Bible Text: John 13:1-15, John 13:34-35 | Preacher: Pastor Andrew Richard | Series: Lent 2022 | This day is called Maundy Thursday. The word “Maundy” comes from the Latin word mandatum, which means “commandment,” because on this day Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” Now in a sense, the command to love is not new. Love has always been the summary of the Law: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.” “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So what is new about this new commandment?
What’s new about the command is that we are to love “just as I have loved you,” Jesus says. We are to love with the love of Jesus. What was new on Maundy Thursday, and became even clearer on Good Friday, was the extent of his love. The full revelation of God’s love in Jesus Christ had not happened until that evening of the Last Supper. But now Jesus can say, “just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”
Jesus connects this command of love with the Sacrament of the Altar. Jesus laid his outer garments aside and tied a towel around his waist and washed his disciples’ feet “during supper,” as we heard in the reading. Jesus shows that the Lord’s Supper and Christian love go together. Indeed, Jesus gave his Supper and his mandate almost simultaneously. Therefore, if we want to understand Christian love properly, then we must first properly understand the Sacrament of the Altar.
The Sacrament of the Altar is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ himself for us Christians to eat and to drink. This is the simple explanation that we have learned from the Small Catechism, and it’s an explanation that very accurately reflects what Jesus said when he instituted the Lord’s Supper. He calls the bread his body. He calls the wine his blood. He says to eat his body. He says to drink his blood. And he says that this Supper gives the forgiveness of sins. Many churches rage against this understanding. Yet our Lord’s words are so inescapably clear, and other explanations of them are so inexplicably convoluted, that there’s no real need to spend our evening refuting naysayers. Just remember that any question about the Lord’s Supper can be answered from Christ’s clear words of institution. Know his words about the Sacrament, and you’ll both be confident of the truth yourself and be able to refute those who would contradict Christ.
But knowing the truth about the Sacrament of the Altar, consider what love Jesus shows us in it and what a great consolation it is in all distress. First we see the love of Jesus in that there sits God at the supper table, and he’s talking about his body and his blood. Even though we’re coming up on Easter, we dare not forget that all of this is the culmination of Christmas, that God came to us in human flesh. He didn’t have to stoop down to us. He didn’t have to so identify himself with us that he would become one of us. But he did. He joined himself to us and experienced pain and temptation and hunger and thirst and weariness. He even experienced the wages of our sin, which is our death, and he made it his death, because he counted our sins against himself.
What did the Son of God gain by taking on human flesh? In one sense he gained nothing. The divine nature is perfect and complete, and therefore the Son of God, by joining a human nature to his divine nature, gained nothing, because God lacks nothing. The Incarnation shows the perfect love that Jesus has for us. He was not the least bit self-interested when he became a man, but was thinking only of how much he could benefit us.
Yet in another sense Jesus did gain something by becoming a man: he gained us. That was his whole point, to redeem us by his blood. And this also shows the great love that Jesus has for us. We are poor miserable sinners. We are corrupt, dirty, low, and wretched. A rusted can on a scrap heap is in a way better than we are, because at least the rusted can hasn’t sinned against the God who made it. No one would travel to the ends of the earth in order to get that rusted can for himself. Yet Jesus made a far greater journey―from heaven to earth―to get us, who by our rebellion against God had made ourselves more offensive than trash. And Jesus counted it a gain. He counted it a gain to take on our flesh and come to get us and call us his own, so greatly does he love us. When Jesus sets his body and blood before us in the Sacrament, he reminds us of this great love. “I am your brother,” he says. “I have a body as you have and blood as you have, and I only have a body and blood for your sake, because I love you.”
