The Meal for Betrayers (Maundy Thursday)

[Below you'll find the message presented during Maundy Thursday worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, as well as live stream video of the service. Be sure to attend Good Friday worship tomorrow if you're able to do so.]

Matthew 26:17-30

Holy Communion, the sacrament Jesus instituted on the night before His crucifixion, is reserved for only one kind of person, and one kind of person only.

Holy Communion is for betrayers of God, those whose basic orientation in life is away from God, the giver of life, and toward an eternity of sin, death, damnation, isolation, and regret.

Holy Communion is God’s Word to sinners.

Only sinners can approach this table.

Jesus tells us so in this evening’s Gospel lesson. He does so while having the Passover meal with the twelve we now know as apostles, the sent ones.

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus says to all of them, including Judas, “one of you will betray me.” (Matthew 26:21)

Then He tells them again, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me [and that would have been all twelve of the men at the table] will betray me.” (Matthew 26:23)

None of the twelve believe in what Jesus tells them.

Each in turn asks Him, “Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?” (Matthew 26:22)

Judas seeks extra assurance, addressing Jesus as Rabbi or Teacher, rather than as Lord: “Surely you don’t mean me, Rabbi?” (Matthew 26:25) To which Jesus says, “You have said so.” (Matthew 26:26)

The question asked by each man says two things.

The first thing it says is that they don’t trust Jesus’ Word. They were grown-up men who had stuck with Jesus for several years. They were certain they wouldn’t betray him now.

The second thing it says is that down deep, they all know themselves to be betrayers of God the Son. Only Judas would sell Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver. But most of the men around that table would scatter in fear at the moment of Jesus’ arrest. The boldest of the group, Peter, would go to the temple environs to watch Jesus’ trial, but would deny any association with Jesus three times. They all–every single one of them–who eat the Passover meal with Jesus that night will betray Jesus. That’s what betrayers do. It’s what sinners do.

Betrayers have inherited this disposition to look out for themselves with no thought of God or others. Adam displayed it when, immediately after falling into sin, he blamed God and Eve, the woman he had described as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” (Genesis 2:22) “The woman you put here with me,” he tells God,”—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (Genesis 3:12) Eve was maybe a little better. She, at least, didn’t try to pin the blame on God. When God confronted her for her part in the fall, she told God, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:13)

You and I are no different.

The truth is the last thing any of us wants to do is love God or love others.

We prefer worshiping at the altar of self and preserving our own skins rather than taking the chance of loving God or loving for others, for there is always risk in love.

We recoil at the Word of God when it tells us: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” (Philippians 2:3-4)

The psalmist tells us that, “The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 14:2-3)

We are betrayers of the God we know in Jesus.

But to the betrayers who sat around Him at the Last Supper, as well as to we betrayers who gather in this sanctuary tonight, Jesus has another Word.

He gives it to all who gather in the name of the triune God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to all who realize they are betrayers in need of the Messiah Who has come to save us from sin and all its deadly, fatal consequences.

Jesus says of the bread and the wine on our table: “Take and eat; this is my body” and “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:26-28)

Jesus meets our betrayal with His new covenant or new testament, His promise, to make the filthy clean.

He, as one teacher puts it, gives us His body and takes on Himself our old bodies of sin even as we are betraying Him.

And so, each time we receive Christ’s body and blood, a miracle occurs. We who, by our nature and our actions, betray our God, are forgiven and made new.

Through the years as a pastor presiding over the sacrament, I have encountered people who refused to take the bread and the wine because they didn’t believe.

I’ve always respected that. It shows an integrity that some church-goers would do well to emulate.

The Small Catechism tells us that people are “truly worthy and well prepared who believe [Jesus’] words, ‘Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’”

If we’re willing to trust the promise of those words from Jesus, we should, by all means, come to the table and receive Christ’s body and blood.

Nothing will more certainly build saving faith in Christ within us, no matter the depths of our betrayal or the breadth of our sins, than receiving the sacrament whenever it is offered.

Holy Communion is Jesus’ Gospel Word of promise and life for sinners!

All of which is why I’ve been deeply troubled by another group of people I’ve encountered through the years: Those who refuse the sacrament because they don’t feel they’re good enough, or holy enough, or repentant enough.

During His Last Supper with the twelve, do you notice what Jesus does immediately after He tells Judas that he, like the other eleven, is going to betray Him?

He doesn’t spend a moment condemning, excoriating, or ragging on the twelve.

He doesn’t rage against their sins or give vent to resentment.

Jesus knows that He’s going to the cross to take the condemnation for sin each of us deserves, whether Judas sells Him out, or Peter denies knowing Him, or the others melt into the streets of Jerusalem, or we sin against God, or not.

