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When I was a little kid, I always used to call this day Monday Thursday. I had no idea why this special day during Holy Week had to have Monday attached to it, but I figured it had something to do with it being the first day of going to church 3 times in 4 days, and since Monday was the first day of the week, this made sense to me. As I grew older, I realized that it was actually Maundy Thursday, but that helped even less since I had no clue what the word Maundy meant. Well, I finally learned last week in our Tuesday morning Bible study. Maundy actually comes from the Latin “Maundate” which means Commandment. Its where we get our word “mandate” from. So, in reality, today is Commandment Thursday. This actually means something to me now because the Thursday of Holy Week is rich with new commandments and actually has its roots in one of the most ancient commandments from God – the commandment to celebrate Passover. To really understand and appreciate this Commandment Thursday, I thought it would be helpful to revisit the Last Supper, where all this commandment stuff for us Christians really got started and to see how the old commandment of Passover took on new meaning through our Lord’s words and actions. So to start off, I wanted to look at what we actually remember from the Last Supper because its become quite distorted over the centuries and even just the past few years with the whole DiVinci Code thing.
Well, the whole reason that Jesus and the disciples were gathered together that evening was because they were celebrating the Passover Feast – and it was a feast, much like our Thanksgiving dinners, only there was a lot more ritual to it. Everything that they did at a Passover Meal had meaning – right down to what they were eating and in what order they were eating it. The very act of celebrating Passover was commanded by God way back in Exodus 12, even before the Hebrews escaped from Egypt. God was about to send the 10th Plague on the Egyptians, the one that would kill their firstborn children, when he commanded them to eat unleavened bread and to kill a lamb and smear the lamb’s blood on the doorpost. This is how they would survive the plague. But just as God was giving them these instructions, he also added this “You shall observe this rite as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children. When you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. And when your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this observance?' you shall say, 'It is the passover sacrifice to the LORD, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.'" God’s very first command to his people, before he even saved them, before he led them through the Red Sea, before he gave the 10 Commandments or the land of Israel – God’s very first command to his people was to remember. And that’s what Jesus was doing with his disciples on the night of the Last Supper – remembering what God had done in the past. The meal would’ve begun with some kind of washing. Jews were really big into cleanliness, and unlike all of these paintings, they wouldn’t have been sitting on chairs. During that time, the way to have a meal was to sit on the ground and recline around really low tables. This would’ve meant that you were right next to everyone’s dirty, nasty feet – hence the importance of footwashing. But right off the bat, the disciples should’ve known something was different about this night because it is not the servants or the slaves who do the footwashing, but rather Jesus himself. It is Jesus who takes off his outer clothing, wraps a towel around his waist and begins washing the dirtiest part of his disciples’ bodies. After he gets done, he sits back down at the table and says, “Do you understand what I’ve done for you? Now that I have washed your feet, you should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” Here is the first new mandate of this first Maundy Thursday. Now, at the meal itself, Jesus & the disciples would have retold the story of the Passover, saying aloud what each food represented, reminding them of why they were there. They would have eaten Marror, or bitter herbs like horseradish to remind them of the hardships of the slavery in Egypt. Using a vegetable like celery or parsley call “karpas,” they would’ve tasted salt water to remind them of the tears they shed in slavery and of the water of the Red Sea that was parted for them. They would’ve had Charoset, a sweet mixture of fruits, nuts, and wine that represented the mortar that held bricks together while in slavery but also the sweetness of the freedom God had given to them. Of course, there was matzah bread. Matzah bread is bread that has no yeast and hasn’t risen yet. This was to remember that that the Hebrews were in such a hurry to leave that they didn’t have time to wait for the bread to rise. Matzah is also sweet bread however, and this sweetness represents the speed with which the Hebrews became free people. Somewhere on the table there would have been a lamb shank called z-roa to remind them of the original Passover lamb that families sacrificed for the blood. This lamb also tied into the sacrifices they made at the Temple in order to cleanse their sins. I can’t help but think of our Sunday morning worship service and the first song we always sing while taking Communion – it is always some version of “The Lamb of God.” And finally because wine is the drink of free people and of celebration, everyone would have drank four cups of wine at specified times to represent the four promises that God made to them in Exodus 6:6-7, "I will free you from the labor of the Egyptians: and I will deliver you from their slavery. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great judgments: and I will take you to be my people". At each point in the meal, the meaning of the food was told and God’s great grace was remembered. But it was as Passover Meal was ending that Jesus decided to expand the meaning of the rituals. The final piece of the Passover ritual is called Tzafun, which literally means “hidden one.” Here they would have taken some final pieces of matzah and broken them into two. The breaking of the matzah symbolizes a Jewish history of expulsion, exile, bondage, betrayal, and slavery. Today, we call these things brokenness, suffering, shame, and sin. Now imagine that you’re the disciples and instead of hearing this or maybe after hearing this, Jesus says, “Take and eat, THIS is my body.” All of this suffering and brokenness, this is what I’m taking upon myself and what I’m giving myself for. Do this for the remembrance of me. After the breaking of the matzah, then everyone says the Baruch, or Great Thanksgiving prayer. Then the host fills and blesses the 3rd cup of wine, which is the Cup of Redemption. Again, imagine you’re the disciples and instead of hearing about God’s redemption or after hearing about it, Jesus says, “This cup is the new covenant in MY blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.” Surrounded with Passover imagery, Jesus has now placed himself firmly in place of the Passover Lamb. Following the Cup of Redemption, the 4th Cup of Wine is filled and shared to remind them that God has made them his people. After this cup, to complete the Passover Meal, they were to sing some songs of praise, which the disciples did just before they went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Passover was commanded by God to be a meal of remembrance so that their children would know what God had done. In this meal, the bread and the wine both have a special place because of their dual meanings. They are to remind the Jewish people that they can understand and celebrate being free, but only by remembering what it meant to be slaves in Egypt. At the Last Supper, on Maundy Thursday, Jesus gave us two new mandates. First, that we should follow his example of humble service represented by the footwashing. And second, that we should break bread and share wine in remembrance of him as our sins are forgiven. As with the Jewish Passover, we can use Holy Communion to tell the story of what Jesus has done for us. The bread and the wine take on special meaning for us as Christians, as we understand and celebrate what it means to be forgiven, but only by remembering what it cost to achieve that forgiveness – the very life of our Lord. Amen. |
