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 Luke 22:7-20, and it’s entitled, “New Passover,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. On the night our Savior and Lord Jesus was betrayed, he was also falsely accused. His accusers could find no evidence that would hold up in court. They knew he had committed no crime. The next morning, Pilate, the Roman governor, would reach the same conclusion: Jesus had done nothing wrong. His best judgment told him to let Jesus go, to pass over this incident and move on—to write Jesus the pass that Pilate knew he deserved. But Jesus’ accusers, the Jewish leaders, wouldn’t settle for that. They couldn’t pass over the upset they felt Jesus was causing their little establishment. So Jesus wouldn’t get a pass—and this was just as Jesus intended. He would not be passed over from condemnation, but he willingly took stripes for our sin to heal us (Is 53:5).
3. We who are baptized into Jesus’ name are still accused, but through his accomplished victory for us, the Lord does not permit our accusations to stand. He found a way for us to be passed over from condemnation. We have now passed over from death to life (Jn 5:24). It is all on account of the abounding gift of being passed over by the Lord, who gave a new Passover to us. Usually we don’t like being passed over, but it’s surprisingly true: Being Passed Over Is an Abounding Gift. What’s more, we are continually kept in our passed-over state through the blessed gift that Christ, our Lord, established this holy night.
4. The last thing our sin will permit is our being passed over. “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom 5:12). Death is sometimes presented in Scripture as a monster or false king. It hunts us down and demands that we be counted among the condemned. And there’s no escaping him. He writes no one a pass. He will find all of us. The world joins in the accusations against us: “You’re not half the employee she is.” “You’re not the father you should be.” “You’re not committed enough to saving our planet.” Finally, the devil continues to accuse us. He slanders and lies so that we might believe him: “You can’t be forgiven! Not for that! That’s exactly what God’s commandment told you not to do!” Satan tells us that judgment is surely coming—no passing over us for condemnation. All too often, in our sinful weakness, we believe the assaults against us.
5. But, Luke introduces our reading with words that signal a change in Luke 22:7: “Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.” Luke has a sense of the dramatic. The Lord sends his disciples into Jerusalem to prepare in an upper room the meal that from now on will counter all assaults against the people of God. The scene is magnificent: The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (Jn 1:29), who would be the last and greatest Lamb sacrificed, entered this most holy meal in remembrance of God’s deliverance of his people from slavery. Little did the disciples know that through this meal, the holy church would receive God’s gift: children of God would be passed over when judgment of sin and death would be handed down—and that gift would continue to give them that blessedness of being passed over.
6. The Lord always takes the initiative to save. He knows we can’t save ourselves from the accusations against us, so he prepared this holy and powerful meal, a rock-solid covenant, and he did it on the very night he stepped in to take sin’s betrayal in our stead. Against Jesus sin, the world, and the devil accused: “You will not be passed over from death.” So, in the greatest love the world has ever known, he took our place, permitting himself to be betrayed by Judas, arrested, and forced away by the mob, condemned and then crucified with the sins of the world upon himself.
7. Usually we don’t like being passed over—passed over for a promotion, being ignored by someone whose affection we desire, being left off a guest list. Usually it hurts to be passed over. But how painful was it for Jesus not to be passed over? One among his closest companions, his very disciple, would betray him with a kiss, and it was also this Judas who left the Upper Room before the Sacrament of the Altar was instituted by Christ. But, Judas wouldn’t be the last one who would contribute to the Lord not being passed over. Instead of being watchful with him in prayer, his other disciples would sleep as he sweat blood, and when the time of the cross came, he would cry out to the Father, “Why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). But before Good Friday was Maundy Thursday. And already on this night, the Lord would give to God’s children there at the table with him the victory he would seal the next day on the cross.
8. The Lord Jesus celebrating the Passover meal with his disciples took them back to the first Passover. They rehearsed once again what had occurred in Egypt fifteen centuries before: God’s final plague on the Egyptians, which at long last brought Israel out of slavery. In each Israelite household, a lamb had been sacrificed. The blood of the lamb had covered the lintels and doorposts of their houses (Ex 12:22). That night, the angel of death had killed the firstborn in every Egyptian home, but the Israelite homes, where the blood was over the door, the angel passed over, doing no harm. That blood was already powerful, as it pointed to the blood of the Messiah who would come. The blood that caused God’s people to be passed over was already the life in the blood that covered the condemnation of death (Lev 17:11). But, all of this, was temporary (Heb 10:11).
9. Then Jesus did something new. He did something to make atonement permanent. At every Passover meal, several cups of wine were shared around the table. This night, when Jesus took the third cup—called the cup of redemption—he said something of this wine that had never been said before: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). This wine was now also the way his redeemed would receive his blood, God’s blood (Acts 20:28). Jesus gave the wine of the new covenant that was also a participation in his blood (1 Cor 10:16). This cup, this promise, this Old Testament beriyth (בְּרִית) and New Testament diatheke (διαθήκη), would unite his believing people to the blood that would be—the very next day—the atonement not only for our sins but for the sins of the world (1 Jn 2:2).
10. And with such a last will and testament, Christ’s words—God’s words—can never fail. They are absolute. They are enduring. They are always true. A new status now marks the baptized into Christ: they are passed over from judgment and condemnation to the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
11. We’ve now entered a new status by the grace of God in Christ and through faith in his steadfast promise “poured out for you.” At one time, sin, the world, and the devil insisted we could never be passed over in the face of our great guilt, shame, and despair, but Jesus became our sin (2 Cor 5:21) and our curse (Gal 3:13). By faith in him, that attack and curse, which could never be passed over, became his and no longer ours. In love and mercy, Jesus made a way for his children never to stray from this salvation: a new Passover constantly received by his church. This is why we are now his new creation: his blood of the covenant runs through us.
12. It came at a cost unimaginable. The aloneness and abandonment our Lord felt on the first Maundy Thursday must have been devastating, but even in the face of this, he gave this gracious command, mandatum: “Do this” (Luke 22:19). The Lord Jesus knew exactly what we poor sinners need: constant assurance throughout our lives that we have indeed been passed over from the bondage of sin and death. This new Passover—the Lord’s Supper—is ours. And it has been given to us by Jesus, who, even on this night so terrifying for him, gave us the best gift we could have ever received.
13. In Holy Scripture, Jesus is also a physician (Mk 2:17), most assuredly the greatest one. But what will keep us eternally under his care? His medicine, of course. It is the medicine that keeps us always passed over. St. Ambrose said, “Because I always sin, I always need to take the medicine” (AC XXIV 33). The medicine has been given to you, Christians—it is your medicine; it is your new Passover—so that from sin and death you are healed; you are passed over. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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