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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies
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MEMORIAL OF THE LORD’S
SUPPER: 2012
With Footnotes,
Appendices and Figures
To download a PDF version
of this file click
here
For whenever you eat this
bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
1 Corinthians 11: 26
Note: Scripture references are to the British text of
the New International Version, unless stated otherwise. Verses which are
not quoted are hyperlinked and can be read online. Texts which are
quoted are not usually hyperlinked.
In this article, astronomical calculations are
expressed as Universal Time (UT), in both 24- and 12-hour formats.
__________________________________________________________
THE LORD JESUS COMMEMORATED the Passover in
Jerusalem in the evening of its prescribed date, Nisan 14 (Matthew
26: 17, 20;
Mark
14: 12, 17;
Luke
22: 7). In
keeping with Jewish tradition, the day began at sunset and ended 24
hours later. So Nisan 13 would end when Nisan 14 began (Exodus
12: 1-8). The
‘evening’ hours preceded the ‘day’ hours (compare with
Genesis
1: 5, etc.).
The length of the Jewish day varied somewhat, but it would roughly correspond
to a 24-hour period which began at 6:00 p.m. (18:00). Jesus instituted the
‘last supper’ immediately following the Passover meal (Matthew
26: 26, 27;
Luke
22: 20;
1
Corinthians 11: 23-26). It has been the practice of the Christian church since then to
remember this sacred event, in one form or another.
When to Observe the Memorial?
There is long-standing disagreement among
churches on the precise method which should be used not only to keep the feast,
but how to calculate the date for its observance. In common with other Bible
Students, those associated with UK Bible Students choose to commemorate
it once a year, as one would an anniversary. However, we believe the date of
its observance is less important than the fact of its institution. Should other
Christians choose to keep it more frequently, there is no sin, and we wish them
the Lord’s blessing.
Using astronomical data we need to ascertain the
following:
1.
Date and time of the Vernal (Spring) Equinox for the given year
2.
Date and time of the New Moon preceding the Equinox
3.
Date and time of the New Moon following the Equinox
4.
Date and time of the New Moon which occurs closest to the Equinox
To find Nisan 1, an additional step, is required:
5.
Add 2h 21m to account for the time difference at the meridian in
Jerusalem
Depending on which astronomical tables are
employed, there are minor discrepancies, down to the minutes and seconds. These
differences are not usually significant in the overall calculations.[fn1]
For the year 2012 the data follow in Universal
Time [UT] expressed by hours and minutes, and by the 12-hour clock time
in parentheses:
1.
Date and time of the Vernal (Spring) Equinox
March 20 at 05h 07m (March 20, 5:07 a.m.)
2.
Date and time of the New Moon preceding the Equinox
February 21 at 22h 35m (February 21, 10:35
p.m.)
3.
Date and time of the New Moon following the Equinox
March 22 at 14h 37m (March 22, 2:37 p.m.)
Therefore:
4. Date and time of the New
Moon which occurs closest to the Equinox is
March 22 at 14h 37m
(March 22, 2:37 p.m.)
5.
To this add the time difference at the meridian in Jerusalem (2h 21m).
This
results in: March 22 at 16h 58m (March 22, 4:58 p.m.)
Now Find the Start of Nisan 1 and Nisan 14
The calculations required to arrive at Nisan 14
are counter-intuitive and one can get confused. Remember that the day of the
Memorial corresponds to a Jewish day running from sunset to sunset, unlike the
customary sunrise to sunrise. To determine the hour at which Nisan 1 begins,
keep in mind that in this instance, one must back up to 6:00 p.m. (1800)
of the previous day. It is then necessary to apply this offset to the
succeeding 13 days. So in 2012 Nisan 1 starts March 21 at 6:00
p.m. (18:00) and ends March 22 at 6:00 p.m. (18:00), at which
time Nisan 2 begins, and so on. Therefore, Nisan 14 will start at your local
time of 6:00 p.m. (18:00) on Tuesday, April 3. To verify this
calculation consult Fig. 2 in
App. III.