Jesus has a mission and no amount of human disloyalty, sin, or betrayal will turn Him away from it. Referring to His crucifixion, Jesus says elsewhere, “I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50)

Instead of speaking words of condemnation, Jesus immediately shifts to giving His antidote for our sin, His gift to we betrayers.

Jesus gives to us who are born dead and condemned for our sin, Himself, His body and His blood.

As Jesus says in another place, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32) We are the sin-sick and we are the dying that  Jesus has come to save!

Friends in Christ, this feast of Christ’s very life given to us to eat and drink, isn’t for the perfect.

It’s for those of you who know the depths of your betrayal of your Lord and who know of your need of Him.

In another place, Jesus tells us a truth that I fear we don’t take literally enough. “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” (John 6:53-56)

So, on this Maundy Thursday, as Jesus gives us His Word–His body and blood in, with, and under the bread and the wine–, however much you and I may have betrayed our Lord in the past week, two days, half hour, we are right where we belong: At the table of our Lord. Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 14

Holy Communion (Back to Basics: Revisiting the Catechism, Part 5)

Here's the video of tonight's midweek Lenten worship and the full prepared text of the message.

Matthew 26:26-29

Tonight, we come to the final installment of our Lenten series, Back to the Basics: Revisiting the Catechism. 

With it, we consider The Small Catechism’s discussion of the second of the two Sacraments, Holy Communion. 

A Sacrament is usually defined by Lutherans according to three criteria: 

• (1) It was instituted by Christ; 
• (2) It involves a physical element;
• (3) It brings the forgiveness of sins through Jesus to those who receive it. 

Holy Baptism and Holy Communion meet these criteria. 

But what exactly is Holy Communion? 

What promises does Jesus make to those who receive it? 

How does Holy Communion work? 

And who is worthy of this Sacrament? 

Martin Luther set out to answer these four basic questions simply in The Small Catechism.

Holy Communion is not the invention of the Church. Jesus Himself presided over the Sacrament for the first time at what we call the Last Supper. 

Three gospel writers as well as the apostle Paul in one of his New Testament letters, tell us how Jesus, on the night of His betrayal and arrest, shared Holy Communion with the twelve. 

Matthew says: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’” (Matthew 26:26-28)

Notice, Jesus did not say, “This represents My body.” 

Nor did He say, “This represents or symbolizes my blood of the covenant.” 

Had Jesus wanted to say those things, He could have done so. 

But He said, “This bread IS My body...This wine IS My blood of the covenant.” 

As I’ve said before, Jesus knows what the meaning of IS is. 

And this has tremendous significance! 

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says in John 6:35. 

He also says, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” (John 6:54-56) 

A chemical analysis of the elements used by Jesus in Holy Communion will show that they are bread and wine. But Jesus says that they are also His life-giving body and blood. 

This is why, in The Small Catechism, Luther says that “Communion is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and the wine, given to us Christians to eat and drink, as it was instituted by Christ Himself.”

Luther then asks what benefit eating and drinking the Sacrament can bring. To answer, he points back to Jesus’ words. The Sacrament brings us “the forgiveness of sins.” 

You see, Jesus, like the spotless lambs once offered on the annual Jewish “Day of Atonement,” Yom Kippur, has offered Himself as the perfect, sinless, once-and-for-all sacrifice for our sins. Unlike Yom Kippur, which only brought Jews forgiveness of the previous year’s sins, Jesus has offered Himself as the definitive sacrifice for all our sin. 

“Look,” John the Baptist told others when he saw Jesus approaching him at the Jordan River, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) 

When we receive Christ’s body and blood, He is physically filling us and covering us once more with the benefits of what He has accomplished for us on the cross. 

This is why the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:16: “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” 

We need to regularly participate in this Sacrament--Luther assumed the Church would offer it to believers daily--because, as long as we remain in this world, our old selves remain, and we are prone to sin, in need of forgiveness. 

Holy Baptism, of course, is the means by which God gives us rebirth. Holy Communion though is bread for our journey, sustaining us in the grace of God given in Jesus, along life’s way, a holy hedge against the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.

But how, unbelievers and even Christians who don’t take Jesus’ Sacrament seriously ask, “can bodily eating and drinking bring such great benefits?” 

We ask questions like these because we think that forgiveness of sin depends on us, on our right attitudes or thoughts. 

Thoughts like these spring from our human ego. Which is why Luther points us back to Who it is that acts when we receive Holy Communion. “It is not the eating and drinking alone,” Luther writes, “but also the words that accompany it, ‘Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’ These words, together with the eating and drinking, are the chief thing in the Sacrament, and those who believe them have what they say and declare, namely, the forgiveness of sin.”

