Maundy Thursday
Ex
12:1-14
3/29/18
“The
LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ‘This month shall be for you
the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell
all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man
shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household.’”
The first
verses of our text for Maundy Thursday tell us that the Passover had a very specific
timing. The month in which it occurred was to be the first month of the
religious year. On the tenth day they
were to take a lamb. And then our text
goes on to say, “you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when
the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at
twilight.” On the fourteenth day of the
month that was later given the name Nisan, the Israelites were to kill and eat
the Passover meal.
We have
gathered on Maundy Thursday to remember our Lord Jesus’ Last Supper with his
disciples, and especially the Sacrament he instituted at that meal. The Last
Supper was a Passover meal. However, if
you look at your calendar you will find that it appears we are a day off. Tomorrow is actually Nisan 14 – tomorrow
is the fourteenth day of the month described in our text - and so tomorrow is Passover. Maybe we should just stop the service now and
come back tomorrow. But before we do
that and mess up our entire Holy Week schedule, let us first take a closer look
at our text.
During the mid-week
Lent services we considered the events in the first eleven chapters of Exodus
that led up to tonight. Because of a
famine, Jacob and his family had gone to Egypt, where Joseph was now second in
charge of the nation. There God blessed
Israel and they became a numerous people. Yet eventually a new Pharaoh arose
who didn’t remember Joseph and what he had done. Instead, he saw Israel as a threat.
This Pharaoh
enslaved the Israelites and used them as forced labor. Yahweh had called Moses at
the burning bush and sent him to Pharaoh with this message: “Israel is my
firstborn son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me.’ If you
refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.” Despite nine terrible plagues that Yahweh had
sent upon Egypt, Pharaoh had refused to allow Israel to leave.
The moment
had arrived for Yahweh’s tenth and final plague – the one that would force
Pharaoh to let Israel go. In
preparation, God told the Israelites to choose a year old male lamb that had no
blemish. On the fourteenth day they were
to kill the lamb at twilight. Yahweh
told Israel: “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two
doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the
flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs
they shall eat it.” The Israelites were to eat the meal in haste, ready to
leave, with their belt fastened, sandals on their feet and staff in hand.
The reason
for this was that Yahweh was about to do something awesome and powerful. God says in our text, “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.”
Yahweh was
going to execute judgment on Pharaoh and all the false gods of Egypt. He was going to kill the first born of the
Egyptians. However, the blood of the
lamb on the Israelites’ houses would keep them safe. It would be a sign that would cause God’s
destructive wrath to pass over the Israelites and spare them.
The
Passover meal was to be eaten in preparation to leave as God delivered Israel
from Egypt. Yet the meal would not be a
one-time event. Instead our text says, “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.” The Israelites were to continue to celebrate it each year as a reminder
– a memorial day – of Yahweh’s great saving action in the exodus.
Jesus was a faithful descendant of
Israel, and so he gathered to eat the Passover meal with his disciples. However, that Passover was different. It was different because as the incarnate Son
of God he was about to offer himself as the once and for all sacrifice to
redeem us from sin. Jesus was the Passover lamb. The next day he would shed his blood on the
cross as the suffering Servant described by Isaiah. He was going to be numbered with the transgressors
because you are a transgressor of God’s will in thought, word, and deed. Jesus
would receive God’s wrath against those sins in your place. The shedding of his
blood for you causes that wrath to pass over you unharmed, just like the
Israelites.
A normal Passover meal looked back. It looked back
to God’s rescue of Israel from slavery in Egypt. But Jesus took the Passover
and reoriented it. Now as they were eating, Jesus took
bread, and when it had given thanks he gave it to the disciples and said, “Take
and eat. This is my body which is given
for you. Do this as often as you eat it in remembrance of me.” Later in the meal he took a cup, and when he
had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you this
cup is new testament in my blood which is shed for you forgiveness of sins. Do
this in remembrance of me.”
The Lord
Jesus spoke not about what God had done in the past, but about what he himself was about to do by dying on
the cross. He spoke about a remembrance
that no longer was about the exodus, but instead was about the saving action he
would carry out.
And Jesus
also changed the focus of the meal. The
Israelites had been commanded to eat unleavened bread and lamb roasted over a
fire as a reminder of what God had done at the Passover. Now Jesus said that he was using bread and
wine to give them his true body and blood.
This was not merely mental recollection.
Instead, Jesus’ creative power was providing the body given and the
blood shed on the cross. Jesus was
giving the price paid to redeem you from sin.
At the Last
Supper, Jesus took the Passover meal and transformed it. He made it his own because of who he is and
what he was about to do. He is the
incarnate Lord, true God and true man. He was about to die on the cross to win
forgiveness and salvation for you and every other sinner. But that was not all. As they went to
Jerusalem, Jesus had said to the disciples, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem.
And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and
they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be
mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
Jesus would
die. But he would also rise on the third day.
It is now as the crucified and risen Lord that he gives us his true body
and blood. This death and resurrection has reoriented everything. No longer is
the Passover itself the focus. Instead
it is his saving death on the cross of Good Friday and his resurrection from
the dead on the third day – on Easter Sunday.
And so the
Church which receives from Jesus the blood of the new covenant has changed the
timing of the celebration. The Passover
has not been forgotten. Not at all – for the death and resurrection of Jesus is
not a mythical event that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far
away. Instead it happened in our time
and history. It happened when Pontius
Pilate was prefect over the province of Judea.
It happened at the time when the Passover was celebrated.
The Church
continues to acknowledge this timing of the Passover, something that changes
every year because it is based on a lunar calendar rather than our solar one and
so it doesn’t always fall on the same day.
But now the reference point is the first
Sunday after the Passover. This is
Easter and the Friday that proceeds it is Good Friday – the days linked by the
crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Maundy Thursday, of course comes before Good Friday. She does so no matter whether Thursday is actually
the Passover or not. Indeed this is now
not a Passover meal. Instead, it is a
remembrance of Jesus’ Last Supper in
which he instituted the Lord’s Supper – the Sacrament of the Altar.
We gather
to remember how Jesus prepared to offer himself as the sacrifice for our
sins. As he did so, have gave us the
gift that we continue to receive tonight.
He gave us the Sacrament of the Altar by which we do not merely remember
that Jesus died on the cross for us. Instead Jesus gives us his true body and
blood, given and shed for us on the cross.
He gives us the very price he paid to redeem us from sin, and as we
receive this in faith we know that this forgiveness of sins, life and salvation
is ours now and forever.
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