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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
We eat various kinds of meals, with different people or by ourselves, at different times, and in different places. Perhaps these days we have lost much of the sense of sitting down to a meal together with our family, as we eat on the go, in our cars, and at our desks, and sometimes we do not eat at all. That we as families sit down together to any meals at all might make such meals special, or maybe what makes our meals special are the occasions that we observe at the meals, or the places that we go to eat them. In tonight’s Gospel Reading Jesus’s disciples are concerned about where at least Jesus would eat the Passover, the meal that included the sacrificial Passover lamb and recalled God’s delivering the people of Israel from slavery to Egypt. And, although St. Matthew by Divine inspiration omits some of the details, we know that Jesus, similar to how He provided a donkey for Himself to ride into Jerusalem, miraculously provided a place for the disciples to prepare the Passover for Him to observe it with them. As we tonight consider the Gospel Reading under the theme “Eating the Passover”, we realize that Jesus likewise miraculously provides for us to eat the Passover, and we realize what our “Eating the Passover” means for us and for our salvation.
When it was evening, Jesus reclined at table with the twelve, and, among other things, Jesus spoke about the blood of the covenant. “Covenant” is a theme that runs through all three of tonight’s Readings, and we realize that Jesus’s meal with the twelve disciples was about more than just the Passover meal. The meal described in the Old Testament Reading (Exodus 24:3-11) was part of confirming the covenant God made with them after rescuing them from Egypt. Sacrifices were made, and their blood was applied to the people. Then, the leaders of the people ate and drank in the presence of God. The whole covenant process was part of God’s way of dealing with sin, especially the covenants’ pointing forward to the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
In Moses’s day, the people said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” If you know anything about the rest of the story, you know that the people did not do all the Lord had spoken and were not obedient. In fact, before Moses came down from the mountain, the people egregiously broke at least the First Commandment not to have other gods before the Lord God, if not also the other nine Commandments. By nature, you and I are no different than they were. We all inherit original sin from our common ancestors Adam and Eve, and that original sin leads us to commit all sorts of actual sin. You and I do not have to keep all of the ceremonial and civil laws the Lord spoke to Moses, but we fail to keep even their underlying moral code of the Ten Commandments. We even fail truly to keep Jesus’s commands in tonight’s Gospel Reading for us to take, eat, and drink: perhaps we do not commune as often as we could, or perhaps we do not hold His Word to be sacred and so show that we despise preaching and the other forms of His Word by not using them as we should. Our sins show our deep depravity, and our sins are to be taken seriously, for they warrant God’s eternal wrath upon us, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, Who, out of God’s deep love for us, fulfilled God’s covenant by delivering us from our sin once and for all. God calls and enables us to repent of our sin, to believe in Jesus, and so to be forgiven by grace through faith in Him.
Tonight’s Epistle Reading says Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant (Hebrews 9:11‑22), and, although there is a great deal of continuity between covenants, the covenant referred to in the Epistle Reading is new in some sense, to be sure. The new covenant is certainly fresh, being made and confirmed as Jesus speaks in the Gospel Reading, and the new covenant is certainly also of a higher quality, more effective than the blood of any of the Old Testament sacrifices, as Jesus’s blood shed once on the cross is for the sins of “many”—in the idiom of the original languages, that means “all”—the sins of the whole world, including your sins and mine. From the intimate fellowship of His twelve disciples, Jesus is betrayed unto that death on the cross by Judas, as St. Matthew uniquely reports Jesus told Judas He would be. Yet, that death on the cross sheds Jesus’s blood in place of ours. And, as from the first sacrifices God made to cover Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21) to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. With the Lord there is forgiveness, as we confessed in tonight’s Psalm (130), so that He may be feared—in other words, that we may believe and trust in Him and so be forgiven of all of our sins.
As we believe and trust in Him, we seek from Him His forgiveness of sins in the ways that He has given for us to receive that forgiveness. Under the older covenant, those ways included circumcision and ceremonial washing with water that had been set apart as holy in part by the ashes of a heifer and scarlet wool, sprinkled with branches of hyssop (Numbers 19). Both circumcision and that water of cleansing are fulfilled in and surpassed by Holy Baptism, a new kind of circumcision, one done with water set apart by Jesus’s own Baptism. Holy Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe. As that older covenant included a Passover meal, was inaugurated with blood, and was confirmed with an intimate meal, so the newer covenant includes a transformed Passover meal, inaugurated with Jesus’s own blood, and was confirmed with an intimate meal. In the Sacrament of the Altar, we take, eat, and drink the real flesh and blood of the sacrifice that saves us, Who is present here with us, and so we receive forgiveness, life, and salvation. Here we literally eat the Passover!
Christ your Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for you (1 Corinthians 5:7). His fullness fills you. His mercy forgives you. His grace redeems you. (The Lutheran Study Bible, 136.) He transforms you and me. In response, we sing hymns, as Jesus and the disciples did, and we go out to live our lives according to the various callings He has given us. We serve the living God in the persons of our neighbors—spouses, children and parents, and all those who live inside of our own individual homes and outside of our homes, no matter how far away. Because, like the people of Israel, we continue to fail to do all that the Lord has spoken and are not always obedient, we return to this Altar and its Rail again and again to receive the forgiveness from Him that we need so desperately for ourselves, and we share His and our own forgiveness with others. And, ultimately, we, in resurrected and glorified bodies, will eat and drink with Jesus in His Father’s Kingdom forever.
Truly, we eat various kinds of meals, with different people or by ourselves, at different times, and in different places. I suppose that, if our families celebrated our birthdays at our favorite place every single day, then sooner or later such meals would be less special. Such is most certainly not the case with “Eating the Passover”, however. For, our great need and God’s great promises fulfilled in this meal make it special each and every time we eat it—each and every time we eat it with Him and not only also with our brothers and sisters in Christ in this place but also with all believers of all times and all places, including our dear loved ones who have gone before us in the faith. Such is “Eating the Passover”, the Lamb of God sacrificed for us, for our deliverance from our slavery to sin, now and so will be our eating it with Him in His Kingdom forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +