This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 7.30pm, and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, on Wed 28 March, 7pm.
Grace, mercy and peace be
to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to
you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when
he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
Prayer: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O
Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
At the end of the book of
Genesis, we read about where the old man, Jacob, goes down to Egypt. He has
been reunited with his long-lost son, Joseph, who was sold by his brothers as a
slave, and now became a prince in Egypt. But then comes to time for Jacob to
die—and in Genesis 49, we read about how he gathers all his sons together, and
blesses them one by one. And not long after this wonderful blessing, we
read: When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into
the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.
And as we
come to celebrate Maundy Thursday tonight, we also see a similar thing – Jesus
knows he’s about to die, and so just like Jacob gathering his twelve sons, he
gathers his twelve disciples and he blesses them. But Jesus’ blessing is quite
a different kind of blessing—Jacob gives all his sons individual blessings
which are suitable to each one, but Jesus gives them the same blessing. Jesus
blesses each of the disciples with the words: Take and eat, this is my
body given for you. This is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
Do this in remembrance of me. And instead of resting his hands on
each of the disciples, like we might imagine Jacob doing with each of his sons,
Jesus by means of simple bread puts his body in their mouths, and by means of
simple wine puts his blood upon their lips. What a wonderful blessing Jesus
gives them! This reminds me of those wonderful words of John, who often called
himself the disciple whom Jesus loved, who was actually there at
the Last Supper: Little children, let us not love in word or talk but
in deed and in truth.
We come to
church to hear the words of Jesus, and each word he speaks to us is such a
wonderful, loving word. And what Jesus says is not just talk, but it does
things: Jesus loves us in deed and in truth. And at the Last
Supper, he says: This is my body, and he actually gives the disciples
his body to eat. He says: This is my blood, and he actually gives
the disciples his blood to drink. It’s just like when Jesus, together with his
Father and the Holy Spirit, said at the beginning of creation: Let
there be light, and there was light. And just as we still
have light in the world today because of those words, so also in the church, we
still have Christ’s body and blood to eat and drink, because his words and
still powerful. And so Jesus fulfils those words: Let us not love in
word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Let us
love. At the beginning of our Gospel reading tonight we read
the words: Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that
his hour had come to depart out of the world to the Father, having loved his
own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Do you see how
Maundy Thursday is a night that is stamped with love? Not just some lovey-dovey
soppy love, like in some Hollywood movie. This is pure love, divine love, love
which we can’t begin to comprehend, and we will never completely understand in
our lifetime. But Jesus shows us this love, and demonstrates it to us in his
words and actions. This is what Maundy Thursday is about. And so Jesus washes
his disciples’ feet to show them what sort of a love he has for them.
Peter doesn’t
fully understand. He says: You will never wash my feet. Jesus
says: What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will
understand. We can never fully understand the depth and the power of
the love which Jesus is showing to us at any given time. So often we look back
on our lives and realise that Jesus was with us powerfully in times when we
thought he might have given up on us. But what a wonderful love it is that
Jesus shows us! We read in Romans: I am sure that neither death nor
life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
not height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And so Jesus
washes his disciples’ feet. And he says: For I have given you an
example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I
say to you, a servant is not greater than the one who sent him. If you know
these things, blessed are you if you do them.
Jesus is not
giving his disciples a sacrament of foot-washing. We will have a foot-washing
ceremony later in our service, but this is a re-enactment, not a sacrament. But
through this foot-washing, Jesus wants to teach the disciples: I’m going to
send you out into the world to bring the gospel to all nations. And you need to
know that you are not to go out and get people to serve and wait on you, and to
rub oil on your bunions, and pour you refreshments. You are to go and wait on
those I have called out of the world, you are to serve them, to wash their feet
just like a household slave. This is the kind of love that Jesus teaches the
disciples on Maundy Thursday night.
And so he
says to them: A new commandment I give to you that you love one
another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this
all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.
Jesus
says: I am going to be with you always until the end of the age. I’m
going to walk with you, and work with you, and I’m going to breathe my Holy
Spirit on you to comfort you. But that’s not to say that Jesus will work
through us whatever we do. I read recently where someone said that Jesus does
his mission in us and sends the Holy Spirit through us wherever we go and whatever
we do. That’s not true – when we sin, when we hurt people, when we hate people,
when we let our temper get the better of us, when we curse them instead of
blessing them, no—Jesus is not working through us in whatever we do. It’s not
in doing whatever we like that people will know that we are his disciples, but
it’s by this[that] people will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another.
