Passover meal at Upper Moutere
When I was in my late teens, we used to have an Evening Service. One Sunday night we showed up and the church was closed, eventually we were led a few kilometres down the road to a friend’s hop kiln. The upper drying floor had been cleared out and it was there that we participated in a re-creation of the ‘last supper’- it made quite an impression on me.
When I became the pastor here at St Paul’s I saw there was an opportunity to experience this meal in our own way. I did some more research and found I wasn’t comfortable leading a modern Seder as I’m not Jewish and it is just so different to what Jesus would have experienced. By the time Jesus was celebrating Passover, it seems that meal had moved on from the mere basics of lamb, flatbread and bitter herbs; there was wine, Jesus and the disciples were dipping something into bowls during the meal, and there was an idea that the Passover feast was incorporated, or held, within a meal with more food elements on offer.
So, our Passover meal has a mix of 1st century staples- bean stew, chickpea and white bean dips, red lentil stew, baked fish (snapper freshly caught by Jerry!), barley and herb salad, olive and mint dip, dried figs and dates. Along with the bitter herbs, flat bread and lamb, other representative food elements may have been added by Jesus’ day, like salty water (tears) and some apple, walnut and date paste (representing the mortar used to build cities).
As we ate, we looked at the original Passover story, and the significance of the various parts of the meal and what God was doing. Jesus took elements of the meal that retold how God had taken the Hebrew people out of captivity and oppression and said that they are about him. That the bread and wine are his body and his blood, a new covenant being made as God once again steps into human history and does something to lead people out of captivity and oppression (this time from sin and death).
One of the aspects I love about Passover is that even though it has been happening for some 3500 years, and things have been added, we still have a pretty good idea of what happened. The prayers Jesus said before he offered the bread and wine (and we can pray them today) and the Hymn he and the disciples sang before they went with Jesus into the garden while he prayed were likely from the Hallel Psalms (Psalm 113-118). We played a beautiful, modernised setting of Psalm 118 in Hebrew to close our meal. To reflect on the words of this Psalm, that Jesus may have had ringing in his ears as moved towards the cross, was quite powerful.
This year we had more than 30 people, from all ages join us. The food was delicious, the flowing conversation was punctuated by (what I hope) were meaningful moments of reflection on what Jesus was doing and what he meant for us to know as he gave us this meal to share in remembrance of him.
Pastor Andy Marr
Upper Moutere Community Church