Keeping the Feast
Jesus did not mandate, nor is there indicated
anywhere in the Bible, a specific order of service, other than the general
outline recorded in the New Testament. The following represents merely what
appeals to the UK Bible Students as a tested, reasonable approach,
adapted from the general practice of Bible Students elsewhere. For unleavened
bread – ‘leaven’ in the Scriptures represents sin – matzo may be substituted;
for the alcoholic wine, to which some may object, a good quality grape juice.
These provisions can be bought from any supermarket, especially around the time
of the Jewish Passover. The order of service given here may be modified if you
are observing the Memorial alone. In any case, common sense as to the details
should prevail, all being carried out in a spirit of reverence and humility.
The service is intended to bless, not frustrate or condemn the participant. The
service should not be overly long nor marred by unnecessary comments or
chatter. The focus must always be the sacrifice of Jesus and the benefits to
each one of us as a believer, represented by the emblems and our partaking of
them. The service is not creedal. Anyone who is consecrated, committed to
Christ, regardless of doctrinal affiliation, is eligible to take part.
If you are not able to keep the Memorial on the
date shown here, it would be suitable to keep it exactly one calendar month
later – that is, on the 14th of the following month. Refer to
Numbers
9: 6-11.
A SUGGESTED ORDER OF
SERVICE
1.
Start with one or more solemn hymns to guide the minds of the
assembly in the direction of our Lord and His sacrificial death.
2.
A prayer may then be offered for God’s blessing on the service.
3.
The one officiating, or another, might read an account of the Last Supper.
4.
The one officiating, or another, might give a brief account of the Passover in
the Old Testament, explaining how it was a picture of Jesus, the fulfilment –
the ‘Passover lamb’ (1
Corinthians 5: 7).
5.
Someone may then ask a blessing over the bread and on those who will partake of
it, that all might have a full appreciation of its significance as a symbol of
our Lord’s body, sacrificed for all.
6.
One of the pieces of bread may then be broken, and our Lord’s words spoken:
‘Take and eat; this is my body’ (Matthew 26: 26). The plate should then be
served to those partaking. [The force of this emblem is that of
justification by faith, a result of the ransom-sacrifice.]
7.
When passing and partaking of the emblems, silence is recommended as the
participants meditate on the sacredness of the occasion.
8.
A prayer may then be invoked over the cup, expressing thankfulness, and
requesting the Lord’s blessing on those participating. Jesus’ words may be
repeated: ‘Drink from it, all of you’ (Matthew 26: 27). The cup should then be
served in quietness. [The force of this emblem is that of consecration, new
life arising out of Jesus’ spilt blood, His death.]
9.
The service may be ended with a suitable hymn (‘When they had sung a hymn,
they went out to the Mount of Olives’; Mark 14: 26).
______________
[fn1]
Our data are obtained from the sources below; our final
calculations use the dynamic data from
The Planets:
1. The Planets software (v. 2.02, copyright 2002 Brendan Murphy)
<http://www.cpac.org.uk/download.asp>
2. Astronomical Tables of the Sun, Moon, and Planets, Jean Meeus (Willmann-Bell, Inc.; 1983), pp. 3-43, 4-18.
APPENDIX I
Time Zones
By
international agreement Planet Earth has been divided up into 24 theoretical
increments of 15 degrees, or time zones (15 x 24 [hours] = 360). Although each
time zone is theoretically 15 degrees wide, usually corresponding to a 1-hour
difference in mean solar time, in practice the shape of time zones is
adjusted to match internal, international, and political borders. For example,
in the city of St. John’s in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada,
the increment is 30 minutes, putting that region half-an-hour ahead of the next
time zone westward.