There’s a second point in the Sacrament of the Altar that shows the love of Christ for us. Notice how Jesus gives himself to us in the Sacrament. He gives himself to us as a sacrifice. When the Israelites brought animals to the temple for sacrifice, the first step in the sacrificial rites was to drain blood from the body and collect it separately in a bowl. The Lord had given certain instructions for what to do with the flesh and other instructions for what to do with the blood. And this is how Jesus gives himself to us in the Sacrament. He gives us his body and blood separately, with different instructions for each: “Take, eat” and “drink of it, all of you.”
Why did Jesus institute the Sacrament of the Altar in this way? Because he wants us to know when we receive the Sacrament that he is our all-sufficient sacrifice. It’s as if he says to us, “See, my body and my blood were separated. I became a sacrifice for you. Goats and bulls could not take away sins, even with repeated sacrifices. But I am the sacrifice who has taken away all sins, a once for all sacrifice that will never be repeated, because no atonement for sin is needed beyond what I have already accomplished. Here is my body. Take it and eat it. Here is my blood. Drink of it all of you, and know that your sins are forgiven for the sake of my perfect sacrifice.”
What greater comfort could we ask of God? If sins should plague your conscience, there’s the body and blood of Jesus assuring you that he has borne the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. If Satan should harass you with accusations and stir up doubt in you, there’s the body and blood of Jesus assuring you that it is God who justifies, so who is to condemn? If you suffer and it seems that God has become your enemy, there’s the body and blood of Jesus assuring you that God is not angry with you. As if it weren’t enough that Jesus became your brother in the flesh and took your sins on himself, he grants you to take him into yourself. At the altar you receive the very body that was pierced for your transgressions and crushed for your iniquities. At the altar you receive the very blood that flowed from Jesus’ veins on the cross. This body and blood strengthen faith, forgive sin, cast out doubt, and grant everlasting life and peace.
The Sacrament of the Altar also increases Christian love. How could it be otherwise? Here is the Lord who became flesh for us in love. Here are his body and blood, given and poured out for us in love. Here he gives all the fruits of his sacrifice to us in love. “Just as I have loved you,” Jesus said, “you also are to love one another.” With these words Jesus does not merely call us to imitate his love. But in the Sacrament we all become participants in his love and partakers of his love. His love enlivens our love for one another. His love binds us together in love, such that we are one in him. Thus Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”
There’s no point in noting that we’re all different from one another. That’s obvious enough. We’re different in upbringing, in personality, in dress, in interests, in our stations in life. You knew all that already. But the point worth noting, the point that gives new perspective, the point that only God’s Word could make known to us, is that we are in fact one with each other. At the altar kneel young and old, rich and poor, male and female, simple and educated. Yet we all approach hungering and thirsting for righteousness. We all receive the one body of Jesus. We all receive the same blood of Jesus. And therefore when we look at each other we don’t primarily see differences. Instead we see brothers and sisters who eat from the same family table, who are dressed the same in the robe of Christ’s righteousness, who are called by the same name of Christ.
When we depart from the altar, we think about each other in a new light. You have in you the same Jesus that I have received, and he has in him the same Jesus that you have received, and she has in her the same Jesus that he has received. When we see each other this way, then looking at your fellow communicant is like looking at your second self. No one ever hated his own body, but nourishes and cherishes it. Thus we love one another.
And what does this love look like? This love is humble. Jesus said, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” In this Jesus does not demand that we repeat this particular act of service, but shows us that his love takes the lowest place and becomes the most humble slave. So in love we likewise consider others better than ourselves. We overlook each other’s faults, we don’t envy another’s good. We are content to take the lowest place in love, because that’s the place Christ took for us in love, and we have received his love.
This Christian love is also self-giving. It is written in 1 John, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” If, because of the love of Jesus that we have received, we wouldn’t even call our lives our own, then what good thing would we withhold from each other? Even if it should hurt, we would act and help, giving all and sparing nothing as if we were caring for our very selves, because in loving each other we are caring for our very selves. We are one body in Jesus, and he is like our soul that animates us with the love he has shown for us. Now let us prepare for Supper in Jesus’ name. Amen.