Jesus' Last Meal, Part 4 (Maundy Thursday)

Jesus' last meal was a Passover Seder. Passover's were always eaten with four cups of wine in memory of the four fulfilled promises of salvation God gave Israel in slavery.

The promise of the third cup: I will redeem you with an outstretched arm… Exodus 6:6

Over the last several months, I’ve been becoming more and more aware of the reality that there are today 27 million people in SLAVERY, many of these are teen age girls who are tricked or kidnapped and thrown into dark wet, cockroach-infested rooms, starved and drugged and beaten and raped until there wills are broken and they finally agree to have sex with their first customer. And then they spend years servicing up to 10 or more men in a day. And it’s just so horrific it breaks my heart and makes me angry.

But, what just puts me over the edge is that when someone finally comes to rescue them, to take them out, to free them, often times they won’t go. They’ll deny that they are slaves. They’ll say they want to be there. Why? Because they are afraid and ashamed. They’re convinced that that they’re nothing more than bodies, so much so that they simply don’t believe they deserve freedom.

The truth is, it is not enough to take their chains off it’s not enough to free them, slaves have got to be redeemed! The Hebrew word for redeem is Gah-al and it means either someone pays a ransom price, or someone takes care of their helpless relative. Either way, redemption is about a major personal cost that says to a person, “you’re worth something.” That is what former slaves need.

So when God’s people are in slavery, he doesn’t just say “I’m going to free you,” he also tells them “I’m going to redeem you with an outstretched arm…I’m going to go out of my way, I’m going stretch out my arm and extend myself and pour out myself for you.” And this is what Jesus was saying when he took the third cup, called the cup of redemption, and told his disciples: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." Luke 22

I just think about what must have been going through Jesus’ mind that night, as he sat eating this meal with his closest friends, knowing that his whole life has been leading up to these moments, knowing what was going to happen, that he was about to die a gruesome and shameful death. Staring that reality in the face and feeling the weight of that fear. And I imagine him, looking down into the red wine in his cup and thinking about the blood poured out the night of the first Passover, the blood of the firstborn sons and spotless lambs, just gazing into it, and knowing: what happened to them is going to happen to me. And then looking around the room at these dear, dear friends thinking “It’s worth it because, when what happened to the lamb happens to me, then what happened to the Israelite slaves is going to happen to those that I love, and they’ll be truly free, more free than the can imagine. And he says it’s worth the cost. It’s worth my death to redeem you. So he looked his friends in the eyes and he told them “this is my blood, and it is poured out for you and for you, and for you."

What if someone looked you in the eye and said, do you know what you’re worth? You’re worth everything to me. I’ll pour out my life for you. I’d die for you. It’s so cliché, but what if they did? What if you mattered that much? What if that’s what God meant when he promised: “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm”?

That was the promise of the third cup.

In the final post in this series, we look at the fourth cup.