Lord's Supper and Passover (2)

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

3 April 2010

It was said in the previous writing on the subject that the Lord's Supper was sandwiched between the evening meal and the Yearly Jewish Passover festival. It was also said that Jesus did not drink any alcohol since His body had to be without sin and in the Bible fermentation and yeast are as a result of sin. It was also clear that the Lord's Supper was preceded by the Footwashing event and the disciples were instructed to also do it in future of course every time they celebrated the Lord's Supper. This is the standard Seventh Day Adventist biblical teaching on this subject here.

About footwashing at the Lord's Supper event, the Syrian Churchfather Ephrem said:

"At the Lord's Supper, Christ sacrificed Himself.

At the Cross, He was sacrificed by others" (Ephrem, Hymn on the Crucifixion 3,1).

Actually, as beautiful as the words sound of Churchfather Ephrem, it is not correct. In Adventist doctrine, Christ offered Himself already to the Trinity in the eternal covenant made between Themselves before the Creation of this universe. Ephesians 1:4 reads: "Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him." In that agreement, Jesus offered Himself voluntary and that was when He sacrificed Himself. A better rephrase of Ephrem would be that at the Lord's Supper, Christ demonstrate that He had given Himself already before. A Seventh Day Adventist will also rephrase theology of the Syrian Orthodox Church when the Bible demands it. This is a case for adjustment.

What do we learn about Jesus Christ in John 13:1-20?

That Jesus is Yahweh.

That Jesus is a prophet.

That Jesus is a servant.

Jesus is Yahweh

As shocking as it may sound to any Jew in those days or our own, the Jew John wrote in John 13:13 that He heard Jesus say: "You call me teacher, and Lord and good, because I am". Kurios or Lord is the expression throughout the socalled Septuagint or LXX for the name of Yahweh in the Hebrew. Jesus said that He is Kurios, thus, He is Yahweh.

Rudolph Bultmann is close to a Baal prophet since he rejects miracles  (Bultmann, Faith and Understanding, 249) the Second Coming (Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, 44 and 47), Judgement (Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, 14), Atonement and a host of other essentials for Christianity, but one thing he said about the Footwashing event is interesting:

"It is grotesque that the Lord's Supper should be represented by the footwashing, especially when the setting is already that of a meal" (see the citation from Bultmann by J. A. T. Robinson's article in NTS). J. A. T. Robinson works similarly with a hermeneutics of suspicion. 

Bultmann was willing to consider the footwashing event as exemplary a lesson in humility but he also wanted to see it with a deeper significance. Seventh Day Adventists sees both the imperative for the exemplary lesson of humility and also the deeper significance that Christ actually said to them: "I your Creator and King of the Universe bows in front of you all the way from Heaven so that I can save you if you accept me and My salvation on your behalf through the incarnation into a human body". Jesus had to bow down all the way from heaven and we only have to bow down half a meter. What a difference.

By bowing down before our fellow human, to wash their feet, we are remembering the Great Incarnation of Jesus Christ on our behalf by the Creator of this World.

Some asks, why did Christ have to die? Imperfect people cannot render perfection needed by the Perfect Creator and thus Christ voluntary gave Himself to die after fulfilling the Perfect life expected and then die because normal humans are under the curse that the wages of sin is death. After living and dying as a human, as us, He truly can be our Substitute and thus available for our Atonement and salvation.

If Jesus had in mind that the Footwashing event should just be a figurative event for us and actually just stop criticizing each other and embrasing one another, then it was not necessary to go so far and wash their feet at all. It would also not be necessary at the Lord's Supper to explain that He was an Example and expect His followers to do the same at the Lord's Supper in future.