Maundy Thursday B

Holy Thursday Year B

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

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

If you had to summarize the purpose and meaning of the Lord’s Supper very quickly, what would you say? Have you ever had to do that? If you ever find yourself in that position, if you don’t already know what you would say, please remember this: it’s all about God’s love for us. That’s really what it boils down to.

If you accepted my challenge a few weeks ago, then you went through the Small Catechism during Lent. But a refresher is always helpful. So what does Luther tell us in the Small Catechism about this meal?

Let’s read this together out loud. I’ll read the questions, and together please read the response.

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This day of Holy Week - Maundy Thursday - is the anniversary of the first celebration of this new meal. Now we know that Christ was observing this meal as the Passover meal with his closest friends. The Passover meal itself is commanded by God for all Jews to celebrate and remember that God delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and especially that God spared them from the angel of death. When they sacrificed a lamb, God instructed them to “take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. [You] shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs [you] shall eat it … It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.” (Exodus 12:7-8, 11-14)

From that time forward, that first Passover, the Jewish people celebrated the Passover meal every year. The Exodus was approximately 1,500 years before Jesus’ crucifixion, which was 2,000 years before today, and Jews still celebrate this meal. It is not only celebrated because God commands it; the Passover meal is also a solemn reminder of the horrible situation God’s people had been in, the grace God showed them by sparing them from that most devastating of plagues - the death of the firstborn throughout the whole land…and that ultimately God delivered them from their slavery.

The death of the firstborn in Egypt was what it took to get Pharaoh to finally let the Hebrew people go. It was the last in a series of ten plagues that was finally more than he could bear - even Pharaoh’s own firstborn son was taken in this plague. The death of the firstborn set God’s people free from their oppression and slavery.

If you remember the Exodus story, you know that it didn’t take long for the Hebrew people to forget what God had done for them. They had barely been out of Egypt for a month when they started complaining. And when their own leader - Moses - took a little longer than they thought he should in talking with God, they very quickly turned to false gods and made idols for themselves. They betrayed the God Who had saved them.

God had promised to deliver them from their slavery. They had cried out to God, and He heard their cries. And out of His love for them, He came to save them from their slavery. It took blood to save them - the blood of the firstborn to break the hold that Pharaoh had on them, and the blood of the sacrificial lamb spread on the doorposts to spare them from the plague of death.

Now fast-forward to the scene we heard in our Gospel lesson tonight. Jesus shares this Passover meal with his disciples. They are planning to have the same meal in remembrance of their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. But Jesus has something to add to this already very special meal.

God knew that humanity could not save ourselves. Time after time, as we read throughout the Old Testament, what the Jews call “the Law and the Prophets” we read about how the people of Israel would begin to turn away from God, forget or even just openly defy their covenant with God - or, perhaps more appropriately, God’s covenant with them - and they would eventually end up miserable. Life - when they turned their backs on God - turned out to be not so great. In fact, it turned out to be empty, bleak, even hopeless.

So our Heavenly Father, in His Infinite Wisdom, provides the solution: He takes action PERSONALLY. Since we didn’t heed His messengers (the prophets), He sent His SON, who was the firstborn of Mary and the Holy Spirit. God’s Son, who has been with the Father always (“In the beginning was the Word…”) now took on flesh, in the form of an infant child. And he grew up as any typical human being would and became an adult. And he walked with us, and he taught us.

Now although he became “incarnate” as we say in the Creed - taking a human, fleshly body, he did not lose any of his divinity. He was and is still God. And that means He knows the Father’s plan. He knows what He was sent for: to die. He must die. The old covenant was broken by us. As we have done repeatedly since we got kicked out of the Garden of Eden; we keep on messing up our relationship with God. *WE* botched it then, and we continue to. It’s our fault. In the old covenant, we had a part to play. God gave us His Law, and asked us to follow it. Which, in our Old Testament lesson today, it’s clear that we agreed to that. “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” Well, that really didn’t work out so well, did it? We couldn’t hold up our end of the bargain. And this covenant was sealed with blood. Sealing a covenant with blood was done to symbolize the shared bond of life between the Lord and His people. God told His people that the blood contained life, which is why they were not to eat the blood of the sacrifices.

