Last Supper
From MormonWiki
The Last Supper, or the Lord’s Supper, refers to the feast of unleavened bread, or the Passover feast, that Jesus Christ shared with his disciples where he instituted the sacrament.
Christ used the imagery He ordained as Jehovah to typify Himself. He used the unleavened bread as the first sacrament. Instead of looking forward to the Messiah to come, His disciples would now use the sacrament in remembrance of Christ's atonement. The Passover wine, representing joy, would now serve as a reminder of His blood atonement in the Garden of Gethsemane.
President Howard W. Hunter taught:
- As the Gospel of John makes clear, the feast of the Passover marked significant milestones during the mortal ministry of Christ. At the first Passover in his ministry, Jesus made his mission known by purifying the temple when he drove from its portals the money changers and those who sold animals. In the second Passover Jesus manifested his power by the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Christ here introduced the symbols that would later have even greater meaning in the Upper Room. “I am the bread of life,” he said. “He that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35.)
- Of course, it would be the feast of his last Passover that would give full expression to this ancient celebration. By that final week of his mortal ministry, Jesus knew clearly what this particular Passover would mean to him. Trouble was already in the air. Matthew records:
- “When Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, “Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.” (Matt. 26:1–2.)
- Knowing full well what awaited him, Jesus asked Peter and John to make arrangements for the paschal meal. He told them to ask of the master of a local house, “Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the passover with my disciples?” (Luke 22:11.)
- The loneliness of his birth was to be, in a sense, duplicated in the loneliness of his death. Foxes had holes and birds had nests, but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head either in his nativity or in his last hours of mortality [see Matthew 8:20].
- Finally, preparations for the Passover meal were complete, in keeping with nearly fifteen hundred years of tradition. Jesus sat down with his disciples and, after the eating of the sacrificial lamb and of the bread and wine of this ancient feast, he taught them a newer and holier meaning of that ancient blessing from God.
- He took one of the flat, round loaves of unleavened bread, said the blessing over it, and broke it into pieces that he distributed to the Apostles, saying: “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19.)
- As the cup was being poured, he took it and, giving thanks, invited them to drink of it, saying, “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” (Luke 22:20.) Paul said of it: “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.” (1 Cor. 11:26.)
- The bread and wine, rather than the animals and herbs, would become emblems of the great Lamb’s body and blood, emblems to be eaten and drunk reverently and in remembrance of him forever.
- In this simple but impressive manner the Savior instituted the ordinance now known as the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. With the suffering of Gethsemane, the sacrifice of Calvary, and the resurrection from a garden tomb, Jesus fulfilled the ancient law and ushered in a new dispensation based on a higher, holier understanding of the law of sacrifice. No more would men be required to offer the firstborn lamb from their flock, because the Firstborn of God had come to offer himself as an “infinite and eternal sacrifice.”
- This is the majesty of the Atonement and Resurrection, not just a passover from death, but a gift of eternal life by an infinite sacrifice.
- How fitting it was during the observance of this ancient covenant of protection [the Passover meal] that Jesus should institute the emblems of the new covenant of safety—the emblems of his own body and blood. As he took the bread and broke it, and took the cup and blessed it, he was presenting himself as the Lamb of God who would provide spiritual nourishment and eternal salvation.[1]
