Food for the Journey

In Holy Communion, Jesus Christ ministers to you personally

[This is a sermon for Maundy Thursday, which happens this year on April 17. Congregations without pastors, pastors overwhelmed by other pastoral duties, Bible study leaders, and others should feel free to use it. If you do use it, please let me know about it. Have a blessed Holy Week!]

Luke 22:7-20

On Maundy Thursday, we remember two things about the meal Jesus shared with the twelve apostles on the Thursday before His crucifixion.

First, we remember the new commandment, or, as in the Latin from which the word Maundy comes, a new mandatum, a new mandate, that Jesus gives to His Church on Thursday of the first Holy Week. Jesus commands, mandates us to love each other with the same self-sacrifice with which He has loved us.

If that commandment doesn’t alarm us and drive us to repent for our sin, asking God to love others through us, we’re living in a state of denial.

That’s because none of us can fulfill this commandment in our own power or goodness.

We need Jesus, remembering that He tells us the total truth when He says, “apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

The second thing we remember on Maundy Thursday, the topic that will occupy us this evening, is Jesus’ institution of the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Holy Baptism, of course, is the sacrament by which Jesus gives us new life.

Holy Communion is the sacrament by which Jesus sustains us in our life with Him.

After Jesus was baptized at the Jordan River, He was led by the Spirit to face temptations in the wilderness. After you and I are baptized, until we die, we live in this world, wrestling with the temptations and tests thrown at us by the devil, the world, and our own sinful selves.

The Gospel of Matthew tells us that after Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, God sent angels to minister to, to take care of, Jesus. (Matthew 4:11)

In Holy Communion, Jesus ministers to you and me directly and personally. He gives us His own sinless, eternally triumphant self. “This is my body given for you…,” He says. And, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:19-20)

Our Gospel lesson for tonight begins with Jesus sending two of His disciples–Peter and John–into Jerusalem to make preparations so that He could celebrate the Passover Seder with His disciples.

In sending Peter and John, we see that Jesus is bringing both the fulfillment of the old covenant and instituting the new covenant. Under the old covenant, the one between God and His people, the Jews, it was customary for two men from a family to go to the outer courts of the temple in Jerusalem so that the Passover lamb their families would eat during the Seder dinner could be slaughtered. They would then take the slaughtered lamb back to the homes or inns in which the meal would take place. But, in a break from tradition, Peter and John weren’t sent to do this on behalf of their biological families. Jesus would have this meal with His new family, the family of God called together by His Gospel Word, the Church. You’ll remember Jesus once said, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice.” (Luke 8:21) Here are Peter and John putting Jesus’ Word into practice, that is, trusting in Jesus, preparing to celebrate a meal that encompasses not just one’s relatives, but all people who believe in Jesus.

Passover was the central festival of the Jewish calendar. It memorialized that moment when God’s people, then enslaved in Egypt, were set free and sent off to the land God promised them. Before the first Passover, God instructed His people to prepare for the tenth and final plague God brought on Egypt. The angel of death would take the life of the firstborn in every home and barnyard in Egypt unless the blood of a sacrificed lamb was smeared on the doorposts of those places.

Blood is the means by which oxygen, the breath of God, gives life to every human being and every vertebrate animal.

Blood is the means by which carbon dioxide, the toxic gas produced by respiration, is taken out of the tissues of the body.

Blood then is life.

When Cain killed his brother Abel in the Old Testament book of Genesis, his blood–his taken life–cried out to God.

At the first Passover, the blood of the lambs, whose death was for the people who trusted in God, barred death access to the lives of the firstborn.

Another festival of the Jewish year was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, a perfectly unblemished lamb was sacrificed at the temple. The lamb bore the sins of God’s people from the previous year. After it was sacrificed, the priest would sprinkle the people with the blood of this perfect lamb. By this means, the people were covered with life from God and the toxic impurity of their sin was removed from them. The problem was that under the old covenant, the effects of the sacrifice lasted, at the most, only a year. And so year after year, God’s guilt-plagued people were called to offer yet another lamb, to be covered once again by its blood. Even at that, people would often offer sin sacrifices throughout the year.

Friends, we too, might be plagued by sin and uncertainty about our standing with God were it not for one thing: Jesus has instituted a new covenant in which we can rest. Our assurance that Christ has saved us doesn’t reside in our subjective thoughts and feelings, but in the objective reality of Christ’s body and blood given to us in, with, and under the bread and the wine. This is the new covenant Jesus gives to you and me.

John the Baptist talked about this new covenant when, pointing to Jesus, He said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) The sin of the world, of the whole world, of every time and every place, including our sin, yours and mine, has been wiped out by the sacrificed body and blood of Jesus!

Under the old covenant, priests daily made sacrifices of lambs, doves, and grain to first, purify themselves of their own sin before they then offered sacrifices of people who came to the temple laden with guilt. Nothing but these constant sacrifices could assure people their sins were forgiven or carry them from death to life. But, referring to Jesus as our great high priest, the book of Hebrews tells us, “Unlike the other high priests, [Jesus] does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. [Sinless Himself] He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.” (Hebrews 7:27)

In Holy Communion, we don’t sacrifice Jesus on the cross again. That’s bad theology, intimating that what Jesus did on the cross wasn’t good enough.

Controlling the timetable and circumstances ordained by God, Jesus offered the sacrifice of His innocent body and blood on the cross once and for all.

This is why when biblically heedless people ask you when you were saved, you can confidently answer, “On a hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago.”

Jesus has already done everything necessary for your sins to be forgiven by God and for you to have life with God. As I’ve said before: When Jesus said before dying on the cross, “It is finished,” He meant it!

The apostle Paul wasn’t lying when He said, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

We become Christians not because we’ve made a decision for God, but because God made a decision for us. He decided to die for us! “While we were still sinners,” the Bible says, “Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) So, friends, in Jesus Christ, our sins are already forgiven. The only question is, do we believe in Him?

This is where Holy Communion comes in. While our salvation has already been accomplished and God’s decision for us is unchangeable, even when the Holy Spirit’s Word has convinced us to believe in Jesus, we can get wobbly in our walk with God. The devil, the world, and our sinful selves constantly press us toward unbelief. They lie to us, telling us we’re not good enough, that Jesus didn’t really die and rise, that we’re too bad and the world is too bad for the good news of new and everlasting life with God through faith in Jesus to be true. On top of that, life can batter us with setbacks, tragedies, and difficulties. “Pastor, I believe in Jesus,” someone told me recently, “but my life is so hard right now.”

Holy Communion happens when the Word of Jesus, along with Jesus’ promises to us, meets the bread and the wine and Jesus tells us, “This is My body and This is My blood. What I accomplished at the cross and tomb was for you. Your sins are forgiven. My good news is for you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5) Though your sins are like scarlet, I make your life as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18). As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed your sin from you. (Psalm 103:12) I am with you always, to the close of the age. (Matthew 28:20) All who believe in Me will not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)”

Friends, life in this world is hard. But we are blessed that during our journey through this life, Jesus gives us Himself, body and blood, in, with, and under the bread and the wine, and fills those who receive Him in faith with life that never ends. Amen