Mark 14:22-26
This Is My Body
22While they were eating, Jesus took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take it; this is My body.”
23Then He took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
24He said to them, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
25Truly I tell you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.”
26And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Berean Standard Bible
They are eating the Passover, and partway through it he changes the words. The meal already had a script. Every household in the country ate it on the same night, saying the same things, and what they said was about Egypt: the lamb, the blood on the doorframes, the LORD passing over those houses, the night a nation walked out of slavery. Families had been saying those words for centuries, and children had grown up and grown old inside them.
Then, partway through, he picks up the bread, gives thanks, breaks it and hands it round.
Take it; this is My body.
The cup goes next. He gives thanks over it, passes it along, and Mark takes the trouble to tell us that they all drank from it. He had already said at that table that one of the Twelve would hand him over, and nobody is recorded getting up and leaving before the cup came past.
This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
Two old phrases sit inside that one sentence. Blood of the covenant belongs to Moses. At Sinai, with the law just given, he took blood and threw it over the people and told them this was the blood of the covenant the LORD had made with them. Poured out for many belongs to Isaiah, and to a servant who pours out his life unto death and carries the sin of many.
Jeremiah had promised a day when God would make a new covenant, forgive, and remember sins no more. The word new is not in Mark's sentence. The word Mark gives us is the one Moses used, which is covenant.
So he takes a meal about a rescue out of Egypt and says that it is now about him. Then the last thing he says at that table looks straight past the following afternoon, when he will be dead, to a day when he drinks wine again in the kingdom of God. He is a man making plans for a table he has not reached yet.
And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
He knew where the road out of the city was going to take him. He sang first.
How We Know
Paul wrote down these words before Mark did. First Corinthians 11:23-25 gives the same night, the same bread taken and broken, the same sentence over it, and the same cup afterwards, and Paul says explicitly that he received it and passed it on.
Two writers, one of them earlier and writing to settle a dispute about how the meal was being conducted, corroborate the same words at the same table.
The differences are small and visible: Paul includes do this in remembrance of me, Mark does not. Mark keeps the promise about not drinking again until the kingdom of God, and Paul does not.
Questions
1 Is there something this family says or does the same way every single year? What happens when somebody changes it?
AnswerEverybody will have one. Passover was that on the scale of a nation: the same night, the same words, the same account of Egypt, kept for centuries. Partway through it, Jesus changed what the words were about.
2 Where does blood of the covenant come from?
AnswerMoses. At Sinai he threw blood over the people and told them it was the blood of the covenant the LORD had made with them. Jesus says that same sentence holding a cup, about his own blood. Mark never stops to point the connection out.
3 Who drank from the cup?
AnswerAll of them. Mark says so plainly, and he has already told us that one of the men at that table would hand Jesus over that night. Nobody is recorded getting up and leaving before it reached him. He handed it to the man who was going to sell him.
4 What is the last thing Jesus says at the table?
AnswerThat he will not drink wine again until he drinks it new in the kingdom of God. He is looking straight past his own death to a table he expects to sit at, which is a strange plan for a man who will be dead by the next afternoon.
What This Means for Us
He handed the cup to everybody at that table.
Mark says they all drank, and by then he had already said out loud that one of the men sitting there would hand him over. Whatever we make of that, it is not how a man behaves when he is serving only the people who have earned it.
Christians have understood how this meal works in different ways ever since, and not always kindly. Nobody here has to settle that tonight. What the words say is not in dispute: body given, blood poured out, for many.
Somebody here keeps a private ledger about whether they belong. The answer to it is in who he handed the cup to.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a meal that says out loud what your Son did. Thank you that he gave the cup to everyone at the table, including the one who would betray him. Keep us from thinking we have to earn a seat. And bring us to the day he drinks it new. Amen.