Bible Text: St. John 13:1–15, 34–35 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” That’s what you do in the Lord’s Supper – you preach, you proclaim, Jesus’ death, and you join every Christian who has ever lived in proclaiming the crucifixion of the Son of God, and long after you have passed from this valley of sorrow to your Father in heaven, Jesus’ faithful disciples will continue this proclamation, until the Lord Jesus returns and delivers to us the Kingdom His death has bought us.
We proclaim at the Lord’s Supper. You do. You preach more loudly there than any sermon I can deliver. You proclaim that Jesus is your Lord, you preach what He has done for you and for everyone who kneels down with you at that altar.
The Christian life isn’t simply receiving from Jesus, it’s doing, it’s action. And we’re going to focus on that action tonight.
But before we can, we have to focus on Jesus’ action. Before we love – and that is what proclaiming Jesus’ death is, it is love, love for Jesus, love for His Father and our Father, love for the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, love for one another, who have been redeemed to God by the very body we eat, washed clean of all sin by the very blood we drink – before we love, Jesus loves us.
That is the command of Maundy Thursday. Maundy comes from the Latin mandatum, which is where you get the English word, mandate, command. Somehow, probably through the French who pronounce everything weird, mandatum became Maundy. So Maundy Thursday is Command Thursday. What is the command? Love one another, as I have loved you.
He loves first. Jesus our dear Lord gives us the beautiful example of His love today. He says, “You call me Lord and Master, and you say rightly, for so I AM.” You are under Him. You obey Him. But what does obeying Him look like? It looks like letting Him wash your feet. Obeying your Master corresponds necessarily to the command He gives. If that command were, climb to heaven, be good enough for Me, make yourself worthy of my Father, you could do nothing but disobey, no matter how much you wanted to do it. This is why Peter’s bad example is so wonderful. He doesn’t want to obey. He insists it’s beneath His Lord to wash his dirty feet. And Jesus says, No, unless you allow this, unless you obey Me here, and you let Me wash that filth off your feet, you can have no part in Me. You want to claim Jesus as your Lord, you want to have part in Him, You obey Him, and His command is to allow Him to stoop down and wash you clean, allow Him to serve you, allow Him to give His body and His blood into your mouth and give you His life.
It sounds so pious, so religious, what Peter says – No, I need to serve you, Jesus. But it’s the most irreligious impulse of your sinful flesh. The objection isn’t really, No, this is beneath YOU, Jesus. No, the objection is, “I don’t need this.” I want my worth in serving You. I want my worth in what I do. I can wash my own feet. Peter will say later that evening to Jesus, “I will lay down my life for You.” Will you, Peter? Yes. Peter does. He’s crucified upside down in the Roman Coliseum thirty years later. He does act. He does serve His Lord. He proclaims the Lord’s death till He comes. But first, he denies Him three times and abandons Him. First he has to see what cowardice and foolish pride sit in his sinful heart. And then look with all sinners to the Lord whose love for us surpasses understanding and let Him serve.
Does this mean I’m worthless, that I can do nothing for my Lord, that I can’t love, that I can’t serve? No. It means that Jesus makes someone out of you that you were not. It means you find your worth not in what that guy thinks of you, not in what your own hands have done, not in what is passing away because it’s all corrupted by sin and pride and vanity, but in the death of your Lord.
There’s your worth. How can you possibly measure this worth? What must the Father think of you, when He sends His only Son to share your humanity, when He watches Him suffer in anguish for you to bear away all your sin? What must the Son think of you that He makes all your enemies His own, when He sides with you against the sin that infects you and the devil that tempts you and the death that looms over you, when He faces them all, and fights for you and allows all the evil to fall on Him, to take it off of you forever? What must the Holy Spirit think of you that He chooses to make you His vessel, to abide in You, to give you a new heart and new feelings and status as God’s own child? What could possibly compare to the worth your Creator gives to you, when He stoops down to serve you?
And that is why you act. That is why you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
You do it there at that altar. St. Paul calls it examining yourself. You proclaim the Lord’s death when you admit with all your heart, that this death was for you, because you were not worthy. When you say, I need this body, I need this blood, because I have examined my life, and I have seen that I have been hot tempered and rude, disobedient and slothful, I have harmed those I love with my words and deeds, I’ve neglected what I should do, and I’ve worried about what is beyond my control, and I am sorry that I have offended against the God who loves me.
And you act at this altar, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes, when you kneel down and trust that this is the fruit of your Lord’s death, this is the goal, that He can stoop down now and serve you, and give you the worth that no sin and no devil, no time or trial, can take from you. This is the body of the God man. It is His true blood. It is the same that was pierced for your transgressions. It is the same that flowed from His side. It is the same that crushed the devil and made him squirm under the feet of his Master. And He gives this body and blood to you, because it is was all for you, all the groaning and sighing and mockery and spit and pain and accusation and anguish and death the sinless Son of God bore, for you. And Here is the pledge of what you mean to God, what your worth is – He gives you His body and His blood and you eat it and you drink it and you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
And you act at this altar, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes, when you kneel down with your brothers and sisters in Christ. And whatever bitterness you feel toward any of them, whatever pride at being offended by what he has said or she has done, you throw at the feet of your Savior. You also should do, Jesus says, just as I have done for you. Here is the reality of the Christian life: my worth, your worth, my dignity, your honor, my joy, your peace, my pride, your boast, is the death of our Lord for us. That’s US. It’s not me anymore, not you anymore, it’s us, one Body, because there is One Bread, one Communion, One Cup, One Lord. Proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes, and that death is not simply for me the individual, it is, not simply for you, an individual, it is, no one else can believe for you, but that death was for us all.
Several times in the New Testament we hear things like, God, the Savior of all, but especially of those who believe. Because yes to proclaim the Lord’s death means to proclaim that He died for all. But especially for these people around you. Because you see that the Lord gives them His body and His blood, you see the worth your Lord places on them. It’s very easy to love humanity in the abstract. Linus says it in the comic strip Peanuts, “I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand.” That’s funny because it’s true. The people around you, the ones you actually have to deal with, are sinners. And it’s a very hard thing to love sinners. It’s a divine thing. It’s what Jesus does. So you act, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes, when you see fellow sinners, kneel down at the altar with you. Because you’re confessing here that just as you find your worth here, so do they, and it’s where you find their worth too. Will you despise the One for whom your Lord died? No. You can’t. You are just as much joined to them as to your Lord, when you eat and drink here, because His body is One and we are His members, bound to one another.
So when you get up from that altar, you act, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes. You pray to Him without ceasing, you confess His name in your home, whatever you do, you do for Him, you love and forgive, and when you again look at your life and see it lacking in love, you act, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes, and you come back to the Lord who serves you. And He will, till He comes, and delivers to you the Kingdom that has no end. Amen.