Eucharistic Meditation

2 Kings 23:21-23: Then the king commanded all the people, saying, Celebrate the Passover to Yahweh your God as it is written inn this book of the covenant. Surely such a Passover had not been celebrated from the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and of the kings of Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was observed to Yahweh in Jerusalem.

As we have seen in the sermon, Josiah is not only a new Moses, who delivers the law to the people and renews the covenant, but a new Joshua, carrying out a purging conquest of the land. Like Joshua, he destroys shrines; like Joshua, he drives out Canaanite gods and their worshipers; like Joshua, he destroys idolatrous priests.

He is also a Joshua in his celebration of the Passover. Between Joshua and 2 Kings there are only two Passover celebrations – Joshua's (Josh. 5) and Josiah's (2 Kgs. 23:21-23), and Josiah's is explicitly performed "as it is written in this book of the covenant" (23:21).

But the relationship between conquest and Passover is different in these two cases. Joshua’s conquest begins in Passover (Josh. 5). As soon as Israel enters the land, they circumcise the men who are not circumcised and they celebrate the Passover. Only after the feast do they begin to carry out the conquest to destroy the Canaanites. Josiah, by contrast, conquers the "Canaanites" of his day first, and his conquest of the land ends with the celebration of Passover.

In these two great Passovers we see two important dimensions of the Lord's Supper, the Christian Passover. Like Joshua, we celebrate the Supper on the first day of the week; and we eat bread to have strength to carry out the conquest during the coming week. But like Josiah, we also celebrate the Supper on the last day of the week; we drink to celebrate the victory that has already been won.

This Eucharist, like the Lord whose death it celebrates, is Alpha and an Omega, a beginning and an end, power for conquest and celebration of conquest achieved, a first-day feast of bread and a sabbatical, eschatological feast of wine.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, June 25, 2006 at 08:14 AM

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