Maundy Thursday
(A)
April 6, 2023
Text: Ex. 12:1-14; 1 Cor. 11:23-32; Matt.
26:17-30
“The
Teacher says, ‘My time is at hand. I
will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples’” (Matt. 26:18;
ESV).
It
is Holy Week, beloved, our Lord’s Passiontide, and Jesus will keep His
Passover with you, here in this House, for you are
His disciples.
He
will be God’s Passover Lamb, the sacrifice to purchase your freedom from
slavery to sin, and save you from the angel of death.
He
will be the Lamb you eat under the bread, in the company of this Family,
your brothers and sisters in Christ, for as Christ Himself said, “‘Who are
my mother and my brothers?’ And looking
about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my
brothers! For whoever does the will of
God, he is my brother and sister and mother’” (Mark 3:33-35).
He
will be the Lamb you eat under the bread of affliction, with bitter herbs, in
pain, and with thorns and thistles, by the sweat of your brow (Gen.
3:18-19). He will feed you with Himself,
to rescue you from the dust of death… for you are dust, and to dust you shall
return… to enliven you and raise you up with His resurrection life.
He
will be the Lamb you eat, whose blood now marks your door. The doorposts and lintel. The sign of His cross.
By
the way, and I didn’t know this until just this week… If you do an image search
on the internet of “how was the Passover Lamb roasted” (and understand, you
will then see images of whole lambs being roasted over fire, so if you are the
type who doesn’t know the meat you eat comes from actual animals who are actually
killed so that you can live and be nourished and feast and rejoice, you’re in
for a big surpise!)… If you search this, you will see that the lamb is roasted cruciform. On a cross.
One of the earliest post-Apostolic Church Fathers, Justin Martyr,
describes it this way: “That lamb which was commanded to be wholly roasted was
a symbol of the suffering of the cross which Christ would undergo. For the
lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of the cross. For
one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and
one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb.”[1]
So
you see? Jesus will be the Lamb roasted
on the spit of the cross in the fire of God’s wrath over your sins. In your place, to save you from that fire.
Jesus
will keep His Passover with you, and He would have you keep it with Him. And He would have you keep it in this manner:
Your belt fastened, sandals on your feet, staff in hand (Ex. 12:11). That is, ready to go. Ready to die, and yet live in Jesus. Ready for His coming again and the
resurrection of the body. Ready to leave
the old, and enter into the new. Eat it
in haste. Be strengthened for the
journey. Because the Lord is not slow to
fulfill His promises, as some count slowness (2 Peter 3:9). He is leading you out, in exodus
from slavery. He is leading you in,
to the Promised Land, by way of the Read Sea waters (your Baptism), to New
Creation and eternal and abundant life.
Keep
the Passover with Jesus with unleavened bread. What does the Lamb do when you eat Him under
the bread of the Supper? He sweeps out
the old leaven, as St. Paul says, “that you may be a new lump, as you really
are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore,” Paul says, “celebrate
the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with
the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:7-8). Not with the old leaven of the Pharisees and
Sadducees, of which Jesus tells us to beware, that is, is their false teaching
and their hypocrisy, their self-justification and the burdens they place on
others (Matt. 16:5-12; Luke 12:1); rather, let us celebrate the festival with
the unleavened bread of biblical teaching and Christ’s righteousness given as a
gift, in which we live by faith. What
does it mean that Jesus sweeps out from us the old leaven of false doctrine and
sin? First of all, He makes atonement
for it. He forgives it. And then, secondly, He leads us to repentance
(death to the old leaven) and faith (life to the new man in Christ)
and sanctification (living that new life) by Jesus’ living within us and
giving us His Holy Spirit.
Keep
the Passover with Jesus with the blood of the Lamb on the doorposts and
lintels, the blood of the cross.
And so there is the Cup of Salvation, the very blood of Christ, poured
out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Many, by the way, does not mean some. In Hebrew thought, it means all. All is certainly many,
right? The blood of Christ, poured out
for many, for the whole world, for the forgiveness of sins. The fruit of the vine. Wine.
Jesus, the Lamb, drank the foaming cup of God’s wrath to the very dregs
on the cross (Ps. 75:8), that the cup of God may be for us the cup of blessing
and joy. Here the Lord has prepared for
us “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of
marrow, of aged wine well refined” (Is. 25:6). “No longer drink only water,” Paul
says to Timothy, “but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and
your frequent ailments” (1 Tim. 5:23).
To wash down the food and for medicinal purposes, sure. But particularly here at the Feast,
the medicine of immortality, and the joy of the Holy Spirit, and eternal life. This is what you need for your
stomach’s sake and your frequent ailments.
Not for drunkenness and dissipation, mind you. That would be the old leaven
again. New wine in old wineskins. But the cup of rejoicing and merriment… the
cup of life!... the cup Jesus drinks with you in His Father’s Kingdom,
here in this House, where heaven comes down to earth, and you sing with saints
and angels, receiving at this altar a foretaste of the eternal Feast to come at
the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
Jesus
will keep His Passover with you, beloved. Here.
Now. This is the Kingdom
of His Father. Come out of the old, and
into the New. Eat and drink, and
rejoice. Jesus is the Passover Lamb,
roasted on the spit of the holy cross.
He died, but behold, He lives.
And here He gives you Himself. As
we will sing on Easter Day: “See, His blood now marks our door; Faith points to
it; death passes o’er. And Satan,” that
old, wicked Pharaoh, “cannot harm us” (LSB 458:5). In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] The idea of the image search and
the quote from Justin are from Bob Sundquist, https://www.1517.org/articles/old-testament-exodus-121-14-maundy-thursday-series-a-2023?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=252761764&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9Zr3aFdvCvWHsy9mlRRU3dA_OZ3YlsLy4rf8BHKCl_MaTgDICxlXeNYKnF6LXKuFbAvI6zE3IcM7h8MU2DeFkIr5OxJw&utm_content=252761764&utm_source=hs_email#_ftnref5
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