The
prime meridian (the ‘00:00’ or ‘zero’ point) is by long tradition set at
Greenwich, England. This is known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).[fn2]
From this point, east and west, clock time is advanced
or retarded 1 hour for every time zone. For example, when it’s 00:00 (12
midnight) at Greenwich, it’s 01:00 (1:00 a.m.) in Paris, which is situated
within the next time zone eastward. In Moscow, 3 time zones to the east of
Greenwich, it would be 03:00 (3:00 a.m.). Conversely, 1 hour is deducted from
GMT when moving west. Assuming 10:00 (10:00 a.m.) in Greenwich, it would be
05:00 (5:00 a.m.) in Philadelphia or Toronto, 5 time zones to the west. [These assumptions disregard the local effect of Daylight
Savings Time.][fn3]
Wolfram
Research gives this definition of the International Date Line:
An imaginary line which
generally follows the 180 degrees meridian of longitude, one half of the way
around the Earth from the Greenwich prime meridian. (Actually, for political
and geographic reasons, the International Date Line makes detours around the
Aleutian Islands in Alaska and some of New Zealand and actually follows time
zone boundaries over some latitude ranges.) The date line marks the boundary
between calendar days, so that the date on the New Zealand side is defined to
be one day after the date on the Alaska side. Since the line passes down the middle of a time zone (over most
latitude ranges), one would switch by an hour at 173.5 degrees W, a day at 180
degrees, and an hour again at 173.5 degrees E. The construct of a date line is
necessary to prevent the continuous accumulation or loss of days as travelers
move around the globe as compared to days reckoned by inhabitants remaining in
a fixed location. The date line resolves this potential difficulty, but can
lead to paradoxes such as a traveler on a long [aeroplane, Ed.] trip
from Asia arriving in the United States several hours before leaving his point of departure.[fn4]
______________
[fn2] Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is now more commonly expressed as Universal Time (UT) and is monitored and regulated by atomic clocks. Public clock time, announced by various timekeeping services, is expressed as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The discrepancy between UT and UTC is not more than one second. The data in this article are expressed in UT, the accepted standard for astronomical calculations.
[fn3]
To see a plane view of the time zones, go to <http://www.worldtimezone.com/> (retrieved 21
January 2012)
[fn4] <http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/InternationalDateLine.html> (retrieved 21 January 2012)
APPENDIX II
Did Jesus break the bread
into eleven pieces (Judas was absent), or into two, each disciple then breaking
off a piece for himself? How should we carry out the service?
The
accounts of the institution of the Memorial supper state that Jesus ‘broke’ the
unleavened bread before passing it to His disciples. (For internal consistency,
citations throughout this Appendix are to the
King James [Authorised] Version, except where indicated otherwise):
Matthew
26: 26:
‘And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave
it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.’
Mark
14: 22:
‘And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to
them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.’
Luke
22: 19:
‘And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying,
This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.’
1
Corinthians 11: 23, 24:
‘For I [Paul] have received of the Lord that which
also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was
betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take,
eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.’
Institution of the Memorial Service
At
the time Jesus inaugurated the Memorial service He was the only one who could
break the bread as symbolic of His own body being broken. Of those assembled in
the upper room He alone was righteous (actually ‘justified’, or ‘just’), His
sacrifice being then future and the holy spirit of begettal not having come
upon the disciples. Looked at this way, one might conclude that since only He
would or could offer His body as a ransom-sacrifice, we should read this
inference back into the original service.
The
difficulty with this assumption, however, is that the Memorial service was
intended as a perpetual anniversary – or until Christ would come again –
in His Second Advent (1 Corinthians 11: 26): ‘For as often as ye eat this
bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.’ This
meaning, therefore, rises above the temporal. In other words, the ages-long significance
of the symbol is what is in view. Jesus was setting forth a model remembrance
for subsequent generations of Christians to follow. The singular event in the
upper room therefore transcends the time in which it occurred, the
signification of the emblems – the bread and the wine – enduring through the
centuries, particularly in relation to the Gospel-Age Church. (For information
on the sin-offering of the Church, see the articles on our Website, ‘Dying for the
Dead’ and ‘Consecration
of the Priests’.
For information regarding the distinction between the Church proper – the
‘Little Flock’ – spirit-begettal, and other features relating to the ‘high
calling’, you may
contact
us by e-mail.)
