1. Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation
of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our
Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word on this Maundy
Thursday of Holy Week is taken from Exodus 12:1-14 and is entitled, “The New & Better Passover Meal of Meals,”
dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Sometimes a meal is more than a
meal, more than a chance to pacify your appetite or stuff your stomach. Sometimes
the meal takes on a life of its own. On their wedding day, couples don’t place
a bite of that pretty cake in each other’s mouths just because they’re in the
mood for it. The final meal of a death row inmate is more than a chance for him
to die without hunger pains. And you may not even like turkey and dressing, but
I’d bet most of you have cooked it, or at least eaten it, for more
Thanksgivings than you care to remember. Eating is often about far more than eating.
3. On their last night in Egypt,
during their final hours of slavery, the Israelites partook of a meal that was
far more than a meal. A simple menu, really, but no serving was there just to
pretty up the plate. Nothing was chosen because of nutritional content or even
because it happened to have good flavor. In fact, one part of it was chosen
because of its bad taste! Bitter herbs the Israelites were to eat, yes, bitter
herbs, for the taskmasters had embittered their slaves’ lives with the
daily grind of servitude. As cows chew their cud, so the soon-to-be-freed
slaves were to chew these herbs, year after year, as an edible token of the bad
taste left in their mouths from those years in slavery in Egypt.
4. Unleavened bread was also part of
the meal—unleavened because Pharaoh would oust them from his land before the
sun rose, before the yeast had time to work its way through their dough. It was
the bread of affliction, because with haste they’d have to exit Egypt (Deut
16:3), before the tyrant once more revised his decree and relocked their chains.
This bread truly was “fast food,” but
of the sacred sort, because the people of God would literally eat and run.
5. The bitter herbs were the dish of
remembrance, and unleavened bread the food that foreshadowed their upcoming
haste. So, too, the main course, the roasted flesh of a sacrificed lamb: that
meat also signaled something else, something that was for them both a now
and a not yet. The now of the roasted meat was the sign that an
innocent victim had been, just a few hours before, slaughtered in their stead.
The angelic destroyer who was passing through the land that night would pass
over their homes, sparing the firstborn sons, while he would pass into
the homes of unbelievers, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. But above and
beside the entrance of the homes of the faithful was painted the blood of the
passover lambs, like a crimson hieroglyphic that translated into one saving
message: “Pass over, O angel. God’s child
lives here.” So that night, as they tasted that meat, they knew that
neither they nor their sons would taste of death. Their Good Shepherd had
prepared a table before them in the presence of their enemies, a table that
gave them light and life as they walked through the valley of the shadow of
Egypt.
6. But this main course proclaimed a
message that extended well beyond that night, beyond the many Passover
celebrations to come. The whole meal—bitter herbs, unleavened bread, and
roasted lamb—this entire meal was an edible prophecy. For as the preachers of
old uttered prophecies of the coming Messiah, so this meal also was a
foretelling, a foretelling that they could sink their teeth into. It promised
that what now the Israelites were eating was but a foretaste, an appetizer,
that was to whet their appetite for a meal that was not yet. And this not
yet meal would be one that would surpass their supper in Egypt both in
wonder and excellence.
7. This surpassing meal is definitely
more than a meal—about eating but about far more than eating, about drinking
but about far more than drinking. It’s a table where the things of earth are
lifted up to the things of heaven and the things of heaven are brought down to
the things of earth. Here God comes down into the Egypt of our captivity, not
to kill his enemies, but to place into our mouths his own body and blood, given
into death to save his enemies, to save us.
8. It may seem a bit plain-Jane, this
food of the new and better Passover. Bread. Wine. Nothing there to
razzle-dazzle the palate. Nothing to make this world’s food enthusiasts
salivate. But so it was in olden times as well, when Israelites ate unleavened
bread, bitter herbs, and roasted lamb. Nothing there either to raise the
eyebrows of Egypt’s Martha Stewart, or even Rachael Ray. But the Father didn’t
send his Son into the world to impress the world but to save the world through
him. And the means he uses to save you are wrapped in the disguise of utter
simplicity.
9. Take, eat, this simple bread is his
body. It’s the body of the Lamb that wasn’t passed over, but passed under the
knife. Or, rather, passed under the court of the Sanhedrin, passed under the
sentence of spineless Pilate, passed under the whips of the soldiers, passed
under the sneers of the crowd, passed under the beams of his cross, passed
under all the evil this world could heap upon him, and then some. For he also
passed under the verdict of his Father, which declared this innocent one guilty
of our crimes, which bade him serve our sentence, all that we—the truly guilty
ones—might go scot-free. Take, eat, this is the body of God’s own Lamb. No
knife slices his throat open, as the dumb beasts of old, but “nails, spear shall pierce Him through, The
cross [is] borne for me, for you” (LSB 370:2). Behold, the Lamb of
God, skewered on the beams of that cruel tree, all the flames of hell ablaze
beneath him, fueled by the firewood of our iniquities, leaping upward to roast
the flesh of this pure and perfect sacrifice. Take, eat, open your mouth, fear
not. Taste and see that the Lamb is good—good for you who have been bad, good
enough for you and for all the world, so good that in eating him you
become the good that he is. You are what you eat.
10. Take, drink, this simple wine is
his blood. It’s the lifeblood of the Lamb who gave his life for you. He gave it
not in a single outpouring, but from the alpha of his life to its omega. He
gave it as an 8-day-old infant, the drops of his circumcision blood, shed for
you. He gave it in Gethsemane, as he prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Mt
26:39), his sweat becoming like drops of blood, already filling that cup the
Father would remove from him, but only after this obedient Son had drained it
of the poison of our sins and filled it with the liquid of his love. Christ
gave his lifeblood when the whips ripped open his muscles, when the thorns
stabbed his brow, when the nails bore through his hands and feet, and finally
when the soldier’s spear broke through the dam of his flesh to unleash the
water and blood that spilled forth to pool in every baptismal font and chalice
of the Lord’s Supper. Take, drink, this is his blood. Paint it not on your
doorposts and lintel, but on your lips, on your tongue, on your heart, and on
your soul, for this blood is the armor of the Almighty, shielding every inch of
you from the destruction that will overtake this world when the angels execute
the judgments of God. They will pass over you, these destroying angels, for you
have passed under the bleeding side of the Passover Lamb, painted with the
crimson colors of the Christ who hands his chalice to you. Take, drink and
drink and drink some more, for this libation is your salvation, the blood that
flows from the veins of the Lamb.
11. Here, dear Christians, is a meal
that takes on a life of its own, or, rather, that takes on the life of another,
the life of its founder, our Lord Jesus Christ. And in taking this meal into
yourself, you take on his life as your own, passing over from death into life
everlasting. In God’s Simple Meals, We Pass from Death to Life. Amen.
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