Bread and wine (Luke 22)

On Good Friday, April 10, I had the pleasure of seeing Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ for the first time. The friend I watched this movie with, a Turkish Muslim, had seen it five years earlier. People in the audience wept, he said, to consider the pain inflicted upon the central figure. He then explained the doctrine of Islam that Jesus was whisked out of harm's way, and replaced by a disguised surrogate, Judas.

Christians, though, believe that Jesus was willing to suffer all of those torments on our behalf -- which is why we love Him so much. Christians rely on eyewitness accounts of the events. Muslims have a somewhat different perspective, reported more than 600 years later. Let's look at today's brief segment:

Luk 22:19 Sonra eline ekmek aldı, şükredip ekmeği böldü ve onlara verdi. "Bu sizin uğrunuza feda edilen bedenimdir. Beni anmak için böyle yapın" dedi.
Luk 22:20 Aynı şekilde, yemekten sonra kâseyi alıp şöyle dedi: "Bu kâse, sizin uğrunuza akıtılan kanımla gerçekleşen yeni antlaşmadır.

Let's look at a few words:

• ekmek -- bread
  
• şükremek -- to give thanks (to God)
  
• bölmek -- to break
  
• feda -- sacrifice, sacrificial offering
  
• bedenimdir -- my body is. beden -- body + im -- my + dir-- is.
  
• akıtılan -- poured out
  
• kanımla -- my blood with
  
• gerçekleşen -- to establish
  
• yeni -- new
• antlaşmadır -- covenant is.
  

If we can trust this eyewitness account, as it was reported to a meticulous historian, the passion of Jesus was a deliberate act, an integral part of his mission, and the means by which he made all things new.