Maundy Thursday, Year C, 2025

Maundy Thursday, Year C

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

We’ve all seen pictures of DaVinci’s “The Last Supper” many times, I’m sure. Jesus is in the middle, arms stretched out to the table in front of him. All of the disciples are engaged in heated conversation. This seems to be the part of the evening where Jesus has just told them that one of them will betray him, and now they’re all trying to figure out who it will be. And if you didn’t know, we can tell which one Judas is in the painting, because he’s the one holding the bag of coins, clenching them in his fist.

Tonight we celebrate and remember that meal. And this is important for a number of reasons. First, that it was important to Jesus to celebrate it. Second, that Jesus re-instituted that meal. And third, that Jesus intended for this new meal to be celebrated frequently after his “departure”.

All of the Gospels tell us that Jesus wanted to celebrate the Passover with the Twelve. The celebration of the Passover meal is commanded by God in Exodus 12, and Jesus is obedient to the commands of His Father. Therefore, he *will* celebrate this meal. We know that the word “Passover” comes from the final plague in Egypt, when the Angel of Death would “pass over” the houses of anyone whose doors had been painted with the blood of the lamb that had been sacrificed that night. The Hebrew word for this is pesach, the origin of the word “Paschal” - as in Paschal Feast, or Paschal Candle.

In the Jeremiah passage for this day, God tells His people: Jeremiah 31:31–32 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.”

A New Covenant, not like the old one. What was wrong with the old one? We were. We were the problem. We couldn’t live up to our part of the bargain. Remember, Moses presented the Covenant - God’s Law - to the people, and they said they would do all that God had commanded. And Moses splashed blood on the altar (representing God’s part in the Covenant), and then he splashed blood on the people (for their part in the Covenant). And what happened? Over and over again, the people betrayed God by worshiping other gods and idols. In fact, they made their first idol just days after this Covenant was begun. This Covenant was going to fail, because they were going to fail their part of it. And in fact, they would fail many times over. The Old Testament tells that story time and time again. And each time the people face God’s wrath, it’s because they have failed. They couldn’t hold up their part of the bargain. God ALWAYS upheld His part.

It’s easy for us to look down our noses at the ancient sinners, isn’t it? But are we any better? I’m pretty comfortable that none of us has engaged in worshiping Baal, or Asherah, or Molech. And I seriously doubt that any of us has carved any images of false gods to put on your mantle. But idols and false gods don’t always have to be little statues. They’re anything we put our trust in that’s not God. They’re anything that occupies the space in our hearts that God should occupy. They’re anything that’s more important to our time than God is, when that time should belong to God. So, with that little update to the standard for staying obedient to the first 2 Commandments, how do we measure up? I hope that description made you squirm in your seat a little. It should. It made me flinch a little just saying it out loud. We’re all guilty of it.

But that’s because it’s in our nature. The very first Covenant that God made was with only 2 people, and it contained only one rule: “Don’t eat the fruit from this one tree.” Eat any other fruit in the garden. Do anything with this one tree except eat the fruit. Just don’t eat the fruit from THIS tree. That’s it. That’s the only rule we had to follow. And we couldn’t keep it. So is it any wonder that we couldn’t keep 10 rules? Of course, God *did* try to set us up for success. He made the #1 rule in this new set to guard against the very thing that got Adam & Eve in trouble. They wanted “to be like God”. They wanted to be gods themselves. So this new 1st Commandment forbid that. You shall have no other gods besides YHWH… and that includes trying to make yourselves into gods. Don’t do that. It didn’t work out so well for the first man and woman. Don’t repeat their mistake.

But since we’re no better than Adam & Eve, God realized that the Covenant that Moses gave the people wasn’t going to cut it. So God came up with a New Covenant, just like He said He would to Jeremiah.

Now again, Jesus is a perfectly obedient Son, so he perfectly obeyed the Father’s Commandments. In fact, in he tells us in Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” And so in keeping the Pesach / the Passover, he fulfills this commandment from Exodus.

You may remember that last year, we went through all the stages of this meal. And Jesus kept all of those, too. But he made a change at the end.

The Interpretation of St. Luke’s Gospel Chapter 22

From Matthew and from Mark we note that the Supper was instituted at the close of that part of the Passover when all were freely eating the Passover food. No one was to be [lacking]. So at the time when the [master of the house] would have gone on to the next ceremonial act - the eating of the last morsel of the lamb, and thereby stopped all further eating - Jesus proceeded to do something that was entirely new. The new act is also an eating and a drinking, but only of the bread and the wine, and only by the disciples; it also has its thanksgivings, but these and the added words refer directly to Christ’s sacrificial body and blood and their saving effect. The disciples understood from the first new word onward.

