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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.
The first Holy (or “Maundy”) Thursday, as the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke uniquely reports, our Lord Jesus Christ earnestly desired to eat that particular Passover meal with His apostles before He suffered. He had probably eaten two previous Passover meals with His disciples, but, for God’s faithful people, that particular Passover meal would not only fulfill all previous Passover meals but also forever change all Passover meals going forward. For, at that particular Passover meal, Jesus established the long‑promised New Covenant in His own blood, with the single empowering command that gives this day its “Maundy” name: you‑all “do this”, that is, eat His Body and drink His Blood, in remembrance of Him (confer 1 Corinthians 11:24‑25). Yet, the New Covenant in Jesus’s own blood is not so much about what we do, as it is about what Jesus does for us. Considering the Gospel Reading tonight, we realize that “The New Covenant is for us”.
For His part, Jesus certainly was keeping the Old Covenant, including the Passover (Exodus 12:14, 18-20; Deuteronomy 16:3). As He had with the colt on Palm Sunday (Luke 19:32), Jesus went to miraculous lengths in order to provide for a secret location furnished with rugs and couches and the customary low table, where He and the apostles could recline and enjoy the Passover meal, as He fulfilled and transformed it before their very eyes—fulfilled and transformed it for the apostles and for us.
For the apostles’ part and for our part, the Old Covenant was long broken, and so we desperately needed the New Covenant. With the Ten Commandments at its core, the Old Covenant, made with the Israelites when the Lord took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, was long broken even by the time God prophesied of it through Jeremiah, what we heard in tonight’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 31:31-34) and what was expounded in tonight’s Epistle Reading (Hebrews 10:15-25). That prophecy of the New Covenant included the writing of God’s law on people’s hearts, hearts that the Lord through Jeremiah elsewhere described as “stubborn”, “rebellious” (Jeremiah 5:23) and “evil” (Jeremiah 7:24). Their stubborn, rebellious, and evil hearts led the people of Israel to break the Old Covenant, as we heard God say through Jeremiah. And, likewise our stubborn, rebellious, and evil hearts, lead us to break that Old Covenant in thoughts, words, and deeds, and so our stubborn, rebellious, and evil hearts also lead to our incurring the curses of the Old Covenant, curses such as death here in time and eternal torment in hell.
Instead of more laws that we also only would fail to keep, the New Covenant centers on the Gospel’s gift of the forgiveness of sins. Through Jeremiah, as reiterated by the Divinely‑inspired author of Hebrews, God offers to forgive our iniquity and remember our sin no more, and, unless we reject His offer, the offer itself brings about our forgiveness. When we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep on sinning, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our stubborn, rebellious, and evil hearts, and God forgives our breaking that Old Covenant in thoughts, words, and deeds. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, Who establishes the New Covenant—not in the blood of bulls or goats (Hebrews 9:13) or even the blood of a Passover Lamb, but—in His own blood (confer Zechariah 9:11).
In fact, the God‑man Jesus Christ is our Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7). The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity as born to the Virgin Mary is the fulfillment (or “anti‑type”) of what the Passover Lamb pointed to (or, you might say, was the “type” of). By the mark of the blood of Jesus shed on the cross, the plague of the angel of death “passes over” us, and so we “pass over” from the death that we otherwise deserve to the life that God gives us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. He is the one Who guarantees a better covenant (Hebrews 7:22). As we tonight spoke in the Gradual (Hebrews 9:12a, c, 15a; Psalm 11:9a), He is the Mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance; He sent redemption to His people and has commanded His covenant forever. Perhaps more important than Jesus’s establishing the New Covenant for the benefit of the whole world, all people, countless others, Jesus gives His Body and pours out His Blood, as the Gospel Reading makes clear, for you, as you repent and believe.
Both the Old Covenant and the New Covenant included such things as ceremonial washings and a meal in the presence of God. The Epistle Reading referred to bodies washed with pure water and hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and that was referring not to the Old Covenant but to the New Covenant! In Holy Baptism our bodies are washed with pure water, and in the Sacrament of the Altar our hearts are, as it were, “sprinkled” clean from an evil conscience, as Moses sprinkled the blood of an Old Covenant sacrifice on the people of Israel (Exodus 24:8). Similarly, in order to participate in the benefits of the Old Covenant, Moses and the leaders of Israel ate and drank of its sacrifice in the presence of God (Exodus 24:9-11), as, in order to participate in the benefits of the New Covenant, we eat and drink of its sacrifice, Christ Himself, in His presence. People from every direction and every time and place come and recline at this table (Luke 13:29), and, as we all participate in the one Body and Blood of Christ, we who are many are one body (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). In the Supper, we rightly discern both the Sacramental Body of Christ and its result, the Ecclesiastical (or “Churchly”) Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:29).
So washed in Holy Baptism and fed in the Sacrament of the Altar, our hearts are changed! God gives us a new heart and a new Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26). As the prophecy through Jeremiah described, God puts His law within us and writes it on our hearts. He is our God, and we are His people. Because He has so forgiven our iniquity and remembered our sin no more, we know Him, from the least of us to the greatest, and we begin to keep His Commandments. As the author of Hebrews described, we draw near to Him with a true heart in full assurance of faith. We hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He Who promised is faithful. We stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as we see the Day drawing near.
Since the first Holy (“Maundy) Thursday, we no longer keep the Passover meal of the Old Covenant but the “Passover meal” of the New Covenant. Not so much a command of the law as a Gospel gift, “The New Covenant is for us”. The Sacrament of the Altar itself points to the, in a sense even greater, Marriage Supper of the Lamb in His Kingdom that has no end (Revelation 19:6-10). Until, in God’s time, we partake of that Supper, we earnestly desire to partake of this Supper, as often as we can (1 Corinthians 11:25), “doing this”, eating the Body of Christ and drinking the Blood of Christ, what our Lutheran Confessions call
“… an abiding memorial of his bitter passion and death and of all his blessings, a seal of the new covenant, a comfort for all sorrowing hearts, and a true bond and union of Christians with Christ their head and with one another” (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VII:44).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +