Maundy Thursday
Dear friends in Christ. Tonight we begin our prayerful meditations on the deepest and most dramatic parts of our Lord’s Passion as today we enter the upper room with Jesus and the disciples. It is on this night that Jesus warns His disciples that one of them will betray Him; the disciples on this night know something is up and are very anxious. But it is also on this night, as we heard in today’s Gospel, that Jesus gives the disciples a lesson in humility by washing their feet. By doing this He is also giving them an illustration of His saving work, the truth of His words that He did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. And by washing their feet He prepares them for the preaching of the Gospel, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah [52.7]: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings.
But also on this night in which Jesus was betrayed and arrested, He gave us the Blessed Sacrament of His Body and Blood, or, in the words of our collect, left us in this wonderful Sacrament a memorial of [His] suffering. And, in today’s epistle [1 Co. 11.25, 26] St. Paul records Jesus’ words: This do in remembrance of Me. But let us not have some sort of empty, Protestant notion that remembrance only means thinking about, thinking back fondly on. Because what does that mean—but that Jesus and His saving work are long ago in the past. That they are just past events separated from us by time and space. Instead, This do in remembrance of Me, “remembering” means bringing it forward, in the present. That’s exactly what the holy Sacraments do: in baptism, as St. Paul says [Rm 6.1 ff.], we die with Christ and rise with Him; and here, in the Sacrament of the Altar, we are receiving His very body and blood—that very body that was loaded down with our sin and which suffered God’s wrath and punishment over those sins; that very blood that was poured out as the sacrifice for our sin. Without the holy sacraments, Jesus’ saving work, the atonement, is and remains ancient history, something we, yes, receive the benefits from, but something we have no present, physical connection with. But with the holy Sacraments, we are there! We are with the disciples in the upper room and receive the same body and blood they did; we are as it were at the foot of the cross with the Blessed Virgin and St. John. The atonement, Jesus’ saving work, is present, before our eyes—our eyes longing to see our salvation—that very moment of Jesus’ death on the cross when we were reconciled to God; the eyes of our heart that receives in faith all of Jesus’s gifts and blessings He won for us on the cross and now holds before us and offers us in the holy Sacraments.
The Holy Sacrament of the Altar is a feast of remembrance. Hear Jesus in our text, part of His words of His instituting this blessed Sacrament and giving it to His Church: for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. There is and can be absolutely no doubt that what we are receiving in the Sacrament is the very blood of Jesus that is being poured out for the forgiveness of the sins of the world. What we are receiving is not just some wine by which we are reminded that Jesus died on the cross in Palestine about 2000 year ago. That would just be dry, ancient history; there would be no connection with the present. Instead, we are receiving blood, the very blood of God Himself, who although He is spirit, has blood to pour out and to give to us because He is also true man, Jesus—true eternal God but also true man born of the Virgin in Bethlehem. Just as He gave the disciples that first Maundy Thursday His very body and blood that in a matter of hours He would offer up on the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world, so also today He gives us that same body and blood that He offered up on the cross as sacrifice for the sins of the world 2000 years ago. It was just as much a miracle then, as it is today! This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
As we receive Jesus’ blood in the holy Sacrament, it is His blood, which means death! Jesus truly died. The blood that Jesus shed on the cross wasn’t just a papercut or thimble full. Instead, His blood is poured out. That’s the language of sacrifice: poured out. And a sacrifice is always unto death. That’s what makes it a sacrifice! And as we receive Jesus’ blood in the sacrament, we are testifying that Jesus truly died—died for my sins and the sins of the world. As we think about our Lord’s holy Passion—His suffering and death—we think of how much blood He did pour out. We think of His prayers in Gethsemane where He sweat drops of blood, of His beatings, of His crown of thorns, of His whippings, of His being nailed to the cross. How much blood He shed! It is a miracle that He had any left. It is a miracle what St. Luke [23.46] records of Jesus’ death: when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, ‘into Your hands I commend My spirit.’” And having said this, He breathed His last. With so much blood poured out, Jesus still had the strength to speak loudly and clearly—certainly proving the truth of what He had said earlier [John 10.18]: No one takes [My life] from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. And when we hear of all this blood of Jesus being poured out let it be a reminder to us of all of His blood which He has given to His Christians down through the ages in the Sacrament and continues to give us for the forgiveness of sins and strengthening of faith.