If a friend works all day long to prepare a four-course dinner, invites you to their house, then spreads it on the table and serves you, unless you’re stupid or an ingrate, you won’t later say, “I got some dinner tonight.” Your host is the one who did everything necessary for you to have that dinner. All you had to do was, like a pig at the trough, show up where your host directed you to go. 

Just so, with Holy Communion, everything depends on Jesus. It’s He Who died and rose, He Who offers up His body and blood, He Who gives you the forgiveness of sin as you eat and drink, He Who invites you to the table. 

And how does He do this? Through the power of His Word, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sin.” 

All that’s left to you is to receive it with helplessness, gratitude, and faith. “I can’t see how this works, Lord, but You say that this IS Your body and this IS Your blood and I trust Your words.” 

It is Christ’s Word that makes Holy Communion Holy Communion. 

It is Christ’s Word that imparts Christ’s forgiveness of your sin physically to you in this sacrament.

Well, who, Luther asks in the fourth section of The Small Catechism’s explanation of Holy Communion, is worthy of such a great gift? Luther says that some may fast or do other outward things to prepare for receiving the Sacrament, but “people are truly worthy and well prepared who believe these words, ‘Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’” “But,” Luther writes, “those who do not believe these words or who doubt them are unworthy and unprepared, for the words ‘for you’ require truly believing hearts.”

We may wonder sometimes when we receive Christ’s body and blood whether we really do believe those words, whether Christ really forgives us. 

Doubts like these are normal and assail even the greatest saints who love Jesus. Until we see Jesus face to face, we will always have doubts. 

When doubts about Christ and His Word come to me, I’m inspired by the example of the man who approached Jesus for healing for his son. Jesus told the man to believe in Him, to trust in Him, that He would heal the boy. “I do believe,” the man replied, “help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) 

Jesus honored that man’s small faith, a faith that, despite its smallness, knew enough to turn to Jesus. 

Baptized believers in Jesus, if you know enough to respond to Jesus’ call to, “Come, drink my blood and eat my body for the forgiveness of your sins,” it’s enough. 

He will supply not only the forgiveness; He will also help you to believe that you share both His death to sin and resurrection to life with you again as you receive the bread and the wine and hear the words, “The body of Christ, given for you,” “The blood of Christ, shed for you.” 

For you. 

God bless you, friends. 

Amen

Maundy Thursday: Jesus Comes to Us

[This message was shared during Maundy Thursday worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, earlier this evening.]

Luke 22:7-20

Maundy is the Old English word for command. On the Thursday when Jesus was arrested before His crucifixion on Good Friday, Jesus gave His Church a new command: that we love our fellow disciples with the same commitment, passion, and sacrifice that He lived out in His suffering and crucifixion. 

Of the four gospel writers, only John mentions this commandment. But John doesn’t mention what, for the other three--Matthew, Mark, and Luke--is central to this night, the institution of Holy Communion. Are the evangelists--three on one side, one on the other--contradicting one another?

Not at all! John’s entire account of Jesus’ earthly ministry is framed by a consciousness of the centrality of the two sacraments, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, to the Christian life. And so, John tells us that Jesus’ ministry begins at Cana when He turns water into wine and His ministry ends when, dead on the cross, a Roman soldier pierces His side and sees water and blood emerge from the wound. 

The Christian life is composed of receiving new life as an act of grace through Jesus at our baptisms and continuing to receive new life and the forgiveness of our sins as Jesus gives Himself again in Holy Communion. John doesn’t denigrate Holy Communion; he elevates it.

Similarly, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, by their accounts of Jesus’ institution of Holy Communion don’t denigrate or ignore Jesus’ new commandment. On the contrary, when we receive the body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion, we are immersed again in the saving love of Jesus. In, with, and under the bread and the wine, the body and blood of Jesus enter us, and as we receive Him by faith, He imparts the power to love our fellow disciples as He loves us. 

So, there is no contradiction among the four gospels about Maundy Thursday, just different perspectives, each reinforcing and underscoring the other.

The gospel of Luke’s account of the first Maundy Thursday and the institution of Holy Communion is our focus tonight. I want to look at just the last seven verses of the lesson, Luke 22:14-20. 

Verse 14: “When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, ‘I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.’”

The feast of Unleavened Bread was kicked off by Passover, the annual celebration of God’s ancient people, the Jews, of God’s deliverance of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. On the first Passover, the eldest of captive Israel’s children and livestock were spared when the angel of death sent by God passed over because their families smeared the blood of a lamb without blemish on their doorposts. 