‘Breaking’ Bread
The
Jewish Passover which Jesus and His disciples kept prior to Jesus’ inauguration
of the ‘last supper’ proceeded along customary lines. We have no evidence that
Jesus varied this routine. As a Jew brought up under the Law He observed the
statutory Jewish feasts. He also honoured the extra-Biblical winter festival
known variously as the ‘feast of the dedication’, the ‘feast of lights’ or,
today, as Hanukkah, a tradition dating back to the 2nd-century revolt of the
Maccabees (John
10: 22, 23).
‘Breaking
bread together’ was a custom of the day. Indeed, the practice of blessing the
bread before breaking it is mentioned several times in the Scriptures, the same
formulation (bless-brake-gave) appearing often. At the feeding of the (more
than) 5,000 with the five loaves and two fishes, we read that Jesus ‘blessed,
and brake, and gave the loaves’ to his disciples (Matthew
14: 19). On the
later occasion when He fed the (more than) 4,000, this time from a supply of
seven loaves and a ‘few’ fish, the narrative also records that He ‘gave thanks,
and brake them, and gave’ to His disciples (Matthew
15: 34-36). The
‘fragments’ left over from these community meals – twelve and seven baskets
respectively – testify that the people did most of the ‘breaking’. See
Matthew
14: 20, 21;
15:
37, 38;
Mark
6: 35-44;
8:
1-9;
Luke
9: 12-17;
John
6: 1-13. Any
doubt about there being two separate mass feedings may be settled by reading
Matthew
16: 9, 10, in
which our Lord refers to those events. [The Greek word, klao, translated
‘brake’ (‘broke’) is used also in
John
19: 32, 33,
with reference to the soldiers breaking the legs of the criminals crucified
with Jesus.]
The
sociable practice of breaking bread together was maintained by the early
Church, going ‘house to house’ (Acts
2: 42-46). On
one of Paul’s missionary journeys he reached Troas and met on Sunday to ‘break
bread’ with the brethren (Acts
20: 7-11). And
shortly before the shipwreck which stranded Paul and his fellow passengers on
the island of Malta, the Apostle ‘took bread, and gave thanks to God in
presence of them all: and when he had broken it, he began to eat’ (Acts 27:
35).
What Sort of Bread?
Bread
was usually made of wheat or barley; the sort used in the Passover and,
therefore, the Memorial supper which superseded it, would have been baked
without leaven – that is, without yeast, without which the bread would not
rise. It probably resembled a thick, flat disc, not unlike pitta bread in
general appearance. In connection with the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 the
Scriptures state that the lad of
John
6: 9 had barley
loaves with him, the staple of the poorer classes. The Greek is artos.
The same word is used in a generic sense by the Apostle Paul in 1
Corinthians 10: 16, 17 (NIV-UK):
Is not the cup of
thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?
And is not the bread [artos] that we break a participation in the body
of Christ? Because there is one loaf [artos], we, who are many, are one
body, for we all partake of the one loaf.[fn5]
The
Apostle’s use here of ‘bread’ does not mean that the Memorial bread itself was
of the leavened variety. Rather, his point is that the suffering of the Gospel-Age
Church demonstrates their participation in the ‘one loaf’. The primary
implication is that the elect Body of Christ is ‘broken’ or sacrificed with Jesus;
not as a part of His ransom-sacrifice – which only Jesus could
provide – but as a part of the ‘sin offering’. This is a complex and profound
doctrine, well beyond the scope of this article; if you are interested in this
subject, please
contact us by e-mail. Suffice it
to say that, for several reasons, the privilege of taking part in the Memorial
service is not confined to the saints of yesteryear.
How to Proceed?
In light of the evidence, the following approach
seems reasonable:
1. The one in charge of the
service breaks the bread/matzo in two, representative of the actions of Jesus,
but does not eat it just yet.
2. As each member of the congregation receives the plate, he or
she breaks off a piece and eats it.
3.
After all have eaten, the plate is returned to the one in
charge who now, as a recipient, breaks off a piece and eats it.
4. The same procedure may be adopted for the cup.
______________
[fn5] The order of the bread and cup is here reversed. Compare with Matthew 26: 26, 27, and Paul’s own rehearsal of it in 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26, in which the distribution of the bread precedes that of the cup.
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Copyright February 2012 ukbiblestudents.co.uk
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