And then we
go to Jesus, and we say: Look, Jesus, I’m just not as loving as I know I should
be. I’m always giving you a bad name. I get frustrated with people, and I don’t
love them. I get to that crazy intersection of Gawler Street and Hutchinson
Street, and some nincompoop turns right in front of me when he shouldn’t have,
so I honk my horn and give him the finger. And to top it off I’ve got this fish
sticker on the back of my car advertising that I’m a Christian. Well, so much
for the line: By this all people will know that you are my disciples.
So, Jesus,
what do I do? How do I learn this love? How do I get this love?
Jesus knows
very well that you need this love, that you need to study it, that you need to
receive it constantly from him.
In the Small
Catechism, Martin Luther, in his Questions and Answers for those who intend to
go to the Sacrament, writes this question:
Finally,
why do you wish to go to the sacrament, [the Lord’s Supper]?
Answer: That
I may learn to believe that Christ, out of great love, (did you hear
that word?) died for my sin, and also learn from Him to love (there
it is again!) God and my neighbour.
The Lord’s
Supper is a Supper of Christian love. Even the apostle Jude, in his letter, the
second last book in the bible, calls the Lord’s Supper, a love feast.
A feast of love. (Actually, the love feast probably also included
not just the Lord’s Supper but also a further meal together.)
But when St
Paul writes to the Corinthians, the Lord’s Supper is not one of love at all. He
says: When you come together it is not for the better but for the
worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that
there are divisions among you. He even says: When you come
together it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes
ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. Shall I commend
you in this? No, I will not!
Those are
very strong words from the apostle Paul. And we can see that even the early
churches didn’t get everything right, as if this was some kind of golden era,
where all these happy smiling Christians were all sitting around in a circle,
holding hands and singing, Kumbaya.
No – they
also, just like us, had to learn how to love.
And so St
Paul says: Let me teach you how to love. I received from the Lord what
I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took
bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body
which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took
the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do
this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
So Jesus
loves his disciples by speaking his word. He says: This is my body,
given for you. This is my blood of the new covenant, the new testament in my
blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.Jesus through the power of
his clear and pure word, makes the bread and wine something that it wasn’t
before. Jesus had done this kind of miracle before, where he took a sick
person, spoke his word, and made them well. So, it’s no ordinary bread and wine
anymore: it’s the body and blood of Christ. It’s still bread and it’s still
wine—but the bread is united to the body of Christ and the wine to this blood.
This is what we call the consecration. So that if someone were to
ask us: what is that food on the table there? We would say: It’s the body and
blood of Christ. And Jesus doesn’t tell lies. Every word of God proves
true. St Paul says: The blessing cup that we bless, is it not
a participation of the blood of Christ?
But it’s not
enough for Jesus simply to consecrate his body and blood. He loves his
disciples by giving his body and blood to them. We read in
Mark: After blessing it, he broke it and gave it to them. He
broke the bread so that they could all have a piece. This is what we call
the distribution. Even in the New Testament, the Lord’s Supper is
called the breaking of the bread. This means, not that Jesus
broke it as some great symbolic ritual, but he broke it so that they could have
some.
But it’s not
enough for Jesus simply to give it to them to do whatever they like with it. He
doesn’t want them to put his body in their pockets and take it home. Jesus
loves his disciples by telling them to eat it and drink it. This is what we
call the reception of the Lord’s Supper. He wants to put his
body in their mouths, and he wants to put his blood on their lips.
And all of
this, Jesus says: Do this in remembrance of me. Remembrance
doesn’t mean that it’s not his body, and that the Lord’s Supper is a memorial
meal of bread and wine without his body. Otherwise, Jesus didn’t mean what he
said, when he said: This is my body. No – the Lord’s
Supper is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the
bread and wine, instituted by Christ himself for us Christians to eat and to
drink. He says: I want you to eat my body and drink my blood in
remembrance of me. That’s what I want you to do, when I say: do this.
What
wonderful love Jesus shows to us! Not only does he die on the cross, and rise
again from the dead, but he stays with his church and feeds his own church
himself, with himself, with his body and blood, all throughout Christian
history!
So this
Supper that we are going to share together, is the supper where Jesus teaches
us his great divine love. It is here, on our knees, around the altar of God,
where Jesus shapes and forms us in his character, in his mind, in his heart and
works in us that pure love, the love which he shows completely undeserved to
us. It’s especially here in the Lord’s Supper where these words are taught and
begin to come true and take shape: By this all people will know that
you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. All this he
does by giving us such a precious gift: His body and his blood.
May God bless
you with his Holy Spirit as we come to receive this gift tonight, and to be
comforted and strengthened with his precious words!
Amen.
Lord Jesus
Christ, we can’t begin to imagine how you bring about this great miracle in the
Lord’s Supper. But we trust in your words in all their truth and purity: This
is my body given for you. This is my blood shed for your for the forgiveness of
sins. Amen, amen, it shall be so!
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