Maundy Thursday
1
Cor 11:23-32
4/2/26
“In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This
cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in
remembrance of me.’” These are the words in our epistle lesson for tonight from
1 Corinthians eleven. Although we hear
them using the translation “testament” in the Words of Institution of the
liturgy, more literally the word used means “covenant.” In the word “covenant”
we receive important insight into what Christ has done for us, and what he
gives us in the Sacrament of the Altar.
Yahweh had taken Israel into a covenant with himself at Mt Sinai.
He had chosen them as his people and brought them out of slavery in Egypt in
the Exodus. At Sinai God gave Israel his Torah – his Law. This was a
description of how Israel was to live in this relationship that God had given.
God’s word repeatedly emphasized that keeping this law would bring blessing,
but breaking it would bring a curse.
At Mt. Sinai Moses read the Book of the Covenant in the hearing of
the people. They replied, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we
will be obedient.” Then Moses took blood from sacrificed oxen and threw it on
the people as he said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made
with you in accordance with all these words.” This act meant that they were now
part of the covenant with God.
The Torah offered the way of life with God. But in practice Israel
soon demonstrated that while the law itself had this ability, the people did
not have the power to carry it out. Instead of being a way of life, the Torah
brought judgment upon Israel. The nation worshipped false gods. It took advantage of the poor. It broke the
law again and again. The result was God’s judgment. In 722 B.C. he used the Assyrians to conquer
the northern kingdom and take them into exile, never to return. In 587 B.C. he
used the Babylonians to take Judah into exile and destroy the temple.
During that time as Judah was about to be taken into exile, the
prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I
will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not
like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they
broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.”
Yahweh said through Jeremiah that he would make a new covenant
– one that was different from the covenant that he made at Mt Sinai. He went on
to say through the prophet, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the
house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law
within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their
God, and they shall be my people.” God said that he would write his law on the
hearts of his people. Then he added, “For I will forgive their iniquity,
and I will remember their sin no more.”
Around the same time, Yahweh also revealed through Ezekiel that he
would do something new. He said, “I will
sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses,
and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give
you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I
will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
God said he would bring about a change in the people, one that would make them
new. And then he explained how he would do this as he said, “And I will put my
Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be
careful to obey my rules.”
The Torah – the law in itself was holy and good. It offered the way
of life with God, but the people did not have the power in themselves to reach
this goal. Instead, in their breaking of the law they brought the law’s curse
upon themselves. Paul told the
Galatians, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it
is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things
written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’” And so Paul concluded that the
law can’t give life. He went on to say, “For if a law had been given that
could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.”
The apostle stated clearly why the law could not give life. The
problem was not the law. Instead we are the problem. He told the Romans,
“For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks,
are under sin.” He explained how as fallen people sin remains a power that
controls us. This sin takes hold of the law and uses it to prompt more sin. He
wrote in Romans chapter seven, “For I would not have known what it is to covet
if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an
opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of
covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.”
God had said he would make a new covenant. He said that he would
put his Spirit within his people. This new covenant arrived in Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the One who established the new covenant, but in doing so he was the
fulfillment of the covenant God made with Israel. That covenant contained the
sacrifices by which God gave forgiveness and enabled the people to live in his
presence. Through them atonement was made for sin.
God sent his Son, Jesus Christ as the once and for all sacrifice
for sin. Through the sacrifice of the sinless Son of God he judged your sin so
that now you can be justified before him. Paul told the Romans, “for all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his
grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received
by faith.” He wrote later, “For God has done what the law, weakened
by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
Jesus Christ was conceived by the work of the Spirit. He was anointed with the Spirit at his
baptism. The Spirit of God raised Jesus from the dead. Paul told the Romans
that Jesus Christ “was declared to be the Son of God in power according to
the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” And then as the
risen and ascended Lord, Jesus poured forth the Spirit – the Spirit who is the
Spirit of Christ. Just as Ezekiel had
prophesied, God has put his Spirit within us in these last days through the water
of baptism.
The new covenant gives life because the Spirit is at work through
the Gospel. Paul told the Corinthians, “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves
to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who
has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not
of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit
gives life.” The letter of the law kills and brings judgment. But the Spirit
of Christ gives life as he works faith
in Jesus’ saving death and resurrection.
The Passover meal was a remembrance of the event by which God freed
Israel from slavery to bring them into the covenant with himself. The Last
Supper was a Passover meal. But Jesus took it and transformed it into something
which is now done in remembrance of how Jesus freed us from the slavery of sin
and death to bring us into the new covenant with God.
The Words of Institution quoted by Paul say that it was “on the
night when he was betrayed.” It is true, of course, that this was the evening
when Judas betrayed Jesus into the hands of the Jewish religious leaders. But
it was far more than that, for this event was part of God’s plan to save
us. Paul used the exact same word when
he told the Romans that Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and
raised for our justification.”
Jesus took bread and said, “This is my body which is for you,” or
more literally, “which is on behalf of you.” The Lord said that he was giving
them his body to eat – his body which was about to be offered on the cross on
behalf of you. He took the cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new
covenant in my blood.” Our Lord declared that the cup was the new covenant
because the cup held his blood shed to establish the new covenant.
In the Sacrament of the Altar Jesus uses bread and wine to give us
his true body and blood. Paul had just said to the Corinthians in the previous
chapter, “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?”
These are questions which in Greek demand a positive answer. Paul
assumes that they agree with him that yes, the wine in the cup is a
participation – it is a communion in the blood Christ. He knows that they agree
with him that yes, the bread is a participation – it is a communion in the body
of Christ.
In the Sacrament Jesus takes the very price he paid for your
forgiveness and gives it to you. He gives you his true body and blood
which was given and shed to establish the new covenant. And in so doing, he
confirms that you are included in that covenant. Each time you receive the Sacrament Jesus is
saying that you are part of the forgiven people of God. You are included among
those who are receiving his saving work – a saving work that will reach its
consummation when you share in his resurrection on the Last Day.
Christ leaves no doubt that this new covenant is for you, because
he places his body and blood into your mouth. Just as the blood of the covenant
splattered on the bodies of the Israelites at Mt Sinai meant that they were in
the covenant, so the body and blood of Jesus given into your body mean that you
are in the new covenant. You have forgiveness and salvation that overcomes
death itself.
God said through Jeremiah, “Behold, the days are coming, declares
the Lord, when I will make a new covenant.” He made the first covenant
with Israel alone. But true to his promise to Abraham that in his seed all
nations would be blessed, God worked through the covenant with Israel to bring
salvation to all. Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the first covenant. By
his death and resurrection he has established the new covenant which gives
forgiveness and life to all people – to Jew and Gentile alike.
Christ instituted the Sacrament to be done in remembrance of him.
As Paul says in our text, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the
cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” But this remembering is more than just a
mental action on our part. It is the
reception of the crucified and risen Lord who comes to us in his body and
blood. It is Christ putting his body and blood into you so that you may know
with certainty that you share in the saving new covenant.
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