For this devotions, instead of providing you with all the liturgical material I offer my local congregation, I will instead offer my homiletic reflection. In addition, I will the cite the Biblical references used for this homiletic reflections to enable the reader to use a translation they are familiar with.
Texts for homiletic reflection are Exodus 12:11&14; I Corinthians 11:23-36; John 13:5-10, John 15:1-5, and John 17: 21b-23
A HOMILETIC REFLECTION
“ A Doorpost, a Lintel, and a Fifth Cup”
By Norm Wright
Maundy Thursday is a feast day commemorating Jesus instituting Holy Communion after a Passover seder (ritual) meal. On this evening of April 9th, Jews around the world are celebrating the seder meal of Passover. What I am sure comes to many Christian and Jewish minds, as we “hunker down” behind the closed doors of our homes, is Israel’s final moments in Egypt; the night of Passover when the Angel of Death passed through Egypt like an overnight epidemic; killing the first born of those who had not taken measures to protect themselves.
Like those early Israelites, we find ourselves in a time of passover, waiting behind closed doors, taking measures to avoid the spread of COVID-19; hoping, praying, and waiting for this deadly virus - this twenty-first century version of the Angel of Death - to pass over us; to pass us by. In the passages from Exodus, Moses tells the people of Israel to commemorate this day and celebrate it as a festival of the Lord - a lasting ordinance.
Fast-forward some fourteen hundred years later to the Last Supper where, in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus and his disciples are doing what Moses commanded the Israelites to do; commemorate the Festival of the Passover by participating in the seder Passover meal. After finishing the Passover meal, Jesus ends the evening’s celebration with the establishment of an additional rite and the initiation of a new covenant.
The earliest account of this new rite is recorded in Paul’s First letter to the Corinthians. Paul, like Moses, frames this new seder meal we call Holy Communion in terms of commemorating that evening’s event by bringing it into the present every time it is celebrated.
In our Christian understanding, this meal of haste underscores the imminent release from the bondage of sin that comes through the kenotic act of Jesus opening himself to the world on the cross; that is, of pouring himself into these symbols of bread and wine as his body and blood; giving himself as something to ingest; implying as in the old saying goes, "We are what we eat” so that we can become his forgiving and redeeming presence to the world.
The act of Holy Communion by its very nature is a communal act - a sharing of these elements of bread and wine as a means of demonstrating our participation in Jesus’s redemptive act; our taking on the very body and blood of Christ. This meaning has often been hidden under the more egocentric understanding that Holy Communion forgives “me” of “my” sin and that is why “I” need to take it every week or as often as it is offered so that “I" can be assured of going to heaven.
Scripture points us in a different direction on this topic. This seder meal is about us sharing together the life of Christ; of our being Christ’s resurrected presence in the world.
In both Paul’s letter and the Synoptic Gospels’ rendition of the Jesus’s words of institution, emphasis is placed on the “this cup” as a “(new) covenant.” What goes unnoticed and unmentioned is that in the Passover Seder meal there are traditionally four cups of wine. Jesus is adding a fifth cup. Not to belabor the significance of numbers in the New Testament, but to mention the number five, a number containing a five in it, or five of anything in the New Testament was used to signify grace, which symbolically establishes “this cup” as symbolizing the Covenant of Grace.
The Gospel of John, which has been used throughout the season of Lent and which is the appointed Gospel for this Maundy Thursday does not talk about the Last Supper as a Passover meal but rather as a meal held the evening before the start of Passover . In John’s Christological view the ultimate Passover occurs when Jesus is crucified on the door post and lintel of the cross.
John’s depiction of Jesus’ discourse with his disciples in this Gospel’s presentation of the Last Supper does not include the Words of Institution. Rather, in John’s description of this supper we encounter a lengthy theological conversations between Jesus and his disciples; in which the disciples periodically ask questions about the meaning of this (as yet unrealized at the time) new Passover event in terms of where Jesus is going and how they are to survive without him.
The implication is clear in the metaphors Jesus uses throughout this discourse that Jesus is speaking sacramentally; in that, wherever we go Jesus is with us. As such, the questions asked in this discourse also serve as a means to bring the uninitiated; the catechist, into a fuller understanding of what takes place in this sacrament; much like the questions asked by children during the Jewish Passover seder regarding its meaning. I would invite readers of this homily to spend some time reading John, chapters 13 through 17 to gain a fuller appreciation and understanding of this Gospel’s presentation of life in Christ as a communal eucharist.
The entirety of John ’s Gospel is a depiction of sacramental life from Holy Baptism through Holy Communion or, to put it in the metaphorical language used in the story of the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2:1-12); from taking water (Baptism) and turning it into wine (Eucharist).
In reading John’s account of the last supper, we encounter a common foot washing that a household’s servants would have done for guests as they entered their host’s home. This has become a traditional ceremony done in many churches on Maundy Thursday to recall the servant role that Jesus was demonstrating for the sake of his disciples and us to do likewise. But notice how Peter, the enthusiast, is initially offended that Jesus would stoop to wash his feet and then is quickly told by Jesus (in obvious baptismal terms) that what Jesus washes, cleans the whole person.
Implied in Jesus washing the feet of his disciples is that our feet, being sanctified in baptism, designates the ground we tread on as Holy Ground, where the presence of God is manifest through us in each and every step we take. So tread humbly or as the prophet advises, “Walk humbly with our God.” [Micah 6:8]
Jesus’s supper discourse ends with what is commonly referred to as Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer. This prayer defines the purpose of communion as bringing us into union with God the Father - “I in them and you in me.” John’s mystical approach to sacramental theology portrays the entire ministry of Jesus as initiating his disciples into becoming co-redemptors of the world with him. John’s Gospel tells us that the work of the Incarnate Word and the Resurrected Christ of God is to be carried out in our lives; as those who have died and are raised with him in Baptism and are nourished with the Bread of Life [John 6] and are sustained as branches of his sacramental vine.
While we cannot share in this important ritual meal, this seder meal of the New Covenant with each other on this evening, we are reminded to “Keep the Feast” in our hearts and minds, to partake of this sacrament, spiritually, as we await the day when we can come together as a family of faith to celebrate this feast.
Amen.
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