Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-14/Matthew 26:17-30 - Maundy Thursday - March 28, 2013 

For You

The Passover was to be celebrated as a statute forever.  Even before God commanded Moses what to do, He made it very clear how important its celebration would be for years to come and even forevermore.  “This month shall be for you the beginning of months.”  Their whole calendar would be reoriented around the events that God would soon accomplish.  “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.” 

But, of course, we don’t celebrate it anymore, do we?  The reason is simple.  Christ fulfilled it.  The Passover pointed to what Jesus would do to save sinners from eternal punishment.  The reason God was so adamant about its continual celebration wasn’t because of the ritual itself.  No, it was because God requires faith in Christ.  Consider these words from Psalm 51:

O Lord, open my lips,
And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.

For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;
You do not delight in burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise.

God delights in our faith not because it is some virtue that pleases Him, but because it receives in repentance what Christ has earned for us.  His sacrifice is the only sacrifice that God really cares about.  And it is for the sake of this sacrifice that God accepts our own offerings as well. 

The reason we don’t celebrate the Passover is because Jesus fulfilled it.  On the other hand, the reason why Moses and the Israelites for generation after generation did celebrate the Passover was for the same reason – because Christ would fulfill it.  It all centers in Christ.  What He accomplishes is the focus of all saving faith from beginning to end. 

Now, since the Passover pointed to Christ, the events of that first Passover night teach us very well how we ought to consider the night when Jesus was betrayed — because just as the angel of death went through the streets of Egypt, claiming what God said He would claim, so on the night of Christ’s betrayal, God claimed from His Son the price for our salvation.  So let’s consider. 

God’s children were in slavery.  No threat would persuade Pharaoh to let them go.  Nine plagues God had sent.  But all they did was harden his heart.  The tenth plague, however, was different.  It would take human lives.  God would require the life of every eldest son from every household.  This last plague was different from the others in another way too.  God would require the eldest son from every household.  He didn’t make an exception for the Jews like He had with most of the other plagues.  Think about that —the flies, the boils, the hail, the darkness— none of these things touched the Israelites.  But with this final plague, when blood would be shed, God did not give His people a special exemption.  Instead, He offered them redemption.  By the blood of a spotless lamb painted on the doorframe of their homes, their eldest sons were spared.  Nothing else distinguished them from the Egyptians that night other than the blood that marked their doors. 

In this way, the Passover feast that God commanded taught them something more than just about this one event in Egypt.  It taught them about how God would meet their spiritual need for deliverance as well.  It taught them what distinguished them from the rest of the world.  It was not their own goodness or obedience.  It was not the blood running through their own veins.  It was the blood that God commanded be shed; it was the blood that faith pointed to.  Just as every inch of the lamb had to be pure and spotless to symbolize the purity that God required of them, so also every inch of the innocent lamb had to be thoroughly roasted by fire in order to symbolize God’s burning judgment against their sin.   

And then they ate it.  They took part in the sacrifice.  By eating it, they said, “This lamb was slain for us!”  They ate it with bitter herbs so to remember the hardship that they had to endure under Egyptian slavery.  But of course the bitter slavery to sin oppressed them harder.  The Lord’s Passover commemorated the night when God saved His people from Egypt.  But it pointed forward to the day when He would free them from sin.  They ate it in haste as refugees ready to flee.  

Year after year, this night was remembered.  God saved His people.  He brought them out of Egypt through the Red Sea, through the desert, and into the Promised Land.  He was their God and they were His people.  And God preserved for Himself always a remnant who kept the feast in true faith – that is, who kept the feast with their eyes fixed on Christ. 

And that’s why Jesus wanted to celebrate the Passover so badly.  We hear Him say to His disciples in St. Luke’s Gospel, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”  This word for fervent desire is almost always used in the New Testament to refer to lust or passion or covetousness – something sinful – because it’s the strongest urge a man can have.  But Jesus’ urge, although strong, was holy.  He desired to celebrate the Passover before He suffered and died because He wanted to join the ancient expectation of God’s people to His own fulfillment of it.  In other words, He wanted to ground their faith in the fact that He would redeem them – not from Egyptian or Roman bondage, but from their sin–from death—from the impending wrath of God.  He would do this by shedding His own blood.  He wanted nothing more. 

—because this final celebration of the Passover would not merely recall that night when God’s wrath passed over to spare the eldest sons of Israel.  No, the wrath of God would remain and fall upon the only Son of the Father as He bore the sins of the world.  This is what Jesus fervently desired — because His fervent desire was to save us from our sin, and to give us eternal life with God.  

