That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. The three elements of the Passover meal — roasted lamb, bitter herbs, unleavened bread — are each theologically charged. The lamb roasted rather than boiled or raw: the completeness of cooking over fire, nothing underdone. The bitter herbs: maror, the memory of bitter slavery, the refusal to sanitize what was suffered. The unleavened bread: the urgency of departure, no time to let the dough rise. Every element of the meal is simultaneously a taste and a theology. John 6:54–55 says whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day — the Passover meal's physicality is the precedent for the Lord's Supper's physicality. Eating is the act of incorporation; the lamb's body becomes the eater's life.

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