Again, His very blood Jesus gives us in the Sacrament, His blood that He had poured out, His sacrifice of Himself on the cross is the basis of our redemption. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. So this means that when we receive Jesus in the Sacrament, when we receive His blood, we are receiving that very thing which made our forgiveness and rescue possible. Dear Christian, never doubt your forgiveness. If Satan is leading you into nagging doubts about whether your sin is really forgiven, if it is too great to be forgiven, run to the altar and receive Jesus, receive His holy blood poured out for you, let that healing medicine go down your throat and bring you the healing of the forgiveness of sins and hear Jesus saying to you: This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
By Jesus’ death, by His shedding His blood, the world has been forgiven its sin. The holy life we can’t live because of our sin nature, Jesus lived for us; the holiness God demands/ expects of us that we daily/ hourly, continually fail to do, Jesus has done for us. The sin we were born with and the sin we continually commit that earn us and deserve us God’s wrath and damnation, Jesus took on Himself, took on His body and there on the cross became the world’s sinner enduring all of God’s wrath and punishment for our sin. As the sacrifice for our sin, Jesus poured out His blood—he died. What gives Jesus’ blood such infinite worth and value for the forgiveness of the sins of all people of all time? It is the blood of the very God Himself!
And the glorious thing is that Jesus not only offered the Father His blood for our forgiveness—which the Father accepted and raised Jesus from the dead on Easter Sunday and has declared the world “forgiven!”—but in the Blessed Sacrament He offers/ gives us His holy, divine blood.
As Christians, our relation with God is based on His grace, based on Jesus’ blood which He has poured out. Here, in the Sacrament, as we drink Jesus’ blood He is giving us both the forgiveness of sin; and that blessed assurance that yes, because of Him and His life, suffering and death, we stand before God in grace. That barrier separating us sinners from the holy God has been removed by the blood of Jesus poured out for the forgiveness of our sin. How, then, our faith is strengthened. Now, because of the spilled blood of our Savior, Christ Jesus the God-man, we have peace with God.
This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Think about the treasure here before us: Jesus’ death brought forgiveness to the world for all sins. That’s a historical fact! But it is also for us present reality because in the Sacrament that forgiveness is applied to us individually as we eat Jesus’ body and drink His blood. Shortly after giving His Church the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus is in Gethsemane praying so fervently He sweat blood [Lk 22.42]: Father, if it is Your will, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Your be done. Jesus drank the cup of judgment down to its bitter dregs so that we, in the Blessed Sacrament, might drink the cup of forgiveness—His holy, divine blood.
2. The Sacrament of the Altar is a glorious feast of remembrance in which Jesus’ sacrifice becomes a reality before our eyes and in our mouths. But it is also at the same time a feast of hope looking forward. Our text: I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom. Here, again, we see this great mystery. Jesus had just said they were drinking His blood, This is my blood of the covenant; and He calls it wine: this fruit of the vine. In the sacrament Jesus gives us His holy, life-giving blood together with the wine, so that we are receiving both wine and blood. How this happens, we cannot explain. All we can say is that in the Blessed Sacrament some how, some way with the earthly elements of bread and wine we are also receiving Jesus’ very body and blood for the forgiveness of sin and the strengthening of faith.
With these words: I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom, Jesus is also directing our attention ahead to heaven. He is not only foretelling His death that day saying that only the cup of suffering remains for Him, but He also points the disciples and the Church through the ages ahead to eternity in heaven, in His heavenly kingdom. Right before His death on the cross, St. John [19.30] records: So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. Jesus did have wine again, that cheap sour wine. But He did have some! And by this showed that His kingdom, the Kingdom of the Messiah, had been ushered in, the forgiveness of sins and peace with God had been restored—and now heaven was opened to all believers.
Here is our glorious and certain hope as Christians! We will be with our Lord one day, eternally in heaven. In the Lord’s Supper we have and enjoy already now a foretaste of heaven. What will the glories of heaven consist of? –Beholding God in all of His glory. What do we have/ what do we see in the Lord’s Supper? —Jesus’ body and blood. Already now in the Sacrament we are catching a glimpse of the glory that will one day be ours. Already now in the Sacrament we are joining our praise with the praise the holy angels and the saints in heaven, anticipating the day we will be there with them at that great heavenly banquet and drinking the fruit of the vine with Jesus in a new—a heavenly/ divine—way. In the meantime, when we receive the holy Sacrament now, the Lord is blessing us with all His spiritual and heavenly gifts and strengthening us as He guides us through this world to eternal life. Each time we receive the holy Sacrament, we behold and receive Jesus and long and pray all the more fervently: Come, Lord Jesus.
The Blessed Sacrament—a feast of remembrance and a feast of looking forward in hope. INJ Amen