On the first Maundy Thursday, Jesus is showing us that He is about to accomplish something even more miraculous and spectacular: The power of sin and death will pass over and not harm those washed clean of the blemish of sin in Holy Baptism and who are covered in the power of His life-giving blood when they trustingly receive Holy Communion. 

This is what Jesus anticipates as He sits with His disciples at this last Passover.

Verse 17: “After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, ‘Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’”

Those of you who were able to attend the Jews for Jesus presentation on Christ in the Passover, will recall that four cups are part of the Passover meal or Seder. The Seder celebrates God’s old covenant or old testament with Israel. Scholars are unclear as to which of the four Passover cups Jesus is sharing in verses 17 and 18. In the end, I don’t think it matters much. The more important thing is that from this old meal commemorating the old covenant, Jesus institutes a new covenant by which all people, Jews and Gentiles, may be saved from death for all eternity. 

In Jesus, Israel’s historic mission of being God’s light of salvation and new life to the nations if fulfilled. A new or renewed Israel comes into being, believing Gentiles grafted into one body with believing Jews. Because God has now shown up in our world in Jesus--the Word made flesh--all people are called to trust in Jesus for life with God. 

As the apostle Peter said of the risen Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) In a sense, the cup that Jesus shares with the disciples before instituting Holy Communion is the last act of the old covenant.

Verse 19: “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’”

A good rule of thumb when interpreting Scripture is that, unless symbolic or poetic imagery is intended, the Word says precisely what it seems to be saying. That’s true of Jesus’ words here, the words of institution. Jesus does not say, as He shares the bread, “This represents my body” or “This symbolizes my body.” Instead, Jesus makes a simple, declarative sentence, “This is my body.” The same happens with the wine: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood…” As I’ve said before, Jesus knows precisely what the meaning of is is. Through the power of His Word spoken over the elements, the bread and the wine are also His body and His blood. 

Jesus gives Himself to us! The simple elements of the two sacraments--water, bread, wine--are God’s saving Word, the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus, touching our bodies, our tongues, our bloodstreams, just as surely as the read Word enters us through our eyes and the proclaimed Word enters us through our ears. 

Holy Communion is Christ entering into us, destroying the cancer of sin and raising us up to life with Him!

This means too that when Jesus says that we’re to receive His body “in remembrance” of Him, it doesn’t mean that receiving Holy Communion is a tour through musty history. Jesus means that when we receive this sacrament with faith that He always tells us the truth, we are re-membered to Him and to His people, reconnected to Christ and the eternal Church of every time and every place, on earth and in heaven. 

We feast with Abraham as he received the bread and wine from Melchizedek. 

We feast with departed loved ones who, heaving trusted in Christ, today enjoy the messianic banquet with Jesus in eternity. 

We feast with every believer in the world, from Amir, the Iranian I met and talked with for forty-five minutes at Aldi’s the other day, who left Islam and came to faith in Jesus back in 2005, to Miriam, Daniel, and Francoise, Jews who trust in Jesus for their salvation, who we met last week. 

We feast with the members of the black churches in Alabama that were recently destroyed by a racist arsonist. 

We are re-membered to Christ and to each other and eternity invades are sin-darkened, time-bound world. 

Holy Communion is a miracle wrought by Jesus by which He lets us have and savor a foretaste of the feast that He has in store for all His people. 

In Holy Communion, heaven comes to earth.

When I was a boy, my parents liked to start our vacations at night based on the mistaken idea that we five kids would fall asleep on the way and dad could drive in peace. That never happened, of course. We always had a big meal before we left home and, since there were no snacks in the car, would only eat when we stopped along the way for a meal. I guess you could say that, through those pre-vacation meals, we were fortified for the journey. 

For the baptized believer in Jesus, life on this earth is a journey. First Peter tells us that we’re foreigners in a strange land. But along the way, God fortifies us with the living bread from heaven, Jesus.

Tonight, we enter a different journey, one that Christians have historically called the Easter Triduum, the Three Days--Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday. It’s a journey through Christ’s betrayal, His death and burial, and finally His resurrection. 

For the first disciples, the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection was a long, grief-filled journey, the way our lives in this world can sometimes be. Their lives weren't perfect or easy even after they came to know that Jesus is risen from the dead.

So, how powerfully loving it was of Jesus to fortify those first disciples for all of their journeys and to fortify us for our own journeys through our own Good Fridays until we reach the believer's final destination, that Easter when we will one day, beyond the gates of death, awaken in His presence. Jesus does that by giving us not just a memory, but Himself, His body and blood in this sacrament, bread and life for our journey. 

Receive this sacrament again tonight and always, friends, with gratitude and faith and awe, remembering that in it, Jesus is coming to you again. Forgiveness is coming to you again. Life is coming to you again. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]