March 9, 2026
The connection between Passover and communion is not a theological footnote — it is the entire foundation of what Jesus did at the Last Supper. When Jesus broke bread and lifted the cup that Thursday night in Jerusalem, he was standing inside a 3,500-year-old story and declaring that it had always been pointing to him.
Most of us who have taken communion have done it dozens of times. The small wafer, the tiny cup, a few seconds of silence, and then we move on. It becomes familiar fast. But the twelve people sitting at that table with Jesus were not going through the motions — they were watching their most sacred annual meal get completely reimagined in real time. Understanding what they understood that night changes everything about what communion means.
The Passover is widely considered the oldest continuously practiced religious feast in human history, observed every year for roughly 3,600 years. It commemorates a single night in Egypt when God delivered the Hebrew people from generations of slavery. Each family was instructed to sacrifice an unblemished lamb, paint its blood on the doorposts of their home, and eat the roasted lamb inside. When the angel of death moved through Egypt, the blood on the door was the sign of protection — not because the family inside was especially righteous, but because they were covered by the blood of the lamb.
Every year since, Jewish families have gathered for the Passover seder — a multi-sensory ceremonial meal with bitter herbs to remember suffering, saltwater to remember tears, unleavened bread to remember the haste of leaving, and four cups of wine each named for one of God's promises. It is living memory turned into a meal.
Jesus did not stumble into the Passover by accident. Luke 22 records that he sent Peter and John specifically to prepare the Passover — and he was deliberate about it. He chose to anchor his final night with his disciples inside this specific river of tradition because he intended to stand in it and redirect it entirely.
If you want to go deeper into the Exodus story behind the Passover, learn more here.
At a traditional Passover seder, three pieces of matzah are placed in a special cloth envelope. The middle piece — called the afikomen — is broken, wrapped in a linen cloth, and hidden somewhere in the house. Later in the meal, children search for it, and whoever finds it receives a prize. No one is entirely sure why this tradition exists. When the pastor behind this sermon asked his host at a Passover seder, the answer he received was simply: "Some traditions are meant to be followed, not understood."
But consider what this ritual looks like from the other side of Easter: a piece of bread that is broken, wrapped in cloth, hidden away — and then found again. Jesus picked up that middle piece of matzah, the afikomen, and said, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19, NIV). He was not adding a layer of meaning to an existing symbol. He was claiming the symbol as his own.
The matzah itself is striped and pierced in its preparation — a detail that would have been invisible for fifteen centuries of Passover celebrations until the disciples watched what happened to Jesus on Friday. Isaiah 53:5 describes the suffering servant: "He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed." The bread they had eaten every Passover looked like that prophecy. They just hadn't seen it yet.
When Jesus broke it and said this is my body, he collapsed 1,500 years of tradition into a single moment. Every Passover they had ever celebrated had been preparing them to receive this.
There are four cups of wine at a traditional Passover seder, each named for one of God's four promises to Israel in Exodus 6. The first is the cup of sanctification. The second is the cup of deliverance — where participants dip a finger and let a drop fall for each of the ten plagues, remembering that their joy is diminished by the suffering of others. The third is the cup of redemption, poured to commemorate God's promise: I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. The fourth cup, sometimes called the cup of acceptance or the cup of praise, closes the meal.
Jesus picked up the third cup — the cup of redemption — and said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:20, NIV). Redemption means to be claimed. It means someone saying: you are mine, and I am paying the price to prove it. That cup had carried that meaning for centuries. Jesus stepped into it and said the price he was about to pay was the fulfillment of everything the cup had been promising.
Then he set down the fourth cup and did not drink it. He told his disciples he would not drink it again until the kingdom of God came in its fullness. He left the meal deliberately incomplete — an open story, a table still being set.
What It Meant Then: God's provision to spare Israel from judgment — the blood of an unblemished lamb painted on the doorposts of each home.
What Jesus Said It Meant: Jesus as the once-for-all perfect sacrifice for sin, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
What It Meant Then: A symbol of haste — bread made without leaven because there was no time to wait; freedom was coming and God's people needed to be ready to run.
What Jesus Said It Meant: The body of Jesus, broken and given. Striped and pierced in its very preparation, it became a picture of the suffering servant described in Isaiah 53.
What It Meant Then: God's promise to claim Israel as his own — to redeem them with an outstretched arm from slavery in Egypt.
What Jesus Said It Meant: The new covenant sealed in the blood of Jesus, poured out for the forgiveness of sins.
What It Meant Then: The cup of acceptance and praise, closing the Passover meal and completing God's four promises to Israel.
What Jesus Said It Meant: Held in reserve. Jesus said he would not drink it again until the kingdom of God comes in its fullness — a story still being completed.
Four things the Passover symbols reveal about what Jesus came to do:
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The lamb at the center of the Passover table was not simply dinner. It was a theology. It had to be without blemish — perfect, set apart. Families brought the lamb into their home on the tenth of Nisan, lived with it for four days, and then sacrificed it on the fourteenth. You knew the animal. The sacrifice was supposed to cost you something emotionally, not just ritually. And the blood collected from it was painted on the vertical doorpost and the horizontal beam above the door — a detail the early church could not have missed once they saw the cross.
John the Baptist, seeing Jesus for the first time, said: "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29, NIV). The Apostle Paul calls Jesus "our Passover lamb" in 1 Corinthians 5:7. The Gospel of John is structured so that Jesus dies on the cross at the exact hour the Passover lamb is being sacrificed in the temple — a deliberate theological statement, not a historical inconsistency.
The disciples around that table had grown up painting doorposts and eating lamb and telling the story of deliverance. And now their rabbi was standing in the middle of that story and saying: the lamb was always me. They didn't fully understand it until Sunday. But when the resurrection happened, the pieces clicked into place with stunning force. The blood on the doorpost. The vertical and horizontal lines of wood. The lamb without blemish. The angel of death passing over. All of it pointed forward to a hill outside Jerusalem.
Understanding the Passover roots of communion is not just an intellectual exercise — it changes how you participate in it. Here are four ways to carry this into your week:
The reason the Passover has been practiced every year for 3,600 years is because the story doesn't stay in Egypt. Egypt keeps finding a way to enslave people. It was Egypt, then Assyria, then Babylon, then Persia, then Greece, then Rome — and the cycle continued. The disciples at that Thursday table thought Rome was the problem. They were waiting for Jesus to raise an army.
But Jesus had the real enemy in his sights. Rome was an afterthought. Sin and death — the oldest, deepest fracture in the human story — that was the thing he came to deal with. And he stood in a feast of liberation and said: I am liberating you from the thing that has held you longest.
The new covenant in his blood is a covenant of freedom. Not from a political reality, but from the weight we carry inside — guilt, shame, the slow accumulation of everything we've done and everything done to us. That is what the cup means. That is what the bread means. That is what the Passover was always pointing toward.
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Q: What is the connection between Passover and communion?
A: Communion was instituted by Jesus during a Passover seder on the night before his crucifixion. He took two central Passover symbols — the unleavened bread and the cup of redemption — and reinterpreted them as pointing to his own body and blood. The Passover had commemorated God's deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt; Jesus used that same framework to announce a new covenant of deliverance from sin and death.
Q: Why is Jesus called the Lamb of God?
A: The title connects Jesus directly to the Passover lamb of Exodus 12 — an unblemished animal whose blood was painted on the doorposts of Hebrew homes to protect families from judgment. Early followers of Jesus understood his crucifixion as the fulfillment of that symbol: a perfect sacrifice whose blood covers and claims those who receive him. John the Baptist used this title the first time he publicly identified Jesus (John 1:29), and the imagery runs through the entire New Testament.
Q: What does the afikomen have to do with the resurrection of Jesus?
A: The afikomen is the middle piece of matzah at a Passover seder — broken, wrapped in a linen cloth, hidden, and then found again later in the meal. Early followers of Jesus saw in this ritual a striking parallel: a piece of bread broken and wrapped in cloth, disappearing and reappearing. Jesus took the afikomen at the Last Supper and said, "This is my body given for you." The connection to his burial and resurrection was not lost on his disciples once Sunday arrived.
Q: What do the four cups of wine at Passover mean?
A: Each of the four cups corresponds to one of God's four promises to Israel in Exodus 6: sanctification, deliverance, redemption, and acceptance. At the Last Supper, Jesus took the third cup — the cup of redemption — and declared it the new covenant in his blood. He notably did not drink the fourth cup, saying he would not drink it again until the kingdom of God came in its fullness — leaving the story deliberately open.
Q: Why do Christians take communion today?
A: Jesus gave a direct instruction at the Last Supper: "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19, NIV). But it is more than a memorial. The Apostle Paul describes communion as a participation in the body and blood of Christ — something active and present, not merely historical. For Christians, communion is a regular declaration that Jesus' sacrifice accomplished something real, and that those who receive it are claimed and covered by it.
