Colvin on The Lord's Supper

A helpful discussion here between Alistair Roberts and Matthew Colvin who is the author of an expensive book, The Lost Supper: Revisiting Passover and the Origins of the Eucharist (Fortress Press, 2019). Roberts describes the wide-ranging discussion: "the value of rabbinic and other extra-biblical Jewish sources for our reading of the New Testament, the meaning of Christ's words of institution, rethinking the metaphysics and the mechanics of the Supper, Eucharistic practices, and much else besides!"

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Scholars have argued about it, but he is surely right that the Supper is Christianized Passover. 

The Supper and the Passover are both given before the event to which they refer (The Exodus Passover and the death and resurrection of Christ). Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (Revised, 1966) is a classic. He gives 14 reasons why we should think of the Supper as a Passover.

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The chronology of John and the Synoptics can be easily harmonised. John 19:14 has the Last Supper on the "Day of Preparation" of the Passover but this is best taken as the day of preparation of the Sabbath in Passover week, so that all four gospels have the Supper on Thursday and the crucifixion on the Friday. 

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For both Passover and Supper we can think about:

Institution / instruction 

The first meal

The event referred to 

The repetition of this ritual meal

The ultimate (eschatological) fulfilment of the meal

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 Colvin refers to this passage: 

In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he had come out of Egypt, as it is said: "You shall tell your child on that day, it is because of this that the L‑rd did for me when I left Egypt."

The Holy One, blessed be He, redeemed not only our fathers from Egypt, but He redeemed also us with them, as it is said: "It was us that He brought out from there, so that He might bring us to give us the land that He swore to our fathers."

(The English Haggadah) 

https://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/661624/jewish/English-Haggadah-Text.htm

As we eat the Supper, we should of course recall our redemption from slavery to sin. This is our story as the people of God. And also our death with Christ and our resurrection with him: we were included in his death, we died with him that we might live with him and for him.

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Colvin also advocates for an eyes open Supper as a communal ritual meal, not a private spiritual exercise. We should not think we have to get the magic words right but we do have to discern the body, the church, or as Paul says, it is not the Lord's Supper we eat if we are being selfish and greedy and getting drunk while others are going hungry.