Maundy Thursday
Ex
12:1-14
4/1/21
One of the
places I want to visit someday is Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. There, next to one another are the USS
Arizona Memorial and the battleship USS Missouri. In perfect symmetry you have the battleship
USS Arizona that was sunk on the day World War II began for the United States
in 1941, and the USS Missouri where the Japanese surrender documents were
signed that ended the war in 1945.
The USS Arizona
Memorial has an interesting history. The
ship was sunk in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 with the
loss of 1,177 sailors and Marines. Devastated by the attack, unlike most of the
other battleships sunk, she could not be raised and restored for service. She remained sunken and easily visible in the
shallow water.
It was,
however, more than twenty years before the memorial was built. Although the
creation of the memorial had been approved in 1958, by 1960 only half of the
$500,000 dollars needed for construction had been raised. In 1961 Elvis Presley did a benefit concert
that raised $64,000 dollars. Presley
also made his own personal donation. The publicity surrounding the concert helped
call attention to the project, and the rest of the money was raised so that the
memorial could be completed in 1962.
A memorial
is a place that causes us to remember an event and the people who were involved
in it. Like the USS Arizona Memorial, memorials often are solemn places because
they were built to remember people who have died in an event. In the case of the Arizona Memorial this is
especially poignant because 1,102 Americans are entombed in the sunken ship.
Our text
for Maundy Thursday teaches us that the event we are celebrating tonight was
grounded in the setting of a memorial. Our Lord’s last supper with his
disciples took place in the setting of a Passover meal which was held each year
as a memorial of how God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt. As Jesus celebrated this memorial, he
instituted a new and even more significant memorial for what would happen the
next day.
The first
part of the Book of Exodus says, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know
Joseph.” Because of Joseph’s position of
power in Egypt and the famine that had come upon the region, Jacob and his
family had gone to live in Egypt. There God blessed and them and over time they
became a numerous people. But as the years passed, Joseph’s role in helping to
save Egypt was forgotten. Eventually the
Egyptian leader Pharaoh saw the Israelites as a potential threat. He used them for slave labor and sought to
control them by killing the male children.
God called Moses to be his
instrument by which he would rescue Israel from slavery. Moses announced nine
terrible plagues that then fell upon the Egyptians. However, Pharaoh refused to allow the
Israelites to leave. So finally, Moses
said, “Thus
says the LORD: About midnight I will go out in the midst of
Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the
firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave
girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle.” However, Yahweh announced through Moses that
he would spare and protect Israel.
We hear in our text that in
preparation for this event, Yahweh told the Israelites to prepare a meal. They
were to take a lamb without blemish and kill it at twilight. God told them to take some of the blood and put it on
the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they ate it. They were to eat the meal their belt
fastened, their sandals on their feet, and their staff in their hand. They were
to eat it in haste, ready to leave.
The reason for this was very clear. Yahweh said, “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.”
Israel was to celebrate the Passover
meal that night as Yahweh was about to rescue them. But this was not to be a one time event. Instead he told them, “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 this meal in the promised land. When their children asked
what it meant they were to say, “It is the sacrifice of the LORD's Passover, for he passed over
the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but
spared our houses.”
Jesus was a faithful descendant of
Israel. The Gospel of John shows us that
he regularly came to Jerusalem as a Passover pilgrim. He had returned to Jerusalem for the Passover
during Holy Week. But this trip was
different because it was his last trip. On the way there he had told his
disciples that the Jewish leaders would hand him over to the Gentiles to be
crucified, but that he would rise on the third day.
Our Lord was celebrating a meal with
his disciples that was a memorial – a remembrance – of how God had redeemed his
people from slavery. Yet the event in
the Old Testament that the meal celebrated pointed forward to what Jesus would
do the next day for you.
The Son of God had come into the
world to redeem you from slavery – to free you from the slavery of sin, death
and Satan. Conceived as fallen people,
your lives daily are ones in which you break God’s law. Because of this what we just confessed is
true – we deserve God’s present and eternal punishment.
We deserve this. But Jesus Christ
died on the cross in our place as he shed his blood. He received the wrath of God against our sin.
Now, just like the blood that marked the houses of the Israelites on the night
of the Passover, his blood causes God’s judgment to pass over us. God who redeemed Israel from slavery in
Egypt, has redeemed us by the death of Jesus Christ.
At the Last Supper, Jesus celebrated
the Passover meal with his disciples. But during that meal he did something
completely new – something that was, quite frankly shocking, as he took the
Passover and made it his own. He took the bread of the meal, and when he had
given thanks, he broke it and gave it to the disciples saying, “Take, eat, is
my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance me.” Our Lord said that he was giving to them his
body to eat – the body given for them. They were to do this in remembrance of
him.
Later on, after supper, he took the
cup and when he had given thanks he gave it to them saying, “Take and drink.
This cup is the new testament in my blood which is shed for you for the
forgiveness of sins. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of
me.” Our Lord said that he was giving
them his blood to drink – the blood shed for them for the forgiveness of sins.
This too, they were to do in remembrance of him.
At 9:00 a.m. the next morning, Jesus
would be suffering as a slow death as he hung on a cross. At 3:00 p.m. he would
breathe his last and die. Those events explained what Jesus said at the
Passover meal. Our Lord gave his body
into death on the cross in order to free us from sin. He shed his blood as he died to give us
forgiveness.
At the Last Supper, Jesus instituted
the Sacrament of the Altar. His words
are plain, straightforward … and shocking.
Jesus took the memorial of the Passover and turned it into a memorial of
his death, because he was the fulfillment of the Passover lamb.
However, human memorials are about
remembering events in the past that involved people who are no longer there. Jesus’ memorial is completely different. He said that he was giving the disciples his
body given for them. Our Lord is the Son
of God who has no limitations. He does what he says. If you want to say that
can’t or wouldn’t – well, that is your problem.
Then Jesus said that he was giving them his blood shed for them. These words confirm that our Lord was doing
something new and unheard of, because Jews were strictly forbidden from
drinking blood. The very idea of it was shocking. But that is precisely what Jesus said he was
giving to them.
Our Lord said to “Do this in
remembrance of me.” Tonight, just as the
Church has for two thousand years, we again obey his words and receive his
gift. In the memorial of the Sacrament,
Jesus is not absent. Instead, he is present in his true body and
blood. And the Sacrament is not simply about our remembering what Jesus
did. Instead through his body and blood
Jesus gives to us here and now what he accomplished on the cross. It is his body and blood, given and shed for
you. His body given on the cross.
His blood shed on the cross. That
is what he puts into your mouth as he applies what he won for you –
forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life.
In the epistle lesson tonight, the
apostle Paul writes, “For as often as
you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until
he comes.” In the celebration of the
Sacrament we proclaim our Lord’s death. This occurs in the Words of
Institution. It occurs in the words of
distribution. It occurs as we gather to receive the body and blood of our the
Lord, given and shed for us on the cross.
We proclaim the Lord’s death. But it is the risen Lord who is able to do
this. It is the risen, ascended and
exalted Lord whose word causes bread and wine to be his true body and blood –
the means by which he gives us forgiveness and strengthens the new man. This
our Lord does until he comes on the Last Day.
And when he does, he will transform this meal one last time into the
feast of salvation that has no end.
No comments:
Post a Comment