Come to the Table
Moshiach's Tish is a video from Artists for Israel International. At a Hasidic tish the chassidim wait for the Rebbe's shirayim. At Moshiach's table it is the other way round: he is the portion that is broken and given, and the cup is his blood poured out.
The pages below follow the same order as the video. First the substitute named over the head on Erev Yom Kippur, then the broken matzah hidden at the Seder, then the Lord's Seder that brings the two together, where the cup is lifted and the bread is broken and given to everyone at the table.
The Only Real Peace Table in This World
At a Hasidic tish (Yiddish for "table") the chassidim crowd around the Rebbe while he eats, and they wait for the shirayim, the portions he has blessed and tasted and passes out to them. Being near the table is everything, and receiving from his hand is a privilege.
Moshiach's Tish turns this around. He does not pass on the leftovers of his own meal. The broken matzah is his body and the cup is his blood poured out. As the AFII member's manual puts it, the Lord's Seder is the one table where enemies of God are given peace terms:
"His broken body and outpoured blood are the only acceptable peace terms to bring reconciliation between a just, holy God and sinful men… God's peace offering, the blood of the Lamb of God, is his only acceptable restitution for the sins of guilty, God-alienated men, and the Lord's Seder is the only real Peace Table in this world."
A Messianic Synagogue Member's Manual, IVA-page 3Even the order of serving preaches. In the service printed below, the servers go around the room and say to each person, "For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup…" The words are repeated "over and over again, even as the Gospel is echoing endlessly right now all over the world." The Messianic rabbi is served last. At this tish the One at the head of the table said, "I am among you as one who serves" (Luke 22:27).
A Seder that looks both ways
"The Passover Seder of the Old Covenant looked backward to God's blood-sprinkled deliverance of his people from enslavement… The Passover Seder of the New Covenant also looks backward to a blood-sprinkled deliverance effected by the Lamb of God. This New Covenant Seder, however, looks forward to the Second Coming of the Messiah." (Manual, IVA-page 7)
The Kapparot Formula: "This Is My Substitute"
On the eve of Yom Kippur many Jews still carry out kapparot. A rooster (for a woman, a hen) is held up and circled over the head three times, or coins for tzedakah are used instead, and the formula from the machzor is said. The words do not hedge. They name a substitute, an exchange and a kapporah, and they state plainly that one life goes to death so that another may go to life.
The formula is not said alone. In the machzor it comes after verses from Tehillim 107 and from Iyov 33, about a messenger who intercedes, one in a thousand, and who says:
"Then He is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a kopher."
Iyov / Job 33:24So the custom asks the question itself, and it is the question that runs through the whole of the Kapporah exhibit: what kopher has been found? The rabbis argued over the answer. The Mechaber of the Shulchan Aruch discouraged the custom, while the Rema upheld it as an accepted minhag. Their dispute shows that the custom points beyond itself. Everyone who says the words knows a bird cannot actually carry the weight of a man's soul.
What the rooster cannot do
"No man can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to G-d a kopher for him; for the redemption of their soul is costly" (Tehillim 49:8–9). A fowl is a life, but not one of equal worth. Its death settles nothing in heaven. Afterwards it is given to the poor or its value is given as tzedakah. The words are right, but the substitute is not equal to them.
What Moshiach did
"He was wounded for our transgressions… the chastisement of our shalom was upon him" (Yeshayahu 53:5). Here the substitute is equal to the debt: nefesh tachat nefesh, a life of greater worth than the many it stands for. He went to death so that the many might go to life and to shalom. This is the cup of Gat Sh'mani, drunk to the dregs.
Read at Moshiach's Tish
Placed beside the cup on Moshiach's table, the old words finally come true. זֶה חֲלִיפָתִי: this One is my substitute. זֶה תְּמוּרָתִי: this One is my exchange. זֶה כַּפָּרָתִי: this One is my kapporah. He went to death, and I go to a good, long life and to shalom. This is not a new liturgy. It is a reading of the old one, the kopher that Iyov's messenger was looking for, found at last.
The Shrouded Afikoman
Kapparot names the substitute, and the Seder table acts it out. At yachatz the leader takes the middle of the three matzot, breaks it, wraps the larger piece in a cloth as a body is wrapped for burial, and hides it. With the Temple's lamb long gone from the table, this broken, shrouded bread has taken the place of the korban Pesach.
the middle matzah: broken, shrouded, set apart until the end
| Hebrew | Transliteration | Sense |
|---|---|---|
| אֲפִיקוֹמָן | afikoman | "that which comes after" (from Greek epikomion), the last taste of the meal |
| יַחַץ | yachatz | the breaking of the middle matzah |
| צָפוּן | tzafun | "hidden," the step in which it is brought back out and eaten |
| קָרְבַּן פֶּסַח | korban Pesach | the Passover offering, the lamb without blemish |
Vanished from sight: Luke 24:31
At Emmaus two talmidim recognize the Stranger only when he takes the bread, says the HaMotzi and breaks it. At that moment he disappears:
"And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight."
Luke 24:31Standing among them again: Luke 24:36
The afikoman does not stay hidden. The Seder cannot end until it is searched out, brought back to the tish and shared. Luke's next scene follows the same pattern:
"And as they thus spake, Yeshua himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Shalom aleichem."
Luke 24:36Broken, wrapped, hidden and brought back: the afikoman is "that which comes after," the last taste at Moshiach's Tish. As the service below says, "This New Covenant Seder… looks forward to the Second Coming of the Messiah."
A Lord's Seder Service
From Everything You Need to Grow a Messianic Synagogue, Part IV, "A Messianic Synagogue Member's Manual," printed pages 59–69 (IVB-pages 9–19). The Hebrew is the manual's own. The English Scripture follows the NEB, as printed there.
In the same way that the story of the exodus from Egypt is retold and relived perpetually among the Jews on Passover, we who are spiritual Jews are commanded to retell and relive what happened for us on Passover in the death of our Lord Yeshua, who commands us, in our own Haggadah or "declaration," "Do this in remembrance of me."
The Servers come and take their positions at the Lord's table beside the Reader.
Rabbi Saul, standing at the foot of a New Sinai, wrote this Haggadah for a new pilgrim spiritual Israel. The Lord's Supper is the Passover Seder of the Jewish New Covenant. Believers' Passover celebrates the New Exodus from the bondage of sin and death which the Jewish Messiah effected by his atoning death. Messiah Yeshua replaced the victim of the Old Covenant, the Passover lamb sacrificed in the festival of deliverance, and his blood ratified the New Covenant between God and man. The Jewish New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34) promised forgiveness of sins and personal knowledge of and communion with God. By having followed the Lord through the Red Sea of water immersion we have entered into personal communion with God and, having become spiritual Jews, may now come to the Lord's Seder, even as we will someday feast at the glorious Messianic banquet in the New Jerusalem. This broken loaf and this outpoured wine proclaim to all the Lord's death, as well as the present time of salvation and the coming judgment of the One who commanded that we witness to him in this way: the King of Israel, praised be he, Yeshua Ha Mashiach.
"You should understand, my brothers, that our ancestors were all under the pillar of cloud, and all of them passed through the Red Sea; and so they all received immersion into the fellowship of Moses in cloud and sea."
I Corinthians 10:1–2"This water prefigured the water of baptism through which you are now delivered to safety. Baptism is not the washing away of bodily uncleanness, but the appeal made to God by a clear conscience; and it brings salvation through the resurrection of Yeshua Ha Mashiach."
I Peter 3:21"They all ate the same supernatural food, and all drank the same supernatural drink; I mean, they all drank from the supernatural rock that accompanied their travels, and that rock was Messiah. And yet, most of them were not accepted by God, for the desert was strewn with their corpses. These events happened as symbols to warn us not to set our desires on evil things, as they did."
I Corinthians 10:3–6Therefore, we are to take no part in the Lord's Seder without applying moral scrutiny to our lives and behavior.
"It follows that anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of desecrating the body and blood of the Lord. A man must examine himself before eating his share of the bread and drinking from the cup. For he who eats and drinks eats and drinks judgment on himself if he does not discern the Body."
I Corinthians 11:27–29Those who have not yet obeyed the Lord by taking the mikveh-bris of water immersion in his name, please remain seated. This is to protect anyone from partaking unworthily in disobedience and bringing judgment upon himself. Those who have followed the Lord in the mikveh-bris of water immersion, please stand.
"Have you never heard the saying, 'A little leaven leavens all the dough'? The old leaven of corruption is working among you. Purge it out, and then you will be bread of a new baking. As believers you are unleavened Passover bread; for indeed our Passover has begun; the sacrifice is offered: Messiah himself, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."
I Corinthians 5:6–7; John 1:29During the next few moments there will be silence as each believer shall conduct a mental search through every corner of his life to purge out in confession all the leaven of sin in order that he may be pronounced "clean" by our God.
Lord, we confess our sins.
"If we confess our sins, he is just, and may be trusted to forgive our sins and cleanse us from every kind of wrong. Your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake."
I John 1:9; I John 2:12Just as the Old Covenant was inaugurated by blood sacrifice, so too is the New Covenant. We who enter into covenant with the Lord through his blood enter also into covenant with our fellow believers. Hereby united in love concretely in this covenant meal, we are established in the community of Messiah. We are Spiritual Israel. We belong to one another forever and to the Lord.
"Form your own judgment on what I say. When we bless the cup of blessing, is it not a means of sharing in the blood of Messiah? When we break the bread, is it not a means of sharing in the body of Messiah? Because there is one loaf, we, many as we are, are one body; for it is one loaf of which we all partake."
I Corinthians 10:15–17Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.
"For the tradition which I handed on to you came to me from the Lord himself: that the Lord Yeshua, on the night of his arrest, took bread and, after giving thanks to God, broke it and said: 'This is my body, which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.'"
I Corinthians 11:23–24The Reader breaks the matzoh.
Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.
"In the same way, he took the cup after supper and said: 'This is the New Covenant sealed by my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.'"
I Corinthians 11:25The Reader pours the wine.
"For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes."
I Corinthians 11:26After the servers are served by the reader, they use the same formula (I Corinthians 11:26) to serve all who are standing, until they return to the table, where one of them serves the reader.
Let us raise our hands and worship the Lord. Maranatha.