God first gave this command to Noah [“…you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (Gen 9:4)] and then later also to Moses: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, No person among you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger who sojourns among you eat blood.” (Leviticus 17:11-12)

Now with all of this in mind, listen again to Jesus’ own words:

“And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, ‘Take; this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.’”

They had eaten the Passover meal, and now Jesus, the Son of God, re-defines this covenant meal. Sometimes we’ll hear verse 24 as “This is my blood of the *new* covenant, which is poured out for many.” And that is entirely appropriate, because it *is* a new covenant. And this time, it’s all on God’s shoulders. We’re not meeting Him halfway, or “doing our part”. God is the actor here. Specifically, God the Son.

Jesus knew exactly what he was doing, every step of the way. He knew that He was going to be crucified. He knew that before that, he would be beaten severely. He knew that before being beaten, he would be put on trial. And he knew that before being put on trial, he would be betrayed by one of his closest friends and arrested. Once more, humanity would betray God in a sinful way, and blood would be shed, and there would be death. And it would be our fault, not God’s fault.

So if Jesus knew all this would happen, why did he do it? Because He LOVES US. That is what this is all about. God’s incredible, patient, boundless love for us, His children. Love that we don’t deserve…love that we cannot ever earn. Jesus took all this on WILLINGLY, and with the full knowledge of exactly how awful his suffering and death was going to be.

What I find truly beautiful here is that he does not do away with the Passover meal, but rather he gives it new meaning, he re-defines it: “Take, this is my body.” The unleavened bread has now become the flesh of the sacrificial lamb. Jesus doesn’t say “this represents my body” or “this symbolizes my body” does he? No. He says “this *is* my body”. When we do this tonight, and every time we come to the Sacrament of the Altar, it IS the same meal. It IS his body and his blood.

The blood of the new covenant is his own blood. He shed his blood to free us from the bondage of a much worse oppression than just the Egyptians. He shed his blood to free us from bondage to sin itself…a bondage that has held us captive since our first parents. And this time, we don’t have to take the sacrificial lamb’s blood and paint it on our doors. This time, it’s not so that death will pass us by. This time, the blood of the Lamb of God will turn death away forever.

Unlike God’s command to Noah and Moses - now Jesus COMMANDS his disciples to consume *his* blood. He wants us to, quite literally, drink him into ourselves.

While we do not believe that the wafer actually, physically becomes human flesh, or that the wine actually, physically becomes human blood…we *do* believe that there *is* something mysterious that happens in this meal. In this meal, the bread and wine are blessed and we are taken back to that same meal that Jesus shared with His friends. We are linked mysteriously somehow with that event, and we are brought into Christ’s presence. He is truly present in this bread and cup.

As St. Paul told the church in Corinth: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” When we come to the Lord’s Table, this is what we are doing. We are sharing that same meal. We are participating in the body and blood of Christ. We are taking him into ourselves, receiving the gift of the new covenant - the covenant for which God bears full responsibility. The covenant that is a promise from God, that we only need to receive and not work for.

Christ’s body is broken for us. Christ’s blood is shed for us…for the forgiveness of sins. This *is* the new covenant that Jesus describes in that Passover meal. And that new covenant is what will be sealed with His Precious Blood when his hands and feet are nailed to the cross the very next day…all because of God’s deep and unfailing love for us - His children.

As we partake in this meal tonight, let us all remember what this meal truly is: it is Our Savior, selflessly giving Himself for us, to break the bonds of sin that once held us, to remind us that we *are* forgiven, and to show us each and every time we come to His Table just how far He is willing to go for us.

Brother and sisters: this meal is definitely ALL about how much God loves us.

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