The only way to share this flat, unleavened bread was to break it into pieces. So, it’s broken not to symbolize something that happened to Jesus body, but just as a practical way of sharing this part of the meal. We don’t really know what words Jesus used to give thanks for the bread and wine, but we don’t need to. As my favorite New Testament scholar says: “All we can say about these words is that, after they were once spoken by Jesus, they remain [effective] for all time wherever the Sacrament is celebrated.” [Lenski, 1046]

The words we do have tell us a great deal: “This is my body...” Have 4 short words ever sparked so much controversy? In Latin, this phrase is “Hoc est corpus meum”, which is the origin of the phrase “hocus pocus” as words of magic...someone misheard the priest speaking those words, and now we have “hocus pocus”. But in that moment on the night of his betrayal, Jesus has given thanks - blessed the bread - and in that act has consecrated it, made it holy. Luther tells us ““It is no longer mere bread of the oven but bread of flesh, or bread of body, that is, bread which is sacramentally one with Christ’s body.” [Lenski, 1047] Let us never take for granted what it is that we are receiving in this meal: Christ’s own body, “given for you”. He’s allowing his own flesh to be brutally beaten and killed, putting himself on that cross for all those sins we talked about earlier. Yours, mine, and everyone else’s. Those are taken with him to that cross.

Then Jesus moves on to the cup - this is a single cup, to be used by all the disciples at the table. They are to drink from the same vessel, but it’s not the vessel that’s important; it’s the contents. They are all to drink his very blood - the wine that has been consecrated with thanksgiving. Like his body, Jesus is shedding his blood for us. It is “poured out” for us. The final descriptor of the blood is also important. Here he says Luke 22:20 “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” And now we have the fulfillment of the prophecy in Jeremiah. Here is the new covenant. But I want to go just a little deeper on that particular word.

If we look at older Lutheran worship books, or if we were to look at the new LC-MS worship book, we find a different word there than covenant. They use the word “testament”. So, why the difference? Recall the reason a new covenant was needed: the people couldn’t keep their part of the deal. A covenant is an agreement between parties. This new arrangement that Christ is instituting doesn’t rely on the people. It is wholly and completely God’s action on our behalf. “The Old Testament dealt with the promises God had given to his chosen people. God placed himself in ‘covenant’ relation to Israel. The heart of this revelation, like the promises and the gifts of God to Israel, is [completely] one-sided. It is always God’s covenant, not Israel’s; and it is never a mutual agreement. This covenant, indeed, obligates Israel, and Israel assumes these obligations, but the covenant itself emanates entirely from God. The LXX [Septuagint - the ancient Bible written entirely in Greek] translates berith, ‘covenant,’ with διαθήκη (diatheke), ‘testament,’ since this term has the strongest one-sided connotation. A will or testament emanates only from the [the person who wrote the will]. Christ brought the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. The result of this was that God’s people now have the inheritance and are God’s heirs, joint-heirs with Christ, Rom. 8:17. It is thus that in the New Testament berith becomes διαθήκη (diatheke), ‘will and testament’ by which God bequeaths to us the blessings Christ has brought.” [Lenski, 1052–1053] Can I get an “amen”?

And in the meal Jesus gave his body to everyone at the table, and he tells them “do this in remembrance of me.” He says the same when he tells them to drink his blood from the cup - to do it “in remembrance of me.” In Greek, that verb “do” shows continuous, ongoing action. Think of it as “keep on doing this to remember me”. Continuously, and ongoing… until the final, eternal feast begins. “The purpose of the remembering is to recall Jesus, but not only in a general way: he is to be recalled by all that this sacrament includes for [everyone who receives His Body and Blood].” [Lenski, 1050] Each time we come to the Lord’s Supper, we are to remember all that Jesus has done for us. The great gift of salvation, in its entirety. It is an amazing and truly awesome thing. And we are invited and welcome to partake.

Brothers and sisters, my hope for our whole church family is that every single Christian who partakes in this meal - tonight and every time we celebrate it - will always be amazed and humbled by the gift we have been given. I pray that all of us will be appropriately grateful - to the extent that we can be that grateful - when we receive the body and blood of our Savior. Tonight especially, as we all receive from one cup, let’s envision ourselves being at that table with our Savior, knowing what he is about to endure on our behalf. And let’s let that thought carry us through the next few days. His gift to us is more than we can possibly be thankful enough for. And that should give us a hint as to just how much He love us.

(Instruction)