Sermon: Maundy Thursday - 2021

1 April 2021

Text: John 13:1-15, 34-35 (Ex 12:1-14, 1 Cor 23:32)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

One of the oldest symbols of the Christian faith is, of course, the cross: two intersecting lines, one vertical and one horizontal.  This symbol illustrates who Jesus is, as He is both vertical (divine) and horizontal (human).  He has perfect communion with both God and man, because He is both God and man.

He is also the intersection between eternity and time, between the Creator and creation, and between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Jesus is both/and and not either/or.  And this is the mystery of the Incarnation, that is, the idea that God takes on human flesh.  And this creates situations hard for us to imagine: a man who is perfect, a God who has a mother and who dies, a man who controls the universe by means of His Word, and a God who is sacrificed for the sake of His creatures. 

And on this holy day, we remember the events of that Thursday when Jesus celebrated the Passover one final time with His disciples, and afterward, was arrested and began the ordeal of His passion, leading to His death, and culminating in His resurrection.

But on this day that we call Maundy Thursday, Jesus fulfills what His cousin John the Baptist prophesied, pointing to Jesus and saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world!”

This truth is fulfilled at the Last Supper that completed Passover, which in turn became the Lord’s Supper – in which the Passover is not ended, but brought to its fullness in Christ. 

The Passover was the “memorial day” that the children of Israel were commanded to “keep… as a feast to the Lord.”  It was a remembrance of the miracle of the people being saved from slavery, death, and Pharoah – which points to our being saved from bondage to sin, from death, and from the tyranny of the devil. 

The children of Israel slaughtered the sacrificial lamb, a male without blemish, that served as the substitutionary offering for the sins of the people, for the wages of sin is death.  The Lord Himself provides a substitute, just as He did when Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac, and the ram appeared, with his head caught in the thorn-bush.  As a seal of this substitutionary offering, the lamb’s blood was placed on the doors, and the angel of death passed over houses marked by the blood of the lamb.  The lamb’s blood was a miraculous protection that God Himself provided to His people.

And so, Jesus celebrates the final Passover, because from then on, He will be that Lamb, that atoning sacrifice, that substitute.  And instead of killing and eating the flesh of a lamb as a memorial of our freedom, we now have a revised meal, the eating of the flesh of the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world.”  And His blood seals us and protects us from the devil.  And that is freedom indeed!

Before giving us this Holy Supper and charging us to do this in His memory, our Lord prepared the disciples by washing them.  This was shocking to them, for rabbis did not debase themselves to serve their students – let alone did they picture God taking the role of a lowly slave washing the filth from their bare feet.  And yet, this is what Jesus does.  Be becomes a servant.  He washes us with water and the Holy Spirit.  And He charges His church to do likewise.

We Christians are to love one another, even if we don’t like one another.  For we are brothers and sisters in His name, and we share table fellowship – horizontally with one another, and vertically with God.  It is God who comes down to eat with us, and it is a man who restores us to fellowship with God.

St. Paul recorded the words that He “received from the Lord,” and which he “also delivered to” us.  We Christians have been doing as our Lord said to do: “Do this in remembrance of Me,” day after day for nearly two thousand years. 

We take bread and wine, we give thanks, we bless it with the very words of Jesus, by whose Word the universe was created, “Take, eat, this is My body, which is given for you…. Drink of it all of you, this cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  This is our Passover, the New and Greater Passover, the one all-availing sacrifice whose one death atones for the sins of all the world. 

We no longer have to sacrifice lambs and goats and bulls, for Jesus is the fulfillment of all sacrifices of all time.  What greater sacrifice could there be, dear friends, than God Himself, who died on the cross, who rose from the dead, and whose physical body and blood are given to us in the Holy Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper?

And notice that this is not just a symbolic ritual.  For St. Paul cautions us against such thinking: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.  Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink 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.”

This bread and wine are indeed bread and wine.  But, dear brothers and sisters, they are more than that.  It is both/and.  It is truly the body and blood of Christ.  We must discern the body, that is, confess His presence, or we are doing spiritual damage to ourselves.  And spiritual damage can affect us mentally and even physically.  This sacrament is not a symbol, it is not some kind of vague spiritual presence.  It is what Jesus says it is: His body and His blood.

Some Christians scoff at this.  For how can it be both/and?  Well, dear friends, how can Jesus be both God and man?  How can you be both saint and sinner?  How can the Bible be the Word of God and yet written by men?  If it is too much to believe that the Lord’s own words have the power to make bread His body and wine His blood, than why should we believe that He turned water into wine, let alone created the universe out of nothing by means of His Word, or healed the sick, or raised the dead? 

Our Lord gives us this Lord’s Supper to fortify us for our journey in this fallen world, like the Israelites eating the manna, the bread from heaven, that kept them alive in the desert. 

Jesus washed the feet of His disciples.  He ordained them, sent them to preach, and told them to make disciples by baptism.  And their successors have been baptizing us, washing us, and preparing us for the Supper for nearly two millennia.  And our Lord established the fulfillment of the Passover, the Paschal Feast that we celebrate every Lord’s Day and on special feasts, eating His flesh and drinking His blood upon His gracious invitation, discerning the body and participating in this physical miracle that St. Ignatius of Antioch called, “The medicine of immortality.”

Let us joyfully receive from the Lord what St. Paul delivered to us, what Moses established and what Jesus fulfilled – and what was completed on the cross.  Let us join this holy intersection of the human and the divine, of the physical and the transcendent, of time and eternity: the miracle of the Sacrament of the Altar.  Let us receive the gift that saves us, that connects us to the cross and to the tomb, to our Lord’s incarnation here where we are.  And let us hold this Paschal feast sacred, in our confession and in our celebration, keeping the feast until our Lord’s return in glory, throughout our generations as a statute forever.  Let us keep the feast: like the sign of the cross, in which time and eternity, God and humanity, intersect for our salvation.

Amen.

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