Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-14

Throughout Holy Week our worship is a retelling of the events of the last week before Jesus was crucified. Luke tells us that after teaching each day in the Temple, at night Jesus went and slept on the Mount of Olives. (Luke 21:37) On Palm Sunday, we heard how he entered Jerusalem from there, and tonight is Maundy Thursday, named for the mandatum, or command, that Jesus gives his disciples in John’s Gospel “to love one another as I have loved you.”

But, unlike John’s gospel, none of the synoptic gospels — Matthew, Mark and Luke —have Jesus speak that command or wash the feet of his disciples. Instead, the focus in these gospels is the Passover meal that is shared between them.

The modern Passover meal or seder is not the same meal that Jesus ate with the disciples; many of the foods that are eaten and the traditions that shape that ritual today developed after the destruction of the Temple, more than forty years after Jesus’ crucifixion. Even so, understanding the Jewish Passover helps us understand the words that Jesus speaks at the Table in tonight’s gospel.

When Israel was living in slavery in Egypt under the rule of the Pharaoh, Moses and his brother Aaron went to the ruler and tried to negotiate freedom, and Pharaoh refused. Nine plagues struck the Egyptians but Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened. Then, on the night before a tenth plague struck, the Israelites were instructed to smear blood on their doorposts and lintel, and they were promised that the Lord would pass over them as he struck down the Egyptians.

The next day, Israel was delivered from slavery and, in the millennia since, the Jewish people have commemorated the exodus in the Passover meal that is described in our reading tonight. In this meal that is shared with friends and family, they retell the story of God’s deliverance, eating foods that symbolize different events in the biblical narrative, celebrating the day as a festival to the Lord and remembering the events throughout generations.

Tonight’s reading from Exodus Chapter 12 details how to prepare the Passover meal, and in the Hebrew, in verse 6, the writer’s words are, “It will be for you.” These are the same words we hear Jesus say when he tells the disciples his body is given, and the new covenant in his blood is poured out, for you. (Luke 22:19-20) God provides the gift of salvation — protection from death —for each one of us.

The liturgy of the Passover makes worshipers participants in God’s saving activity. Our liturgy of Holy Communion also renews our participation in God’s saving activity. In Holy Communion, we celebrate God’s Word, or promise of forgiveness of sin, joined with the earthly elements of wine and bread and the command to “do this for the remembrance of me.”

But the task of remembering is not passive.

Returning to the Exodus text, did you hear how Israel was instructed to eat their meal? (verse 11) The Lord said,

11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the LORD.

As scholar Christopher Hays writes, “[God’s people] are commanded to be ready, at any moment, to move with God.”[i]

This meal isn’t a prolonged wedding feast with liters of wine, and it isn’t merely comfort food shared in thanksgiving. In this meal, we are both protected from death, which is separation from God, and we are given food for the baptismal journey which we are living.

This meal prepares us to give ourselves to the world.

As joyful as coming to this Table is, participating in this meal means taking a risk.[ii] Just as God delivered Israel, God delivers us and God expects us to be on the move and ready to follow Jesus when we’ve been fed.

We are invited to the meal but not just the meal; we are invited to life together. At the table we are bound to our brothers and sisters, and our welfare — our whole lives —are connected to one another. In his essay “Freedom of a Christian”, Luther wrote, “A man does not live for himself alone, …but lives also for every man on earth.”[iii]

There isn’t any expectation that we will follow Jesus perfectly. Judas, who betrays him, is at this table, and later on this same night, the disciples who shared bread and wine with Jesus flee when he is arrested. But God invites us anyway.

Tonight, as you come to be fed, know that Jesus “eagerly desires” to share in this holy meal with you. Hear the invitation not just to come and eat; but, quoting Luther again, to “give [yourself] as a Christ to [your] neighbor, just as Christ offered himself to you.”[iv]

Let us pray…
Holy God,
We remember Your mighty acts throughout history;
with thanksgiving we remember that by Your saving grace through Your Son Jesus You move us from sin to reconciliation, giving us the gift of salvation and new life,
that we would live, not for ourselves, but for the world.
Nourish us tonight at this Table and send us out guided by Your Holy Spirit to take risks for the sake of the world.
Amen.

[i] Bartlett, David L.. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide . Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[ii] Amy-Jill Levine. Entering the Passion of Jesus.
[iii] Martin Luther. “Freedom of a Christian.” Three Treatises. 301.
[iv] Luther. 304.