Bible Text: John 13:1-15, 34-35 | Preacher: Pastor Andrew Richard
Jesus didn’t have to give us anything this night. He was getting ready to die for us tomorrow. What more could we ask for? He was prepared to shed His blood and lay down His very life for sheep that loved to wander. His death itself is completely undeserved. He didn’t have to do that either. And if He was going to give that great gift of Himself, He certainly didn’t have to outdo Himself and give us something tonight too.
But Jesus wanted to give us the Sacrament of the Altar, the Holy Supper of His own body and blood. He teaches us in the parable of the workers in the vineyard what His general attitude is toward us. When those who worked the full day grumbled that He gave the same pay to those who only did one hour, Jesus says, “I want to give to this last man as to you.” “I want to give,” Jesus says. That’s it, plain and simple. Jesus wants to give. He didn’t have to give us anything tonight, but He wanted to, because He loves to be generous to us. He wants to give.
But what to give? Jesus could have given us anything this night. All things are His. “All things were created through Him and for Him,” it says in Colossians 1. He could have given His Church a tract of land, like the land that He promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But that land didn’t remain theirs forever. Keeping that gift depended on them, and Jesus didn’t want what He gave us tonight to depend on us. They lost that gift, as so many gifts are lost or ruined. You know the excitement of receiving a gift. You’ve probably forgotten many of them, they were so transient. You probably remember some that were ruined or lost. You probably still have some that are dear to you, but showing much wear. You probably have others that are in good shape and that you’ll pass on to someone in the next generation, who might pass it on to someone in the next generation, and so on, until it goes up in flames on the Last Day. Jesus didn’t want to give us a gift like that, a gift that would only be worth something for a time or delight us for a time, but a gift that would give constant delight and serve not just temporally, but eternally. He could have given us a big pile of money, but what good would that be? He could have given us constant outward peace, such that we’d never have to bear a cross. It’s significant that He could have given that and didn’t. That says something about the good that Jesus gives us through our crosses, that He wants us to have them, that the privilege of bearing a cross is a greater gift than being deprived of one. Jesus could have given us the power to heal everyone who is sick. It’s in His power, and He could have put it in our power, if He thought that was the best gift for us to have. He had something better in mind.
Of all the things that Jesus could have given us this night, He instituted the Lord’s Supper. In connection with His impending crucifixion, He gave to His Church, in advance and for a lasting treasure, to eat of His body and drink of His blood. All else is fleeting. All else is subject to corruption and decay and passes away. But Jesus doesn’t. He wanted to give us something that would last, so He gave us Himself. And He gave us Himself in the Sacrament of the Altar, because by it He meets our greatest need. He tells us what the Sacrament is for when He institutes it: “for the forgiveness of sins.” Jesus gives us His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins because that’s what we need most of all.
Now it is a defect of our nature that we don’t feel our greatest need as we ought. We often feel the need for food more regularly and strongly than we feel the need for the forgiveness of sins. What’s wrong with us? Sin, that’s what’s wrong with us. Sin not only offends against God and merits hell, but is a deep corruption of the flesh, like a spiritual leprosy that makes the diseased person unfeeling. Sometimes you won’t feel like you need the Sacrament. Well, the leper doesn’t feel that he has burned his hand or cut his foot, but that doesn’t change the fact of the matter. When you don’t feel the need for the forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament, Martin Luther recommends in the Large Catechism that you stick your hand in your shirt and check if you’re still made of flesh. If you are, then believe what the Scriptures say about your flesh, such as in Galatians 5, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like” (Gal. 5:19-21). If you don’t feel those evils in your flesh and don’t perceive the sins that proceed from them, then trust Jesus more than you trust your senses. He could have met any need of yours this night. He could have given any gift to satisfy any lack, and He chose to give His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. So acknowledge to yourself, “My flesh feels the need for this thing over here, and yearns for it and pines away for it and thinks it needs it more than anything else. But if that were true, then Jesus would have given me that on Maundy Thursday. Instead, He gave me His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. So I will learn to feel the need for the Sacrament and yearn for that and pine for that, and by receiving it often, as He taught me, I will learn to feel the need for Him more than for anything else.” That’s how we must think.
So Jesus didn’t have to give us anything tonight. But He wanted to give. Jesus could have given us anything tonight. And He gave us the Holy Supper of His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus also could have given this to us anytime. He chose to do it on this night for two reasons. First, Jesus wanted the Sacrament of the Altar closely connected with His sacrifice on the cross. He says when He institutes the Sacrament of the Altar, “Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me.” Now if Jesus had instituted the Sacrament immediately after He drove the moneychangers out of the temple and said, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” then every time we received the Sacrament we would have in our minds the image of Jesus with divine wrath in His eyes, flailing people with a whip and overturning tables. That’s not how Jesus wants us to remember Him. Jesus could have instituted the Sacrament at any time and connected it with any event. He could have us remember Him as the almighty Word by which the heavens and the earth were made. He is that almighty Word, but that’s not chiefly how He wants to be held in our minds. He could have us think of Him as the solemn and just Judge who will come on the Last Day for judgment. He is the Judge, but again, that’s not chiefly how He wants to be remembered.