Now, it’s interesting that even before the night of the Passover God commanded Moses that this would be a statute forever – to keep throughout their generations.  And then in the same way, even before Jesus gave His body into death and shed His blood on the cross, what did He do?   He instituted for His Church throughout the rest of time the Sacrament of His body and blood to eat and to drink for the forgiveness He would soon purchase from God. 

This is great!  Even before God does what needs to be done for our salvation, He first makes sure that our faith knows what to cling to – where to find it.  He doesn’t just save us in some distant corner – making the sacrifice some private affair between Him and His Father.  No, He brings salvation to us – He transcends time and space to make us partakers of the sacrifice.  We need Him to.  Just as God’s people of old depended on the instructions of Moses to escape death that frightful night, so we need Jesus’ instruction to escape death today.  And His instructions are so simple: Take, eat; take, drink. 

On the night when Jesus was betrayed, on the same night when He fulfilled the Passover by becoming the true Passover Lamb of God, Jesus gave to us the fulfillment of the Old Testament by instituting for us the New Testament in His blood.  Now, in the Old Testament, you couldn’t eat the blood.  God was very strict about this.  It was to be offered to God alone — because the life was in the blood.  It was for making atonement.  God demanded blood because God demanded that life be given to atone for our sins. 

But now Christ has atoned for our sins.  The blood that God once and for all demanded in order to make peace He no longer holds back.  Christ offers His body and blood for us Christians to eat and drink in order to deliver the peace He won.  It is not dead blood we receive.  It is not His corpse we are eating.  It is the risen and glorious body of Christ, and it is His living blood, which itself gives life. 

When we eat the body of Christ, we declare: that was given into death for me!  When we drink the blood of Christ, we declare: that was shed for me!  Faith identifies what it receives. 

Saving faith points to Christ.  But more than that: saving faith receives Christ and all His blessings.  That is why, to strengthen our faith, our dear Lord instituted this Sacrament.  Our faith points not to something far away that must be reached and grasped by great spiritual discipline.  No, our faith points to that which is given to us right here and now –that which that is placed into our very mouths for the forgiveness of our sins.  What can possibly dispel our doubt more thoroughly?  Jesus comes to us. 

The Lord's Supper is not just a memorial of what once happened.  It is a participation in it.  The body offered in death and raised to life is given to us.  The lifeblood shed to make peace between us and God delivers that peace.  We do it in remembrance of Christ, not in order to be sentimental, but in order to know what this body and blood has earned — and so that we might believe it.  When we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim our Lord’s death!  We proclaim it until He comes again in glory to rescue us from the oppression of this sinful world. 

And He will come.  He will come as surely as He comes today.  But since we don’t know when that will be, we don’t celebrate the Sacrament in haste like the Passover.  We’re in no hurry.  And it is not bitter like the Passover either.  It’s refreshing, because it gives to us what every promise points to.  But we do eat it – we do drink it with our loins girded and our staff in hand – so to speak.  That is, we do partake of Christ’s atoning sacrifice ready to flee – at any time – ready to leave behind the slavery that binds us and that burdens us week in and week out.  We celebrate this meal ready to depart in peace.  Because that’s what it gives us. 

Jesus said, after instituting the Sacrament, “I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”  The reason Jesus gives to us the Sacrament of the Altar is so that we might feast with Him in heaven forever.  It will be a feast of victory.  The joy we know in part today through faith in the forgiveness of sins will be so full and so great that it cannot be expressed.  All sin and doubt and weakness and death and sadness will be forever gone. 

But for now, we don’t feast, do we?  For now, we seem to just eek by.  Our sins oppress us.  And sometimes we even amaze ourselves at how selfish we can be.  Our slave master is the very flesh that drives us.  And we feed it, while we fail to hunger and thirst for what pleases God.  We fall to temptation.  We indulge our laziness, our lusts, our judgmental hearts.  We are so far from the paradise of peace and joy that we are promised.  We are so unworthy to feast with God. 

But dear Christian, these are all the more reasons to receive what Jesus offers.  No need to look at the Lord's Supper as a feast, where you need to conjure up good feelings, put on your best, and act happy.  Look at it rather like a meal, like your daily bread – like supper.  Look at it as what you need to get by, to survive.  Because that’s what it gives you.  It gives you life.  It gives you what you need – not on special occasions, but often.  It gives you everything that Jesus lived a holy life for.  It gives you everything that Jesus died for.  It gives you Jesus Himself.  It gives you the forgiveness of all your sins and makes you worthy to receive all the joys that await you.  You may come empty, hungry, and with nothing to offer.  But Jesus blesses your weakness, and sends you away with more than heaven can hold.  He makes us new every time we come – and so we come often to proclaim the death that gives us life until all death is forgotten in the newness of the heavenly banquet. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.