2025-04-17 Maundy Thursday

Scripture Readings

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!

Passover. It was the fundamental feast of the Old Testament. It was the foundation from which everything else was built. We know the story well. It was the night where God would deliver His people with a mighty arm from bondage and slavery in Egypt under Pharaoh. This act of redemption became an annual feast, quite literally a holy-day. It was enshrined into the spiritual DNA of God’s people. “Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. 2 And you shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock or the herd, at the place that the Lord will choose, to make his name dwell there. 3 You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction—for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste—that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt” (Deut. 16:1-3). Unleavened bread. The bread of haste. No time for leaven. No time for rising. You had to move fast. Get ready, get prepared!

The other aspect of the unleavened bread is that of sin. Leaven, yeast was symbolic of sin in the Scriptures. Leviticus stresses that “No grain offering that you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven” (2:11). So in the Tabernacle or in the Temple there was no leaven whatsoever. And in the New Testament, St. Paul likewise stresses this idea in Corinth when he writes “Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1Cor 5:8). To this end, the Jewish homes were searched for any kind of leaven. It would be cleansed and purged right down to the very last twinkie in the bottom corner of the pantry! This really becomes an image of repentance. Much like spring cleaning, right? Go over the whole place from top to bottom and get rid of the gribblies and dust bunnies. But in this case, in the spiritual sense, rid your hearts and minds of the leaven of sin.

That’s got the bread taken care of. Now what about the wine? The Passover seder revolved around 4 cups of wine that each had a meaning. This is taken from Exodus 6:6-7. “Say therefore to the people of Israel, ’I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. 7 I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.” Each of these actions of the Lord were memorialized with a cup of wine.

To this end, the Passover meal would begin with the host chanting a blessing over the first cup, the cup of Kiddush or sanctification. It was a meal set apart for the people of God who had been chosen and set apart from the world. Everyone would drink this cup and then would begin the partaking of the special Passover foods. The meal was lamb, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, greens and a bit of stewed fruit. The second cup was filled and blessed as the cup of Maggid the cup of story telling. The story of the Exodus was recounted in the hearing of all known as Haggadah and then everyone drank of the second cup.

The host then took the unleavened bread, chanted a blessing over it, broke the bread and shared it to those gathered at the table. This began the full supper meal that went on for quite some time. The meal would conclude with the third cup of wine, Birkat Hamazon, the Cup of Blessing. This connects to God’s promise of redemption. The entire evening concluded with the drinking of the fourth cup, the Hallel, the cup of praise. This the cup over which the singing of the Great Hallel Psalms 115-118 would be sung. The celebration ended on this note of great joy as the devout Jews looked to their final redemption from God.

So that’s the refresher of Passover. That’s the reason and background for why Jesus and His Disciples were gathered together in the upper room. But St. Luke’s Gospel records a bit of a peculiarity. Did you catch it? “He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” Jesus doesn’t partake of this cup. But then the text tell us “19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

So which cup does Jesus skip? The second cup, during the story of redemption?? Chronologically this makes sense in the order of the Passover meal as it would come before the blessing of the bread and the third cup of blessing in the wine. But it doesn’t make sense in the big picture of things. St. Luke doesn’t care much for chronology but writes rather for thematic emphasis. We will see this later too where he narrates our Lord’s beating by the soldiers (LK 22:63-65) as taking place before His trial and condemnation (22:66-71). Matthew (27:65-68) and Mark (14:64-65) tell us the opposite is the case.

So with that back story, it makes more sense that the cup Jesus doesn’t partake of is the fourth cup. He abstains from the cup of joy and praise because His hour of suffering has come. The time of joy for Him would be in the Kingdom of God. But now before Him would be the way of the cross. This would be the way of suffering and shame. This would be the place where the Lamb of God would be sacrificed once and for all. Certainly joy and celebration will come, but first must come the darkness of suffering.

But the real emphasis of Maundy Thursday is our Lord fulfilling Passover with Holy Communion. The Disciples were completely befuddled by this. What could Jesus possibly mean? “This is my body, which is given for you … this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” The depth and meaning of our Lord’s words of institution would be grasped later, in the light of His sacrifice on the cross. For this meal had prepared them to remember the greatest sanctification, redemption, blessing and praise the world will ever see. By eating the bread and drinking the cup, they would eat His body and drink His blood as the medicine of immortality that heals our spiritual wounds and gives us eternal life.

The context for the Eucharist is truly key for understanding it. It was joy in the midst of sorrow for our Lord. It is on the very cusp of betrayal, suffering and horrible hardship that our Lord gives us this blessed assurance of His forgiveness, life and salvation. As we make our way through our own difficult valleys and struggles in life, we do with the greatest of gifts: our Lord’s real presence, in, with and under bread and wine. These ordinary things carry with them the most amazing and extraordinary promise. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1Cor 11:26). Amen!