Week #2 - “This Is My Body”: What did Yeshua (Jesus) Mean?
Blog Series Intention Recap
At the Table: Understanding Communion from Passover to the Church
This Fifth Thursday series slows readers down at a table they think they already understand. Communion is one of the most practiced and least examined acts in the Church. Familiarity has made it efficient—but often shallow. This series invites us to recover depth, context, and meaning.
This series is not written to win arguments, flatten mystery, or introduce novelty. It is written to help believers come to the table with understanding, humility, and gratitude—recognizing that every time we eat the bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.
This page is a post in the series “At the Table.” Click here to see the rest of the posts.
Let’s jump into Week #2:
“This Is My Body”…
Four words in our English Bibles have generated nearly two thousand years of Christian debate: “This is my body.” But before those words became the subject of theological debate, Yeshua (Jesus), Israel’s Messiah, spoke them at a Passover table to Jewish disciples shaped by Israel’s Scriptures. If Week 1 showed us where the table came from, Week 2 asks how those first listeners would have heard Him. Christians who love the same Lord and read the same Gospels have come to different conclusions, and this post makes the case for one way of reading without pretending the others are foolish. Hearing the words in their setting does not shrink the mystery of communion. It puts the mystery where the Upper Room put it: in what God has done in the Messiah, and in what He will yet do.
Why it Matters:
Yeshua’s words at the table were spoken in a Jewish, Passover, biblical setting, and that setting is the first place to look for their meaning.
Scripture regularly uses “this is” as sign-language: identification that points to, and draws us into, what God has done.
John 6 puts believing at the center: coming to Yeshua satisfies hunger, and believing in Him satisfies thirst.
The case is cumulative: Passover, biblical sign-language, John 6, the covenant cup, and the coming kingdom all point in the same direction.
Go Deeper:
Week 1 ended with a claim worth testing: Yeshua did not explain His death in philosophical categories. He explained it through Israel’s redemption story. Here we test that claim against the most debated words at the table.
Instead of resting everything on a single verb, we will follow a cumulative case. Five lines of evidence converge: Passover symbolism, biblical sign-language, the emphasis of John 6, the covenant cup, and the coming kingdom.
“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’” (Matthew 26:26, ESV)
How Israel Spoke: “This Is” as Sign
Scripture regularly uses the language “this is that” when one thing represents or signifies another.
Joseph to Pharaoh: “The seven good cows are seven years” (Genesis 41:26, ESV)
The Lord to Ezekiel: “these bones are the whole house of Israel” (Ezekiel 37:11, ESV)
Yeshua on His own parable: “The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom” (Matthew 13:38, ESV)
Paul, writing to the church at Corinth: “the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4, ESV)
Nobody in those rooms thought the cows had become calendar years.
“This is” fits comfortably within the symbolic grammar of Passover. Of the lamb eaten in haste, Scripture says:
“It is the Lord’s Passover.” (Exodus 12:11, ESV)
The lamb was not itself the act of “passing over.” At the first Passover, its blood marked the households God spared from judgment. In every generation afterward, the Passover meal called Israel to remember that redemption as its own story. As Week 1 noted, the meal became catechesis, teaching the story through its elements.
We should hold later Seder details with care. The Mishnah, compiled around AD 200, cannot simply be projected backward as a transcript of Yeshua’s Passover meal. But Pesachim preserves traditions that show how Jewish Passover practice explicitly connected the elements of the meal with God’s acts of redemption, including the instruction that each generation see itself as though it personally came out of Egypt (Pesachim 10). This helps us see the world in which remembrance was more than recalling information. Passover located each generation within God’s redemption story. Against that background, Yeshua’s command, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19, ESV), takes on extraordinary weight.
The Little Word “Is”
Yeshua likely spoke Hebrew or Aramaic at the table. Both languages can form present-tense statements without an expressed verb corresponding to the English “is.” The inspired Gospel accounts, however, give us the saying in Greek: touto estin to sōma mou, “this is my body.”
So “is” matters. But the verb alone cannot tell us what kind of identification Yeshua intended. Context has to do that work.
The Passover setting directs us first toward a different set of questions: What does this mean? What has God done? What does this meal call His people to remember?
Look again at Week 1’s cup:
“And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’” (Luke 22:20, ESV)
A cup is not a covenant. Even the most literal reader hears a figure of speech here. And when Yeshua spoke, He was seated at the table, whole and unbroken, with the bread in His hands.
None of this proves by itself that the words could never be read in a stronger sense. It shows that the verb is not the whole story, which is why the case is cumulative.
John 6: Bread from Heaven
John 6 is where this question gets its sharpest edge. It is near Passover (6:4). The crowd has just been fed, and they are talking about manna. Then Yeshua speaks:
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35, ESV)
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.” (John 6:47, ESV)
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53, ESV)
Watch the pattern. Coming to Yeshua satisfies hunger; believing in Him satisfies thirst. Before the imagery intensifies into eating His flesh and drinking His blood, Yeshua has already placed coming to Him and believing in Him at the center of the discourse.
The crowd stumbles: “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60, ESV). Many disciples leave (John 6:66). Then Yeshua adds a line every reading must reckon with:
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (John 6:63, ESV)
Sacramental readers rightly point out that Yeshua has just spoken positively of His flesh, so this verse cannot mean His incarnate flesh does not matter. At the least, it insists that life comes through the Spirit and that His words must be received in faith. The argument here does not rest on this verse. Verses 35 and 47 carry it.
