Sermon for Maundy Thursday - March 28, 2024

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

March 28, 2024

“Participation in Christ’s Body and Blood”

Mark 14:12-26 and 1 Corinthians 10:16-17

Let us pray: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)

The text for our meditation tonight is the Gospel lesson, along with some thoughts from our Epistle. (All quotations are from the ESV translation, except for a few from my own self-translation. The hymn quoted is Hymn 639, “Wide Open Stand the Gates,” stanzas 2-3, from the Lutheran Service Book. Text by Wilhelm Loehe, Translation by Herman Stuempfle, (c) 2002, GIA Publications. Lutheran Service Builder (c) 2024, CPH.)

It is Thursday of Holy Week in our text, and the arrest and suffering and death of Jesus is drawing very close. But He is not thinking about Himself, but about doing His Father’s will and helping His disciples and providing gifts that are a blessing to them and to you and me to this very day.

First, Jesus made sure that He and His disciples properly celebrated the remembrance of the Passover, when God rescued His people from slavery in Egypt almost 1500 years earlier. Old Testament Law said, in Deuteronomy 16:2-3, “You shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, from the flock or the herd, at the place the Lord will choose, to make His Name dwell there. You shall eat no leavened bread with it.”

That is exactly what Jesus made sure happened. He sent out two of His disciples to find, following His directions, the place for eating the Passover meal. They then had to purchase an unblemished lamb and have it properly sacrificed at the Temple and the proper Passover meal prepared. This was all part of Jesus’ saving work for us here on earth. He was like a second Adam, perfectly following His Father’s will, unlike the first Adam and Eve, and unlike the Old Testament people of God, who so often broke the Old Covenant (Jeremiah 31:32) will of God too - and as we all still do, too often.

The sacrifice of the lamb was also prophetic of what Jesus would soon do. John the Baptist had earlier said of Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29,36). By His perfect life in our place, and by His sacrificial death and shedding of His blood, instead of ours or an animal’s, Jesus would forgive all our sins and count us acceptable to God through the gift of faith. He would also free us from Old Testament rituals, like Passover, to follow His New Covenant, as we will hear.

At the Passover meal, Jesus showed His continuing care for His disciples, too - and even for Judas. We hear that while they were eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me, one who is eating with Me.” Then, a bit later, Jesus said, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with Me.” The other disciples do not seem to realize who it is, but Judas certainly knows that Jesus is aware of what he, Judas, plans to do. Jesus then gives a very serious warning to Judas. “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” Jesus is giving Judas a chance to wake up and repent of what he is planning.

But Judas does not care. John’s Gospel tells us that Judas was a thief and had stolen from the disciples’ money bag before (John 12:6). Maybe he just wanted the thirty pieces of silver promised him more than he cared about Jesus or anything else. Other Gospels tell us that Judas soon left the Passover meal to prepare for betraying Jesus. Jesus’ attempt to help him fell on deaf ears.

It is also interesting that when Jesus brought up a betrayal coming, the other disciples began to be sorrowful and to say, one after another, “Is it I? Is it I?” They seemed to have a guilty conscience, too, as if they all had let Jesus down before and might be capable of failing Him again. And, of course, a little later on that evening, when Jesus was seized by the religious authorities and led to the Garden of Gethsemane by Judas, Mark tells us that all the disciples left Jesus and ran away. Jesus had warned them, too, with the prophetic words of the Old Testament, “Strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Zechariah 13:7 and Mark 14:27). But the disciples did not heed Jesus’ warning, either, and they all fled from Jesus in that dangerous situation, so fearful for them.

But even with their weaknesses and failings, John’s Gospel tells us (John 13:1), “Having loved His own who were in the world, Jesus loved these disciples to the end.” And he did so that Thursday evening in one more very special way, even before He and the disciples went out to the Garden of Gethsemane, and He went to His suffering and death and resurrection, for them and for us.

While they were still eating the Passover meal, we hear that Jesus took some of the elements of that meal and transformed it into a whole new meal of the New Covenant, the New Testament He was bringing in, the meal of love and forgiveness and strengthening that we now know of as the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. Other Scriptures give us more detail, including Jesus saying, “Do this, in remembrance of Me.”

