Luke chapter 22

(today's study is done with the TNIV, the NASB, and the KJV - the NIV doesn't want to work this morning)

vs 11

The idea of these guys going up to a stranger out of the blue and asking this is kinda weird. But it wasn't the first time they'd had to do it. It was the second.

vs 12

How nice of him. And where better to celebrate the passover. Except perhaps with your family or something. I don't know. I don't really know the best way to celebrate passover, to be honest.

vs 13

"Preparing the passover" I assume means getting enough wine and a lamb and unleavened bread, and cleaning everything ceremonially and all that stuff.

vs 14

Well, that was a little zoomy bit - we go straight from preparations to Jesus and his buddies reclining at what we assume would be the standard triclinium table.

vs 15

I'm sure that brought a bit of a downer to the whole party. I'm not sure what the typical jewish tradition was to doing the passover - how much partying vs how much cultus, but there's a difference between solemn and sombre. And Jesus is heading for latter.

But I should give him some slack, he is about to die.

vs 16

Does this mean we'll eat the passover in Heaven? I mean, Jesus didn't hang around for a year, so he didn't eat another passover on earth. Or is he just being symbolic, and saying he will "eat it" in heaven, meaning it will be fulfilled.

vs 17

It's a little harder to divide wine than it is bread, so he had to stipulate what was going on here. Otherwise the first one might have drank it all!

vs 18

Now it is interesting here, that Luke does not record Jesus as giving this wine some sort of symbolic significance (certainly not the one we're used to). Instead, he wants them to see this wine as a final drink, never more to be enjoyed until the final coming of the kingdom. He does do it later, don't get me wrong, but this is an extra drink of wine divided amongst everyone that we seem to forget. It is so played down against the other two parts of this passover meal, that we don't even remember it.


vs 19

Now we're in familiar territory. It would have been a pretty solemn occasion - I mean, you don't interrupt a party to do this sort of thing. Does that mean we have to be solemn when we do it? I guess it doesn't hurt to remember the feelings that were floating around at the time, but I think our feelings are allowed to be different. We can be joyful too.

vs 20

Just notice those two small words, 'after supper' (the NASB says "after they had eaten", which makes it ambiguous about whether it was after they had eaten the bread or the whole meal - the greek word here is deipneo - which is a verb meaning 'to sup' which is good enough for me to think they did more than eat a little square of bread). There's a whole meal in between the bread and the wine. That's how you do it in church, right?