Sermon: Maundy Thursday - 2019

Note: This sermon was not preached because of inclement weather.

18 April 2019

Text: 1 Cor 11:23-32 (Ex 12:1014, John 13:1-15, 34-35)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

A lot Protestant Christians disagree with us concerning what Jesus means when He says, “This is my body,” and “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”  Many of our brothers and sisters in these churches go so far as to say that when Jesus says “is,” He really means “is not.”

And in our day and age, we never want to say that someone is wrong.  We like tolerance.  We like to believe that either everybody can be right (even when they say contradictory things), or that it really doesn’t matter – usually followed by statements like “we all worship the same God” and “what matters is how you treat people.”

Of course, these are things that Jesus never says.

There is truth.  Truth exists outside of us.  Jesus is the Truth.  Words are important.  Words are the means by which God creates the universe, and remakes you from sinner to saint.  Jesus is the Word.  Doctrine is not up for grabs.  For doctrine simply means what we teach.  There is true doctrine and false doctrine.  False doctrine is deadly.  Correct doctrine is taught by a correct teacher.  And Jesus is our Teacher.

So what does our Teacher tell us concerning this Lord’s Supper that He established on Maundy Thursday, “on the night when He was betrayed?”

Jesus says that the bread is His body.  We are to eat it.  We are to do it in His remembrance.  Jesus says the wine is the new covenant in His blood.  We are to drink it, and we are to do so in His remembrance.  And when we do this as He instructed us to do it, we are proclaiming His death: we are telling the truth, we are spreading the word of the Word Made Flesh, and we are teaching correctly – teaching our children, ourselves, our neighbors, and the world.  We are confessing the truth of what our Lord is calling us to do.  We are telling the truth about Him: the truth about the Truth.

The Lord calls us to “do this” as He established on that first Maundy Thursday.  In fact, our Lord incorporated a New Commandment into this Eucharistic meal: that we Christians love one another – by our deeds as well as our words.  When we serve our fellow believers, and when we are served with the body and blood of Christ, we are proclaiming the Lord’s service to us: His death, His resurrection, His coming again.  We are teaching the world that Christ has come in love, to forgive, to renew, to restore, and He is truly coming again to re-create the heavens and the earth – even as He recreates bread to be His body and wine to be His blood by means of His miraculous and powerful word: the word of the Word.

The words of the Word Made Flesh created the universe, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, restored hearing to the deaf, and made the lame to walk.  The Word of God forgives our sins, declares our innocence, and restores our communion with the Father.  The Word turns water into wine, bread into His body, and wine into His blood.

And this, dear friends, is why we do not believe that our Lord just meant to establish a meal of mere bread and wine that reminds us of His advent.  Rather, we believe that this Holy Eucharist is an ongoing advent, that He is truly present with us every single time that we “do this” in His remembrance.  

For St. Paul confesses something that would be impossible if our Protestant brothers and sisters were correct: “Whoever, therefore,” says the apostle, “eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.”

He goes on: “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.  That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”

Dear friends, St. Paul is saying that improper self-examination and not discerning the body in the Holy Sacrament can actually be deadly.  It can cause weakness and illness.  Some may scoff at this, but this is what the Word of God says.  The presence of God is powerful and mighty.  We heard anew of the power of God during the original Passover – which the Lord Jesus Christ was celebrating with His disciples on that “night when He was betrayed.”

The blood of the Lamb had the actual power to ward off death itself.  It was not symbolic.  It was not merely a ritual.  The life was in the blood, and the blood was the covenant, the promise of God.  And misuse of the Lord’s Word, despising the blood of the Lamb, could well result in death.

It certainly meant death to the unbelievers who chose to worship Pharaoh instead of the One True God.  

But, dear friends, we are the people of the covenant!  We are the children of Israel who were kept safe from the angel of death!  We are the redeemed who have been saved by the blood of the Lamb!  That is why our Lord speaks of the “new covenant in My blood.”  For when Jesus says, “This is,” He is not speaking metaphorically or establishing rituals for the sake of rituals.  He is speaking as the Creator of the universe, the Word Himself: “And God said… and there was...”

And so we remember on this Maundy Thursday.  We remember our exit from Pharaoh’s tyranny.  And we remember our exit from Satan’s tyranny – by means of the covenant, by means of the Lamb’s sacrifice, by His flesh, by His blood, by His Word, and by His new commandment that we love one another.  For when we do as the Lord instructs, when we serve one another in our needs and in our hunger and thirst for righteousness, when we “do this” in remembrance of Him, when we eat and drink, then truly we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes – we confess the truth that Jesus is God in the flesh who has come to redeem us, and we teach the world who Jesus is, and what He came to do.

And so, dear friends, let us examine ourselves.  Let us confess our sins and rejoice in our pardon.  And let us discern the body of the Lord, taking to heart His mighty and creative words: “This is.”  Let us worship Him, even as those under the first covenant gazed upon His divine presence in visible form, physically manifest in the Ark of the Covenant, being miraculously present upon the Mercy Seat.  Let us not shy away from what the Lord’s words mean, but rather let us confess them and teach them; let us practice them, and most important of all, let us believe them!

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”  Amen.

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