Jesus connected the Sacrament of the Altar with His crucifixion and said, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” because that’s how He wants to be thought of. When we approach the altar to receive Jesus’ body and blood, we should think, “I deserve death. I should not be able to stand in the presence of God and live. My sins defile me, and like Isaiah I should cry, ‘Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips.’ Yet Jesus has not taught me to remember Him here as angry with sinners or as a judge. He has taught me to think of Him here as my gracious Lord, who sacrificed Himself for me, who loved my life more than He loved His own life. ‘Do this in remembrance of Me,’ He says, and I shall remember Him as He was the night He instituted this blessed Sacrament: as the servant who tied the towel around His waist to wash His disciples’ feet, as God in the flesh who suffered for me on the cross.” Yes, in this remembrance you have confidence to come to the Sacrament. In this remembrance you know what to expect here. For Jesus hasn’t changed. He is still the Son of Man who comes not to be served but to serve. He still ties the towel around His waist and stoops down and deals with your dirt and makes you clean, not merely with water, but with His own blood. He is always and forever Christ Crucified. That is how Jesus wants to be remembered in this Supper, and that is the chief reason He connected the Sacrament so closely with His crucifixion.
There is a second reason why Jesus instituted the Sacrament on this night rather than on some other night, and it’s because of what mankind was like that night. Now it is not possible to argue that man ever deserved the gift of Jesus’ body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. But it is possible to argue that there were times when we were less unworthy of it than others. For example, when the disciples left everything to follow Jesus: that’s a moment when man was at his best. When Peter confessed of Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” that was another time when man showed some potential, as if there might be some good in him.
Jesus didn’t choose either of those times. No, He chose the night when the man who hated God betrayed God, and when the man who loved God denied God. Jesus chose the night when His disciples fell asleep multiple times instead of praying like He told them, and then fled from Him, in spite of the fact that they all confidently said they wouldn’t. Jesus picked that night to institute the Sacrament of the Altar, because on that night man was at his lowest, his unworthiest, his worst. In this Jesus teaches you who you are and who He is. You are a wretched sinner, no better than the apostles that night. The cock crowed and Peter went out and wept bitterly because he saw himself for what he was. If ever he had a delusion that he was worthy of anything from Jesus, that delusion was gone. Your delusions must disappear as well, and you must cry out with that holy man Elijah, “It is enough! Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!” (1 Kgs. 19:4). But Jesus instituted His Supper that night on purpose. Jesus was teaching you, “When you feel the utter depths of your sin, and when you feel entirely unworthy of Me, there stands My Supper. There is my body and blood. And I gave My body and blood to man on this night of all nights, because it is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick. If you are saved from your sins it will be by grace, through faith, apart from works. So if you feel unworthy, come. If you feel your sins, come. If you are troubled in conscience and weeping like Peter in complete misery and despair, come. I will wipe away every tear from your eyes and forgive your every sin.” That’s what Jesus teaches us by giving us this Sacrament when we least deserved it. He teaches us His grace.
This also teaches us how we are to view one another as fellow communicants. How easy it is, even with fellow Christians―perhaps especially with fellow Christians―to take this word the wrong way, or that comment, or that lack of a comment, or that look. How easy it is to assume the worst about one another. But why? Why would I assume that a fellow communicant holds enmity toward me, when we both knelt at the altar: equally sinners, equally in need of the grace of Christ, equally blest with the gift of Jesus’ body and blood for the forgiveness of sins? Many grains go into one bread, and I am like one of those grains and each of you like another, and in the Sacrament Christ makes us one bread in His one body. Many grapes go into one cup of wine, and I am like one of those grapes, and each of you like another, and in the cup of His blood Jesus intermingles our lives and unites our lives.
“E pluribus unum” it says on our money. “Out of many, one.” It’s a patriotic sentiment, and perhaps in some way it applies to America as a nation. But that phrase most properly applies to the Sacrament of the Altar. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. You are one with each other. We shouldn’t think of one another as disingenuous or hypocrites, but as fellow sinners, as fellow Christians, as fellow communicants. If there’s a fault, simply overlook it. Say to yourself, “This person is not my enemy. We knelt at the altar together. We acknowledged our sins together. We received Christ’s blood together. My sin doesn’t define me, thanks be to Christ, and I’m not going to let my fellow Christian’s sin define my view of him either. I hate sin, I don’t want to commit it, I go to the Sacrament to receive forgiveness where I’ve done wrong and strength to do better. I’m going to assume the same thing about my brother. If he sins, I’m not going to treat him like he’s steeped in it or lost to it. I’m going to treat him like a Christian, as one who struggles against sin, like I do, as one who is sorry for his sins like I am, as one who doesn’t want to hurt others, just as I don’t want to hurt others. And if he does sin against me or hurt me, why should I rant and rave about it? Christ doesn’t rant and rave about my sins, but instead brings me to His altar and gives me His body and blood to forgive my sins. My brother has received that same body and blood. Shall I demand justice when Christ has already had mercy? No, I shall love and bear with my brother, just as I have need that he love and bear with me.” So we must consider one another, in light of the mercy of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar.
Jesus didn’t have to give us anything tonight. He wanted to give. Jesus could have given us anything. He gave us the Sacrament of the Altar, His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus could have instituted it anytime. He chose the time that most closely connected the Sacrament with His death so that we would remember Him as a gracious Savior, the same time when man was at his worst so that we might know we are saved by grace alone and learn to have mercy on one another. What a blessed feast our Lord has set before us this night. Come, let us prepare for Supper. Amen.