Maundy Thursday
April 5, 2012
Dear friends in Christ.
Back in March of 2006 a man named Jack Dorsey
created and shortly after launched what we now know as Twitter. Now, if you are not familiar with Twitter, it
is an online social networking service that allows you to follow your friends,
experts, favorite celebrities, and breaking news, as they tweet or post their
latest information online. For example,
as of 9:05 PM on April 3, there are 385,065 people following leadership expert,
John C. Maxwell on twitter. There are
13,704,986 people following President Obama, and there are 22,143,612 people
following singer Lady Gaga. Yet while it
can be fun to follow people on twitter and find out what they are up to on a
regular basis, as Christians, the person we want to be following is Jesus, our
Passover Lamb. In fact, as we study the
lesson before us this evening we will take a closer look at the feast of the
Passover as we follow after Jesus, our Passover Lamb.
Now, as we heard in our lesson a few moments ago,
Israel is still in Egypt, suffering under the oppression of slavery. Moses is going head to head with Pharaoh, and
the Lord is preparing to send the tenth and final plague against the
Egyptians. As the Lord is preparing
this, he relates to Moses and Aaron how he wants the people to prepare for
their departure. The Lord says, “Tell
the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is
to take a lamb for his family, one for each household…The animals you choose
must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or
the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all
the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then
they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the
doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs… On that same night I will
pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn--both men and animals--and I
will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. The blood will be
a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will
pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
"This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you
shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD--a lasting ordinance. (Exodus
12:3,5-7,12-14).
This meal of the Passover was first eaten by the
Israelites in Egypt according to the Lord command. On that night, they ate it with their cloaks
tucked into their belts, their sandals on their feet, and their staffs in their
hands. They ate it in haste because the
Lord had said they would be leaving Egypt that very night, and that is exactly
what happened. For on that night, the
Lord did exactly has he had promised. At
midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn of Egypt from the house of
Pharaoh to the house of the lowliest prisoner, as well as the firstborn of all
their livestock. But when the Lord saw
the blood on the doors of the houses of the Israelites, he passed over them as
he had promised. From that time on, the
Israelites had celebrated the Passover as the Lord had commanded them to. They had gathered to eat roast lamb and
bitter herbs and to tell their children the stories of how the Lord had
delivered them from Egypt as he had promised. But while this was truly an
important event in the lives of the Israelites, this meal of the Passover not
only reminded them of their deliverance from the Egyptians, it also
foreshadowed another important event. If
foreshadowed their deliverance from sin and satan, which found its fulfillment
in Jesus Christ our Passover Lamb.
It is this deliverance that we are celebrating
tonight, the deliverance from sin and satan that Jesus won for us as our
Passover Lamb. Although we normally associate the Passover with Maundy
Thursday, and Jesus’ crucifixion with Good Friday, the beautiful truth of God’s
plan is that Jesus, our Passover Lamb was sacrificed for our sins on the day of
the Passover. On that evening, our
Passover Lamb celebrated the Passover with his disciples, he instituted the new
meal of the Lord’s Supper, and he was slaughtered to bring to fulfillment the
forgiveness that was foreshadowed in the Passover meal.
But now comes the question, “How could that be if
Jesus ate the Passover with his disciples on Thursday night?” To answer that question we must remind
ourselves of how the Israelites counted their days; for them, when the sun set
on Thursday evening, Thursday came to an end, and Friday began. The setting of the sun marked the ending of
their day. Take for example our services
tonight. If we measured our days the way
the Israelites measured them, we would be holding this service in the closing
hours of Thursday evening. In this way
even though we would have started worshiping on Thursday we would have finished
our service in the early hours of Friday morning. So, when Jesus ate the Passover with his
disciples at twilight, he was eating it in the first few hours of the day of
the Passover. When Jesus was crucified
some 15 hours later, he was being sacrificed as our Passover Lamb, on the day
of the Passover.
Thus, tonight, as we celebrate Maundy Thursday, we
have followed our Passover Lamb to the upper room where he celebrated the
Passover with his disciples. We will
shortly be dining with him as we come forward to receive his body and blood in
the Sacrament, and tomorrow evening we will follow our Passover Lamb to the
Cross. We will again remind ourselves of
how Jesus was pierced there for our transgressions. We will remind ourselves how the Holy Spirit
took some of the blood of our Passover Lamb and painted it on the door posts
and door frames of our hearts to mark us as forgiven children of God.
This is why we have gathered here this evening. We have gathered to follow Jesus our Passover
Lamb; the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He is the Lamb who was slain. He is the Lamb whose blood has caused God’s
great wrath to Passover us. He is the
Lamb who willingly gave his life in our place and gives us his body and blood
to eat and drink to assure us that we have been completely cleansed of all our
sins . This is Jesus, our Passover Lamb
whom we follow this evening.
Though I’m sure if we looked hard enough we could
probably find a Twitter user sending out tweets as Jesus Christ, tonight we
have chosen to follow the real thing.
Tonight we have followed our Passover Lamb to the upper room and to the
cross. Tonight we have been assured of
the forgiveness he won for us and the wrath that has passed over us. Let us continue to follow him as he leads us
on the path from his empty tomb to our home with him forever in heaven.
Amen.
Pastor
David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN
