Maundy Thursday: A Meal of Remembrance

 March 28 2024

Matthew 26:17-30

         One of the peculiar things that happens when you cross over the sixty year mark is that birthdays no longer seem to have the same excitement that they used to have. Its not just my own birthday which doesn’t seem to give me the same thrills but, as much as I hate to admit it, I didn’t even celebrate my wife, Jennifer’s, birthday either. I did not get her a card nor did I bake her a cake and I feel awful about it. You see, even though I have got in a rut about celebrating birthdays, I still realize that they are important. Birthdays are the way that those around us remember the way we came into the world and the people in our life rejoice at our being born. Every year, my Mom reminds me of how she was freezing green beans and making applesauce and how I so rudely interrupted her work. She tells of how my grandmother had to come and watch my older siblings so that she could head to the hospital. Growing up, my Mom also made sure that there was an angel food cake with sea foam icing lathered all over it waiting for me on my special day. We all know that this is what birthdays are all about, about remembering our beginnings and celebrating the years of life that have followed. I guess, you could say that birthdays, with cake as its centerpiece is a meal of remembrance.

         Much in the same way, what is called in scripture the Passover is also a meal of remembrance. Like our birthday celebrations, Passover is also about telling the story of the birth, but not the birth of an individual, but the birth of a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. You see, Passover, through storytelling and the eating of a meal, recounts the story of how a people enslaved by the Egyptians were set free through the mighty acts of God so that they might become known as the very people of God. The recording of the actual events that the Passover tells is found in the twelfth chapter of Exodus. There we hear of how the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, refused to allow his slaves, the people of Israel, to be set free even though Moses, the servant of God, had brought plague after plague upon his country. So God decides to bring upon the country of Egypt one more plague to bear against the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart. In preparation for this final plague, God tells Moses and the people of Israel, that every family was to select a lamb and on the fourteenth day of the month every family was to slaughter their lamb. They were to take some of the blood of the lamb and with a hyssop branch they were to wipe the blood over the doorposts and the door frame. They were to roast the lamb, and they were to eat it with their sandals on their feet and their staff in their hand so that when the time came they could leave Egypt quickly. The reason for this was that this was the night of the Lord’s Passover. This meant that death was coming upon Egypt, and every first born, from the child of the king to the child of the slave was in peril but the homes where the blood was applied, there God would hover over these homes so that death could not enter there so that they could say that death had, “passed over”, all those who obeyed the Lord. 

         So death came upon Egypt and even the first born son of Pharaoh died that night. In his grief, the Pharaoh conceded to let the people living in Egypt go free and they left in haste to begin their new life as the holy nation of Israel. This is the birth story that is retold every time the people of Israel celebrated the Passover. It is this Passover celebration that  the disciples are making arrangements for here, at the beginning of Matthews account of the Last Supper. One of the most important items that these disciples had to be sure they had was wine, lots of wine. You see, the Passover meal called for each person to drink four glasses of wine over the course of the evening. The first cup of wine was drank at the beginning of the meal after the evening prayer had been said. Then they served the unleavened bread, lettuce and the bitter herbs, a reminder of the bitter life their ancestors had experienced in slavery. After this first course, the roasted lamb was brought to the table. When all the food was on the table, a son of the household would ask their father, “Why is this night different from every other night?” Then the father would recite how their ancestors were slaves down in Egypt and how God, in his mercy, sent Moses down to rescue them. The father would go on to tell of the mighty acts of God in the saving and release of his people. Then grace was said over the meal, and the meal was eaten, and a second class of wine was drunk as the meal continued. A third cup of wine was drunk after the meal and then some psalms were recited and the meal ended with, you guessed it, another cup of wine.

         The reason we need to know what was the norm on that Passover evening is so that we can realize how Jesus took this ancient story vital to the old covenant and transformed it to be a meal of remembrance for the new covenant. The first noticeable difference is that at the last supper, the Passover is not being celebrated with family, the biological family of any of the disciples. No, now there is a new family that Jesus is creating out of those who have the same desire that Jesus does, that God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done here, just as in heaven. The first cup of wine is prayed over and then given to those gathered there but now there are new words said, “This is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” As the meal is served, there seems to be only the unleavened bread upon the table. As the bread is taken, and blessed, it is then given to those around the table, and new words are spoken, “Take eat; this is my body.’ While the taste of the bread and wine still fresh in their mouths, the Psalms sung after the meal is being sung and they are out the door and on their way to the Mount of Olives. Surely they had to wonder what had happened to the Passover meal? What had happened to the bitter herbs, the roasted lamb? What had happened to the telling of the story of that terrifying night when God rescued the first born of Israel from certain death? What had happened to the second, the third and fourth glasses of wine?

         What the early Christians had figured out is that Jesus desires us to see the cross as the place where the bitter herbs were now to be found in the sufferings that Jesus endured.The true Passover lamb was Jesus himself, who was laid not upon a wooden table but nailed to an old wooden cross. What the disciples had experienced in the upper room that night was to be seen as being but the first part of this new Passover meal that Jesus had come to create. The upper room was the time when Jesus gave the promise that his body would indeed be broken and his blood would be shed. It was at the cross, though, that this promise was fulfilled. The first cup of the meal had been drunk there in the upper room, but the second cup, this is the cup that Jesus takes upon himself, the cup which makes him fall to his knees and begs his Heavenly Father to take from him. Yet, the Son accepts the will of the Father; the cup is taken and consumed. The third cup was given to Jesus at the place of the skull, Golgotha, where he was offered wine mixed with bitter gall. Jesus tasted this but could not drink much more than a sip. Then they crucified Jesus. As he hung there upon the cross, crying out in agony, we are told that one of the guards took a hyssop branch.This hyssop branch points us back to the story of the Passover because the Israelites used hyssop branch to put the blood upon their door posts. The hyssop branch at the cross though, was soaked in sour wine and lifted up to Jesus, and having drunk the cup of wrath, Jesus cried out and yielded up his spirit, his very life, to his Father. The new Passover meal Jesus created for his followers has at last come to its end. The promises of the upper room had become the reality of Golgotha and the cross.

         This meal that Jesus created is also a meal of remembrance for it too is a meal which celebrates a birth, the coming into this world of a new family. Jesus had taken a group of people from all walks of life, Zealots and tax collectors and fishermen and many others who were gathered along the way, and he united these former slaves of sin, and they became, as Peter tells us, “…a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people known as God’s own possession…”. The story of this rescue is the Lamb of God, who shed his blood, to put an end to their past so they might have a new beginning in the family of God.This blood was applied to the mercy seat so that at last the will of God was made possible, heaven and earth at last united. The Lamb of God, his body broken, to open up to us a new and living way for us to enter into the most holy presence of God. This is what was promised during that supper on that fateful night when a new Passover was created. A new Passover where there is just only one family, the family of God,  who has the blood of the Lamb of God on their doorposts, the holy assurance that our life is covered under the shielding presence of our God. We are those who have been granted this peace by God, that death will certainty pass over us and a new life is ours just beyond the river. This new family was born on that first Maundy Thursday for these disciples were not just a loose association of friends but through the mighty acts of God they were united in their love for Jesus, the one who always will be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

         Yet, what we must not forget about that first Maundy Thursday is that the new Passover Jesus created was not finished there in the upper room. No, the Passover experience continued in the life of Jesus as he warred against his flesh in the garden and he drank the cup of suffering in order to do the will of God. He drank the cup of judgment of his enemies and gave back to them only mercy. He drank the cup of condemnation, the very sentence of death and gave in return, his very life for the life of the world. Knowing this, how can we not help but believe that this meal of remembrance is to be for us the place where we remember that just as their was a cross for Jesus that there is a cross for us as well. We remember Jesus, not just as our Savior but as our very way of life as well. As we rise from the table we are to go from here with the life of Jesus living in us. We are to go and accept that we too may have to drink the cup of suffering to do the will of God. We are to go and be ready to drink the cup of judgment of a world which declares the cross mere foolishness. We must go and be ready to drink the cup of condemnation knowing that this is but a reminder that this world is not our home. This is how we go and fulfill the command of Jesus given to us that Passover evening, that we love one another just as Jesus has first loved us. As we go from here, may this meal bring this cross shaped love to our remembrance so that this cross shaped love may bear the truth about who we now are, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who know that they really are the very possession of God, now and forever! Amen!