Tonight’s Maundy Thursday sermon is in three parts, focusing on remembering the story of God’s salvation of God’s people, hearing how Jesus calls us to respond in love, and being reunited as God’s people around Christ’s table. Today’s Scripture readings are Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; John 13:1-17, 31b-35; and 1 Corinthians 11:17-26.
This sermon is very similar to my Maundy Thursday sermons from 2022 and 2017 at St. Peter Lutheran in Greene, Iowa. This was a joint service at Christ the King.
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Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14 – Passover
Sermon Moment: “Remembering God’s Salvation”
Someone once described a church as a book club that only ever reads one book. There’s some truth to that, right? As Christians and as a church, everything we do revolves around a particular story, a story told in the Bible.
It’s the story of God’s work, God’s faithfulness to God’s creation, a story still being written. Every time we gather as church, we read together from Scripture, seeking to understand more of God’s story and our place in it.
Sometimes we hear the story through readings, often we tell the story through songs and music, sometimes we encounter the story and its author through tangible things like water, bread, and wine.
During Holy Week, as we approach Easter, we return yet again to the story of God’s salvation, the story where God rescues and redeems God’s people.
The center of tonight’s Maundy Thursday service is the Last Supper, where Jesus gives himself away in bread and wine for us.
When Jesus and his 12 disciples gathered that night in an upper room for his last supper, the first communion celebration, they weren’t just having a meal together. They were gathering to celebrate the Passover. They were remembering what God had done for their ancestors.
They were remembering the story of salvation, the way God had rescued their ancestors, bringing them out of slavery in Egypt and into the freedom of the promised land. Knowing God has been faithful even in worst of times in the past equips us to trust God today in our own times of trouble.
In the Passover story, God tells the Israelites that each family is to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on their door, so that on the night when the firstborn sons of their Egyptian captors are killed, the angel of death will see the blood and pass over their house.
This is such an important event for God’s people that they’re supposed to mark time from when it happens. It will be the first month of the year for you, they’re told.
And every year, they are to remember what happened, to eat the Passover meal and share the story of how God protected them, how God spared them from death.
This is part of our story too. We too have been spared from death. As Christians, we understand Jesus as the Lamb of God who has sacrificed himself for us to give us life.
That night when Jesus and the disciples gathered to remember the Passover story, Jesus announced to them that what had been just bread and wine would now, when received in faith, be his own body and blood.
We share his body and blood in remembrance of God’s faithfulness, in remembrance of the cross, and when we eat this meal, Jesus promises to show up, to be present with us.
Tonight, throughout this Holy Week, and as often as we gather, remember this is your story too. Living as a Christian is about finding your place in God’s story, recognizing that God’s love is for you, that it’s not something abstract or outdated, but that God’s love is given and shed for you.
As you just heard, it’s your sins that are forgiven. The Lamb of God has been poured out for you. God’s salvation is for you.
Tonight, we remember our story.
We sing hymn #338 Beneath the Cross of Jesus.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35 – Footwashing
Sermon Moment: “Responding to God’s Salvation”
The message of Easter, the message of all of Holy week is that Jesus loves you. We see the evidence on the cross. Jesus chooses to lay down his life out of love for you, for me, and for the world. It is undeserved, freely-given love which we cannot earn; all we can do is respond.
At that last supper, gathered with his disciples, Jesus demonstrates for us how to respond to love. As Jesus’ followers, we respond to God’s salvation by joining Jesus in washing feet.
Remember, washing feet at the time was a servant’s job. It’s something no one wants to do, but in a world where you wear sandals and walk on dirty, dusty roads, it has to be done, so the lowest ranking person in the room gets to do it.
Except, of course, when Jesus is around, because at this meal, Jesus himself gets up, takes off his robe, puts on a towel, and starts washing his followers’ feet.
That’s not what’s supposed to happen. The teacher never washes the students’ feet. And if you look at Peter’s reaction, he actually gets upset at this idea. He doesn’t want to see Jesus embarrass himself.