Two observations from the text:
Timing. By most reckonings, this discourse came about a year before the Upper Room, in a Capernaum synagogue (6:59). It first had to make sense to that audience as a call to feed on Yeshua by trusting Him.
Pattern. The same Gospel gives us “I am” sayings that no one reads woodenly: the light of the world (8:12), the door (10:9), the true vine (15:1). Reading “bread of life” the same way is not a shortcut around the text. It is how this Gospel talks.
The Silence at the Table
Leviticus 17:10–14 forbids eating blood. The men in the Upper Room were raised under that law. Then they hear:
“Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:27–28, ESV)
The Gospel writers record no objection from the disciples. That silence cannot prove exactly how they understood Him, and the Gospels do not record every reaction in the room. But given the Torah’s prohibition against consuming blood, the absence of a recorded objection is worth noticing. In John 6 the crowd recoiled. In the Upper Room, none is recorded.
Their ears were also tuned to Sinai, where Moses sprinkled the people and said:
“Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” (Exodus 24:8, ESV)
Blood and covenant were not foreign categories. They belonged to Sinai. Jeremiah’s promised new covenant, which Week 1 traced, adds the promise of forgiveness:
“I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34, ESV)
The words Yeshua speaks over the cup gather both: “the blood of the covenant,” poured out “for the forgiveness of sins.”
Other Readers, Serious Arguments
Catholic and Lutheran readers hear John 6 as pointing straight to the Lord’s Supper, and they take the sharpness of verses 53–56 seriously. That deserves respect.
They point to the departures in John 6. When disciples left, Yeshua did not soften His words. Some see that as evidence He meant them literally.
They point to the Greek. The Gospels and Paul use the same verb of being.
They point to Paul’s warning. Anyone who eats “in an unworthy manner” is “guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 11:27, ESV)
The cumulative case above offers a different reading of each of these. None of that makes the other readings foolish. Week 3 traces how thoughtful Christians arrived where they did.
Careful with Later Categories
Greek-speaking Jews of the period could think symbolically and philosophically, and Christians have used Greek vocabulary well, most famously at Nicaea, to say who the Son is. The concern here is narrower. Later, categories like “substance” and “accidents” were applied to bread and wine, and the conversation shifted from what the table means and does to what the elements are made of. The Upper Room accounts foreground remembrance, covenant, forgiveness, and the coming kingdom.
That shift is Week 3’s story. For now, notice that reading Yeshua’s words through Israel’s story and reading them through later categories produce different questions before they produce different answers.
A Sign-Act, Not a Formula
Israel’s prophets did not only speak. They performed sign-acts. Ezekiel laid siege to a brick (Ezekiel 4). Jeremiah wore a yoke (Jeremiah 27–28). These acts embodied God’s word and drew the watching people into it.
The action at the table functions much like the sign-acts of Israel’s prophets. Yeshua does not merely explain His approaching death. He enacts it symbolically before His disciples.
Bread was broken.
A cup was poured.
The cross was pictured before it happened.
That is why this reading does not mean “just a symbol.” Israel’s symbols were never “just.” The Passover lamb was not “just a symbol.” Eating the meal identified Israel with the redemption God had accomplished and rehearsed that redemption from generation to generation. In the same way, the bread and cup are covenant signs given by the Messiah Himself, through which believers remember, proclaim, and identify with His once-for-all sacrifice. As Week 1 put it, communion is not merely symbolic. Communion is covenantal.
There is no need to drain the Table of mystery. Through a simple meal, believers remember the Messiah’s death, proclaim it together, and look toward the kingdom still to come.
How does this help me understand the concept of “At The Table”?
Hearing the Words as They Were Spoken
Read Yeshua as a Jewish Messiah, at a Jewish feast, speaking to Jewish disciples through the language and story of Israel’s Scriptures.
That reading avoids two opposite mistakes. Communion is neither “just a symbol” nor an isolated ritual cut off from the story it belongs to. The bread and cup are covenant signs given by the Messiah Himself. They call us to remember what God has done, proclaim the Messiah’s death, and anticipate what God will yet do.
And notice where Yeshua takes the meal:
“I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” (Matthew 26:29, ESV)
The table points in three directions: back to Passover, to the cross, and forward to the kingdom. We will return to that last promise in Week 5.
That also means we cannot fully understand communion if we erase Israel from the story. As Week 1 put it, the Church does not replace Israel at the table. We need Israel’s Exodus to understand redemption. We need Israel’s Passover to understand the meal. We need Israel’s covenants to understand the cup. And we need Israel’s Messiah to understand the body broken for us.
Coming to the Table with Clarity
The next time you come to the table, read it backward through Exodus and forward toward the kingdom. When believers hear Yeshua as He was first heard:
The bread reminds us that His body was given for us: “This is my body, which is for you.” (1 Corinthians 11:24, ESV)
The cup proclaims a covenant sealed in blood and forgiveness freely promised
The table forms us as people who trust Him, not merely observe a ritual
Communion becomes not a puzzle to solve, but a covenant to remember and proclaim.
Remember where the story began.
The Church did not invent this story.
We were invited into it.
