Last Supper 7 - Matt 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:15-20

The institution of the sacrament is only a few short verses, but there is so much more that goes into it. If we were to take our religion straight from the Bible, it would be easy to put minimal emphasis on the sacrament because the Sermon on the Mount took up 3 chapters, and the sacrament only takes up a few verses, so volume wise, it would be easy to discount its importance. The first point about the sacrament comes courtesy of my son, who asked, “why do we always do the bread first?” The IM quotes Elder Jeffrey R. Holland as teaching, “With a crust of bread, always broken, blessed, and offered first, we remember his bruised body and broken heart, his physical suffering on the cross where he cried, ‘I thirst,’ and finally, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ The Savior’s physical suffering guarantees that through his mercy and grace every member of the human family shall be freed from the bonds of death and be resurrected triumphantly from the grave.”

The bread represents Christ’s body. With his body he felt physical pain, his body was able to release His spirit and die. With His death and through the atonement The resurrection is what is promised to all who have ever been born, ever, and it is given as a free gift because of the fallen world that we’ve been born into. The bread comes first as a promise of an immortal, glorified body. It also is a reminder of the physical pain that the Savior suffered for us, so that we could repent and not have to suffer. Sometimes I wonder if it is too easy, if that’s why the sacrament isn’t taken as seriously as it could be. It’s easy to eat a tiny piece of bread and drink a sip of water, but making promises to God is serious business. I wish I could find this John Bytheway quote, it says something like, “some friends will go to parties on the weekends, but when they ask you, as a priest, what you are going to do this weekend you can respond by saying that Sunday morning, you will putting hundreds of people under covenant with God.” When he said it like that, it’s quite powerful.
The IM continues quoting Elder Holland, saying, “With a small cup of water we remember the shedding of Christ’s blood and the depth of his spiritual suffering, anguish which began in the Garden of Gethsemane. There he said, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.’ He was in agony and ‘prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’ The Savior’s spiritual suffering and the shedding of his innocent blood, so lovingly and freely given, paid the debt for what the scriptures call the ‘original guilt’ of Adam’s transgression. Furthermore, Christ suffered for the sins and sorrow and pains of all the rest of the human family, providing remission for all our sins as well, upon conditions of obedience to the principles and ordinances of the gospel he taught. As the Apostle Paul wrote, we were ‘bought with a price.’ What an expensive price and what a merciful purchase! That is why every ordinance of the gospel focuses in one way or another on the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, and surely that is why this particular ordinance with all its symbolism and imagery comes to us more readily and more repeatedly than any other in our life.”
While the bread represents the promise of the resurrection of the body, the water represents the salvation of the spirit. The resurrection is a free gift to all, but eternal life will not be forced on any who does not want it. There are no strings attached to the resurrection, it comes to all no matter what, righteous or wicked, but to gain eternal life is a choice that we have to make. It will take conscious effort to work the Jesus to change who we are and how we behave. This is not a guaranteed gift to all no matter what, but still a free gift to all who are willing to participate. The beautiful part about this is that it’s self-paced, no rush to move any faster than you are ready for. The coach (Jesus) is patient, kind, long suffering, hopeful, omniscient, loves us deeply and is intensely invested in our success.
The second point about the sacrament that I want to address is the phrase that Jesus uses “This is my blood of the New Testament.” I had no idea why this is significant until I read the IM explanation which says, “The Savior’s statement, ‘This is my blood of the new testament,’ alluded to important terms in the Old Testament. The word that is translated testament can mean ‘covenant.’ When the Lord made His covenant with the children of Israel, the people covenanted to obey the words of the Lord. Moses offered a sacrifice to the Lord, and then he took blood from the sacrifice and sprinkled it on the people, saying, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you.’ When Jesus Christ alluded to this statement, as recorded in Matthew 26:28, He taught that the new ‘testament,’ or covenant, was about to be ratified with blood, just like the old covenant, and that the blood He would shed for us would cover our sins and blot them out, just as the sacrificial blood symbolically covered the people in Moses’ day.
That is pretty gross, but I guess that’s how things were done back then. I do really like when Jesus’ actions are tied into to prophecy or procedure of the Old Testament because I feel like there is just that more validation, and I think it’s really interesting to understand things in a way that tie both worlds together. The IM continues, “The prophet Jeremiah recorded, ‘Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel,’ indicating that Israel’s old covenant with the Lord would be replaced. When Jesus presented the cup of wine to His Apostles, He was signaling the fulfillment of the old covenant and the establishment of the new covenant.” It’s interesting to consider that the ancient scriptures that the Jews had at the time of Christ foretold the time when God would change His covenant with Israel, but when he came to do it, they said “thanks but no thanks.” Not all of them, but enough to make it a majority, I believe.
Lastly, in all four of the records of institution of the sacrament, Jesus ended by saying, “But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” The obvious answer here is that Jesus is saying that he won’t eat or drink anything until after he’s resurrected, but the IM suggests that it’s more than that saying, “Thus, the sacrament not only symbolizes the Savior’s Atonement but also looks forward in anticipation to the time when He will return to the earth in glory.”