Our Spiritual Journey (Luke 22:7-20)
Written by Pastor Fausel   
 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of The Holy Spirit. Amen.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you on this Holy Night …

Maundy Thursday.  A day to talk about preparing a room for the Passover.  A day to talk about washing the Disciples’ feet.  A day to talk about Jesus’ Institution of the Lord’s Supper.  A Day to talk about Prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.   A day to talk about Jesus’ betrayal and arrest by the Jewish leadership.   A busy day…

All those things are described by the various evangelists as they occurred on this fateful holy day in history.  However … our reading for tonight from Luke’s Gospel directs our attention to just one of those facets of this day:  Jesus’ institution of a new covenant or New Testament in His blood.

So…  to understand that more fully, we need to better appreciate the occasion.  The first Maundy Thursday was a day determined by a lunar event … the rising of the Full Moon fourteen days after the beginning of the first month on the Jewish calendar.

On that day, which, by the way, this year occurred with the rising of the full moon this past Monday, the Passover Lamb was to be killed … according to the Law of Moses, so that that evening, the Passover itself could be celebrated in remembrance of the Israelites’ deliverance from slavery at the hands of the Egyptians.

Today, there is a very set tradition amongst the Jews of how the Passover is to be prepared, and the order in which the food and drink is to be served and eaten.  These directions have been preserved in the Jewish writing called the mishnah.  

However, the first written record of the mishnah is dated 200 years after Jesus  … so, we can only guess how close his celebration of the Passover corresponds to the modern version as it is celebrated today.

So rather than try to interpret which cup Luke records corresponds to which cup is used in today’s celebration … let’s step back instead and talk about the significance of what happened that night … for you and for me.

First of all, our reading we have from the Book of Jeremiah speaks of what was about to happen with Jesus’ Death and Resurrection.   God was going to make a new Covenant.  The Book of Hebrews, from which our Epistle reading was taken, was writeen for Jewish readers of the first century … specifically intended to show that Jesus’ death and resurrection DID bring about the New Covenant that God had promised through Jeremiah.

It might be helpful, then, to clear up some semantics.  The word covenant as it’s used in the Bible refers to a contract drawn up between two people.  In fact the Jewish idiom for drawing up a covenant is to Cut a Covenant. 

The reason for that was that the covenant was signed by cutting an animal, like a cow, in half … splitting it down the middle… and then the two parties would walk between the two half’s. 
As they did, they would pledge to one another that if one of them should beak the covenant … they should be made to be like one of the half’s of the animal.

(A much more graphic a way of committing oneself to an agreement than just clicking on a button that says that you accept the terms and conditions.)

Now, for semantics sake, the word “testament” refers to a one-way covenant.   One person binds him or herself to do what the testament says … without any action required by the receiving party

We use that term today when we talk about someone’s Last Will and Testament.   The bequeathed gets the inheritance at the behest of the one making the last will and testament.  Whatever is in the testament  goes to the recipient with no strings attached …

And so … the Covenant that God made with His People as He delivered them out of Slavery in Egypt consisted of God being their God on His side … and the people binding themselves to the Ten Commandments on theirs. 

Obeying the Ten Commandments set them apart from all other nations.  But, as we know, it was a covenant doomed to failure on the people’s part due to their innate sinfulness.   Yet, God provided a sacrificial system that by the blood of animals …which looked forward to the blood of Christ … their sins would be atoned for.

And then … Jesus came.  He lived a perfect life … that would be ours.  He died a death on the cross … that would satisfy the judgment and punishment of God for all human sin.  And HE was raised to life  again.

And so, on Maundy Thursday, in expectation of His death which was shortly to come … Jesus made His Last Will and Testament.   A one-way covenant, a testament, a promise to his disciples… and to all those who are His by faith … that all that He would accomplish … would be theirs.

Now … to put this all in perspective … let’s draw a picture of this, Okay?  Follow me on this …

Let’s start with the First Passover.  You remember the children of Israel were in slavery in Egypt… they were not able to free themselves.   When the time was right, God intervened.   Through Moses, 10 plagues were visited on Egypt … and the last plague was the death of the first-born. 

To protect God’s people from the death of the first-born … God instituted the Passover … That meant that each family sacrificed a perfect lamb and its blood was put over the door of their house.  So that when the angel of death came … he Passed over any house so marked with the blood of the lamb.

The blood of a perfect lamb? … Death of the first-born?   Ring any bells?? 

You see …the very same way that God delivered the children of Israel from physical slavery … is the same way God saves us spiritually from our slavery … our slavery to sin… We are passed over … we are saved by the blood our Lamb, Christ Jesus … through the forgiveness of our sins, by the shedding of His blood on the cross. 

Now.  Back to Egypt.   The blood of the Passover lamb made the Children of Israel’s rescue from slavery possible, their houses had been passed over … but they were not out of Egypt … yet.   And so God led His people by Moses out of that land.  And to do so, He took them through the waters of the Red Sea.
  
Waters?  Delivery from slavery? … Delivery from the bondage to sin?   Anyone hear … Baptism? 

Who was the actor … when the people went through the Red Sea?  God.   Who is the Actor in delivering us from sin through Holy Baptism?… God.  The blood of the Lamb makes Baptism what it is. 

Now, after having been delivered from Slavery in Egypt by the Passover and passing through the Red Sea …  were the Children of Israel in the Promised Land, yet?  No, they were now in the wilderness.  The desert of Sinai.  So, how do you get to the Promised Land?   Was it every man for himself? 

No.  God led them to the Promised Land… together … as a people … as a congregation.  But there was no food or water in the wilderness … So, how did God take care of their physical needs?  He provided water which flowed from a rock.   In the New Testament we learn that that rock that followed them was Christ.

What about food?   God daily provided bread from heaven … which the people called manna.   But in the New Testament who calls Himself the true bread from heaven? … Jesus himself.

You see, as God provided for the physical needs of the Children of Israel in the desert … so He today, following our Baptism, supplies our spiritual needs by His supper, as we eat and drink Himself … God’s Spiritual nourishment at His table … until we reach our promised land, being fully in God’s presence … or Heaven.

Did you notice?  Jesus’ earthly ministry began with what?  His Baptism.   His earthly ministry ended with His Death, Resurrection and Ascension … the benefits of which are given to us through His last will and testament … the Lord’s Supper.

Jesus didn’t tell us to sacrifice Him again and again.  He didn’t tell us to go and worship empty tombs … He didn’t tell us to go and make pilgrimages to high places and let go of hot air filled balloons in remembrance of Him.

“Do THIS … in remembrance of me,” He said.  Eat this bread and drink this cup … “for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.” He says in John, chapter 6. 

Do this, He is saying… so I can sustain you spiritually on your journey through the wilderness from your Baptism to your coming into the Promised Land of Heaven.

And so … where did it all begin for the Israelites? … with the Passover.  How fitting, then, that the body and blood of Christ now supplant, supersede the covenant of the Passover.  
God’s perfect lamb, His first born, sacrificed for you and me, his blood poured out to save us from God’s wrath and our own spiritual death... was shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.

And so … On Maundy Thursday, Jesus, God, put an end to the old covenant symbolized by the eating of the Passover.  And it was the beginning of the New Testament for us in Jesus’ Blood for the forgiveness of our sins … which has continued on from that day as we continue to “do this in remembrance of Him.”

Tonight, and every time we celebrate the sacrament … we are Eating the Passover Lamb of the New Covenant … or the New Testament … a Lamb whose Sacrifice has delivered us from the slavery of Sin. 

It is this food that strengthens us for the spiritual Journey we are each now on, as God leads us together, for mutual comfort and support, until we all reach His goal for us … our mansions in heaven.

Who would have dreamed in Moses’ Day, that what God was doing then, would perfectly foreshadow what He would later do through Jesus’ Sacrifice for our sin?? 

The reality is: … it’s all about God’s Love.   A love for you that began before the world was begun.   A love for you that we see both in the Passover and in its fulfillment on the Cross.    God saying … I love you this much.   Come, taste and see my Love for you this evening.

In Him.

Amen.
 

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