The Central Event
Elaine Utting
We have just celebrated Easter. Perhaps you took part in different celebrations marking the events of Holy Week. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, a Good Friday meditation.
Maybe you were giving out Easter eggs in the centre of town, and telling people God loves them. Perhaps you joined a sunrise celebration of the risen Jesus on Easter Sunday. Or later in the day joined a congregation joyfully proclaiming ‘Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!’
Maybe you are still celebrating today - meeting with friends or family - doing something special on the Bank Holiday - still enjoying your Easter eggs.
In our home group last week we celebrated by eating a Passover meal together. We followed a script that linked together three things:
The origin of the meal (Exodus 12), when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt and the angel of the Lord ‘passed over’ the houses of the Israelites but struck down the firstborn in the Egyptian homes, so that Pharaoh finally told them to go out in freedom.
The Passover meal that Jesus and his disciples ate together before his arrest and crucifixion, which we now call the Last Supper (John 13). This was the context of the new commandment Jesus gave to his followers: to eat bread and drink wine in remembrance of him (Matthew 26:26-28).
The communion service we hold regularly in our churches now, which Jesus commanded at the Last Supper, and has developed over time from the earliest celebrations of the the new believers (Acts 2:42-47).
The day after our meal this paragraph was in my daily reading:
‘At the last supper, Jesus instituted the service of communion so that we would not forget the central events of world history - the death and resurrection of Jesus.’
(From The Bible In One Year, written by Nicky and Pippa Gumbel)
At our Passover meal there was lots of food, a lot of fun and laughter, and solemn moments too as we ate the bread and drank the wine. It was a very human, accessible way to remember Jesus, the history that foreshadowed his death for us, and the new life we now have that takes us to eternity.
The risen Jesus says:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Revelation 22:13
