In Luke 22:19 Jesus says, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Luke had previously said, “Now the Festival of Unleavened Bread arrived, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John ahead and said, ‘Go and prepare the Passover meal, so we can eat it together” (Luke 22:7-8).

Note how “There is something of a cloak and dagger atmosphere generated by the procedure Jesus outlines” for the Passover meal. As the Word Biblical

Commentary notes: “The householder is being asked to cooperate in concealing one who had been exercising a provocative teaching ministry in the temple by day, and who was at this stage something of a fugitive by night. Not even the disciple band itself (including Judas) is to know ahead of time where they will be in the evening. Jesus has seen to it that his final evening with the disciples, spent in Passover celebration, will not be disturbed.”

So far from teaching a repeat of the annual Jewish Passover festival, Jesus, in his last Passover meal, established a new thing for a new purpose! That is the New Covenant Communion service, which is not once a year (“as often as,” 1 Cor. 11:25-26). It is a time to remember his life, i.e., his teaching ministry and ultimate sacrifice/shedding of blood that eventually ratified, gave the stamp of approval (if you will) to this new covenant ceremony.

The Benson Commentary notes that when Jesus said “Do this in remembrance of me” he meant: “Do it no longer in remembrance of the deliverance from Egypt, but in remembrance of me, who, by dying for you, will bring you out of spiritual bondage, a bondage far worse than the Egyptian, under which your fathers groaned…Do it in remembrance of me, who, by laying down my life, will ransom you from sin, and death.”

As a result, Jesus effectively replaced not only the Passover meal practice but even the language that defined it. Ellicott’s Commentary notes that the word for “remembrance” is also used in the Greek version of the Old Testament in reference to the show-bread (Lev. 24:7), and the blowing of trumpets (Num. 10:10).

Jesus goes on to explain that the “cup of wine symbolizes the new covenant ratified by my blood, poured out for you” (Luke 22:20; Matthew 26:28).

Paul wrote, “Messiah, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. So then, let us be celebrating the festival [i.e. continuously], not with the yeast of vice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1Cor. 5:7-8).

Let us not pass over our true Passover, i.e., the lord Messiah who with his teaching (symbolized by the bread) and sacrifice (symbolized by the wine) instituted this new covenant commandment. And in so doing we are reminded whenever we get together as a church we continue to proclaim all he taught and did, until he comes again.