But it was much more than just a remembrance of Jesus. Our text tells us that Jesus “took bread” - some of that flat unleavened bread used at Passover - “and after blessing it, broke it, and gave it to them and said, ‘Take; this is My Body.’ And He took a cup’ (a cup of the wine used at Passover) and when he had given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, ‘This is My Blood of the (New) Covenant, which is poured out for many'" (for the forgiveness of sins).

We also know that Jesus later promised, before He returned to heaven, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). As true God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, He is “omnipresent,” always present with us as well as with those in heaven.

But the Lord’s Supper is a very special, personal way He comes to us. We can’t understand it, but we believe that when we receive the bread and wine, we also receive Christ Himself, His Body and Blood. Jesus didn’t say, “This is a symbol, This is a representation.” He said, “This is My Body! This is My Blood! Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

And these were not just gifts for those disciples on Maundy Thursday. Jesus said, “Keep on doing this.” And decades later, Paul wrote to Christians in Corinth in our Epistle lesson for tonight, and for us still today, with very similar words. “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the Blood of Christ? And the bread that we break, is it not a participation in the Body of Christ?” The word for “participation” is the same word translated as “communion” or “fellowship” or a “closing sharing” in and with Christ Himself and His Body and Blood in this Holy Communion.

This is also why the Scriptures stress the importance of proper preparation for the Lord’s Supper. We don’t just say, “You all come” to everyone who is present, as some churches do. There is the need for baptism and faith and instruction, in what we call Confirmation of the faith. For Paul also warns, soon after the words we just heard, that “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the Body and Blood of the Lord and not discerning the Body" (1 Corinthians 11: 27-29).

That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect people to receive the Lord’s Supper. None of us are or could come close to that. In fact, our sins are the reason why we need God’s Word and the Lord’s Supper again and again. And when we do come, repentant for our sins and trusting in Christ’s love and promises, we do really receive forgiveness of our sins, through that Body and Blood sacrificed on the cross for us; and we receive strength to carry on with our lives, in Him, whatever we face.

I was working on this sermon on Tuesday when I heard of a bomb threat and a possible shooter at one of our local high schools. Thankfully, none of it turned out to be true, but we do live in very troubled times, and how much we need that strength and assurance in Christ that we receive in the Lord’s Supper.

Receiving Holy Communion builds our unity with one another, too. Paul also writes, in our Epistle lesson, “Because there is one Bread, we who are many are one body, for all partake of the one Bread,” which is Christ. United in that way in Christ, we have more strength at least to try to be more patient and understanding and caring and forgiving to one another, as Jesus has already been with us.

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus closed the giving of the Lord’s Supper with these words, “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God,” in heaven. That is where Jesus is now, in glory, after having been raised from the dead and returning to His Father in heaven. And with Him are all of our loved ones and friends who lived and died in faith in Him. They now enjoy His presence and blessings in a perfect way, in heaven.

And some suggest that when we are united with Christ in the special closeness of His presence in the Lord’s Supper and are united with fellow believers, we are also united with our loved ones, through Christ, in some of the closest unity we can have with them, until we reach heaven ourselves. They are with Jesus, and so are we, in this very special gift of the Lord’s Supper. We are all united in Christ.

Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn before they went to the garden of Gethsemane, and there’s a hymn in our hymnal, #639, that suggests that closeness that I’d like to read in closing:

“(Christ) speaks the Word the bread and wine to bless.
       ‘This is My Flesh and Blood.’
     He bids us eat and drink with thankfulness
        The gift of holy food.
     All human thought must falter -
         Our God stoops low to heal.
     Now present on the altar, for us
         Both Host and Meal.

     The cherubim, their faces veiled from light,
          While saints in wonder kneel,
      Sing praise to Him Whose Face with glory bright,
          No earthly masks conceal.
      This sacrament God gives us.
           Binds us in unity,
       Joins earth with heaven beyond us,
           Time with eternity.”
 
Let us pray: “Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds safe, in Christ Jesus. Amen. (Philippians 4:7)