eschatological interest appears in connection with the
institution (v. 26 after vv. 23-25), and by the consistent association of
eschatological expectations with the Eucharist in the early Church. Otto is no
doubt right in seeing the significance of the original event as closely bound
up with Jesus' expectation of the imminent kingdom of God: Jesus qualifies the
disciples ‘to receive his testament, not by feeding their souls, but by lifting
them out of the secular sphere by the atoning power of his death, and consecrating
them for the kingdom of God’ (The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man, p. 297).
Cf. Dibelius: ‘when the fellowship of the parousia commences this memorial
table-fellowship ends.’
See also << Corpus Christi >>
ADVISORY: I will be away for 60 days. I don't know if I will be able to do an exegesis every Sunday. You may go to the blogs of 2009 as an alternative.
