Communion

<p>COMMUNION JESUS AND PASSOVER FEAST The first Communion service ever was when Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples. Like many other Jewish groups and families in Jerusalem they were sharing the Passover meal that night, as that was the custom on that special day before the Feast of Passover for every family to eat of the Passover lamb. Israel shared this meal each year to celebrate the miraculous deliverance of Israel out from Egypt where they had been in slavery under cruel oppression for 400 years. On that Passover day that they fled out of Egypt each home was instructed to take a lamb for each household and to kill the lamb and apply the blood of that firstborn lamb on the doorposts and lintels of the house so that the angel of death would ‘pass over’ them, and the firstborn son of each family was spared from death, and the firstborn son of every Egyptian family died.</p> <p> To this day Orthodox Jews as individual households all over the world celebrate this Passover feast. They come together for a traditional meal called the Seder, which means “order”, because everything is done in a particular order. The whole theme of the special meal on the Seder night is to remember the exodus of Egypt as if they were there and that is what happened to them, so it is experiential for them and educational for the children and visitors… The Seder plate includes a variety of foods, and they are symbolic. The lamb bone represents the blood of the lamb that was applied to the doors of the Jewish people as God passed over them; the maror (bitter herbs) represents the bitterness the Jews had to endure as slaves; there was a sweet, brown concoction/paste that represents the mortar used to build the Egyptian pyramids; and the dipping of parsley into salt water represents the tears of the enslaved Jewish people. And there is the Matzah, the unleavened bread that is eaten at Passover. They have to eat this because according to the Book of Exodus, the Israelites left Egypt in such a hurry that their bread did