In the times of ancient Israel, after Moses led them out of Israel, God saw fit to build a solid foundation for His chosen people. And since men are foolish, sinful, and naturally prone to wickedness, God sought to plug some of those weaknesses by bringing them the Law through Moses.
The first Laws that God really laid out in Leviticus were laws concerning the sacrifices, that is, the animal sacrifices that the people would have to make in order to atone for their sins, largely because God knew that the people would sin and would need atonement.
And so God told the people that the only acceptable sacrifices for sin would be the firstborn male of the clean animals, without blemish, and who opened its mother's womb. If the sacrifice was to be consumed by the priests and the person offering the sacrifice, that food was considered to be holy. In a sense, you would be consuming food that was purified and purifying your own body and soul as a result.
The sacrifice was always to be presented to the priests who would take care of the butchering of the animal as well as the process in which the resulting sacrifice would be handled.
Flash forward to the time of Jesus. He gained a huge following based on his teachings, but mostly his healings. Then he turns to his disciples, who numbered in the dozens at the time, and told them that they will have to eat His flesh and drink His blood.
Then he was left with only 12 disciples.
But Jesus was the firstborn male among the chosen people, from the line of the kings, who had literally opened his mother's womb since she had been a virgin at the time. He was without sin, even spending 40 days of fasting and resisting Satan's temptations to make bread from stones.
In essence, He was the perfect sacrifice for the atonement of the sins of all of mankind.
On the night of His betrayal and arrest, He gave His disciples bread and wine, telling them that this is His body and blood, thus telling His disciples that this was really what He meant by eating his body and drinking His blood.
And then he was arrested by the priests of the chosen ones who were envious of his power and influence over the people. He was betrayed by a disciple of His who was bitter over being corrected when he questioned the cost of perfume that a prostitute was using to clean Jesus's feet.
And so the priests, who at the time could not execute justice themselves, turned Jesus over to the local governor. When Pilot asked them what charges were against Jesus, all they could say was that he was a criminal overwise they wouldn't have given Him over.
Thus, the priests ended up performing their duties as priests and took care of the one final sacrifice that was needed to redeem us for our sins, unwittingly of course. And during the Passover feast, of all times. But even that was all for the Will of God in order to redeem us all.
They took the most perfect sacrifice and cursed Him by hanging Him from a tree until he was dead.
And when it was finished, the curtain in the Temple was torn in two and God no longer would limit Himself to the holiest of holies because such a thing was no longer necessary. The price had been paid, the sacrifice had been made, and mankind was now able to be forgiven for our sins.
It didn't sit well with the people though. Instead of being overjoyed, they realized that they had succumbed to a kind of collective madness and tortured the Son of God to death. Even the centurions who were there recognized that He was God's Son.
It must have been a miserable Passover celebration that year.
But after being dead and buried for three days, Jesus came back from the dead. And so, the sacrifice was redeemed along with the people. Because God is God of life, not death. Sin is death and can only be redeemed in blood and death. But He is not of death, but life. And so, Jesus came back from the dead because He is the Son of the God of life.
And now He sits at the right hand of His father waiting for the appointed time to return to conquer the wicked with the sword from His mouth and rule with an iron scepter.
For now, we wait and hope, eating the bread and drinking the wine that is His body and blood in remembrance of Him.
Amen. Come Lord Jesus.