But by washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus shows how we as Christians are supposed to live. Those who want to be followers of Jesus are to love one another.
We don’t often literally wash one another’s feet, although that can be a profound experience, but we do seek to follow Jesus’ command: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Our job as Christians is to find ways to love others, and not just in easy situations where there are tax benefits or memorial plaques at stake, but by giving of ourselves, using our time, our gifts, humbling ourselves to serve others.
This is a call to share the kind of love that startles and surprises, to love in situations where no one expects it, a generous, undeserved love that makes no sense by the world’s logic.
Jesus washes the feet of the one he knows will betray him. We are called to love those who don’t think they deserve love, to serve those who won’t serve us back, because that’s what Jesus does for us.
Washing the feet of another person means recognizing them as someone worthy of our service. It means looking at our enemies, or at the people we despise, and seeing them as children of God, people Jesus considered worthy not only of having their feet washed, but as worth dying for.
When we claim to be members of Christ’s body, this is the task we claim. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
We sing hymn #359 Where Charity & Love Prevail. We’ll sing verses 1, 2, and 5.
1 Corinthians 11:17-26 – Problems at the Lord’s Table
Sermon Moment: “Reunited in God’s Salvation”
We humans have an amazing ability to mess stuff up, don’t we? Jesus takes a meal about remembering God’s faithfulness, about remembering what God has done for us, adds the promise that he himself will be present in it, demonstrates what love looks like; and we find ways to mess it up.
In the first-century church in Corinth, the people have heard the instructions from Jesus to share a meal together in memory of him, and some of them have forgotten the part about sharing together and loving one another, and they’ve gotten stuck on the meal part. The rich have plenty of food and drink to enjoy, and the poorer members don’t have anything.
That might be how the world handles food, where those of us who are rich enjoy what we have and others—our sisters and brothers in Christ—survive on tiny rations, but that’s not what Christ’s table is like. That’s something we need to repent of and work to fix, not something to carry into worship.
The Lord’s supper, this communion feast, is intended to be a glimpse of heaven, a foretaste of the feast to come, a meal where all are welcomed by Jesus, our host. The Corinthians have turned this sacrament—this beautiful, sacred gift—into just another worldly meal.
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve gone too far the other way. It can be hard to see communion as a meal at all when we only have a little sip of wine and a tiny piece of bread. Maybe sometimes the way we celebrate communion should look a little more like a real community meal around a table.
Nevertheless, as Paul shares with the Corinthian church the words of institution, the story of how Jesus began this central ritual of faith, he tells them that although their words might recall the story of Jesus’ death, their actions miss the meaning. The cross changes things. The communion table isn’t a place for division. The cross breaks down the boundaries we build up.
In this community of faith, we don’t have to agree on everything— politics, styles of worship, sports teams—we don’t have to all be the same, but around this table, we are united into Christ’s body.
We are fed by Jesus, and we become what we eat, the body of Christ. The cross calls everyone who truly sees it to follow the model of Jesus, the one who humbled himself, who gave up his very life for others.
So Paul calls on the Corinthians—and on us—to repent, to behave differently, to behave as a church, as a community of love. Being the body of Christ means including everyone as children of God, working for reconciliation. The kingdom of God is not divided up into haves and have-nots, into the rich and the poor.
Jesus didn’t die so rich people (and that includes us living in the wealthiest country in the world) could have yet another opportunity to gorge on a fancy dinner. Jesus died for the reconciliation of the world.
As we gather around Christ’s table tonight, may this holy meal we taste truly be food for us to fuel our service to the world in Jesus’ name.
May we repent of our own selfishness and greed, and instead, seek reconciliation and peace with our neighbors.
May this living bread from heaven unite us in God’s salvation.
We sing hymn #542 O Living Bread from Heaven, verses 1, 2, and 4.