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Showing posts with the label Maundy Thursday

Sermon - Trinity IX, 2026 - Luke 16:1-13

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The Parable of the Unjust Steward , Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1540 Christian Wisdom Seeks Eternal Dwellings Wisdom is forward thinking and focused on the goal Christian wisdom employs every treasure, heavenly and worldly, for the sake of reaching the goal If there is a hardest parable, it might be this one; throws people off every time. The parable presents a rich man with a steward who was found wasting the rich man’s possessions. The job of a steward is to be faithful with someone else’s possessions, and this guy wasn’t cutting it. So obviously, he got fired. What’s crazy is the rich man lets the steward hand in the books, and he doesn’t hunt them down and take them from him immediately. The steward does exactly what you don’t want the steward to do, which is why normally the books get taken from the steward: the steward cooks the books. He meets some of the rich man’s debtors, probably tenant farmers, and in order to ingratiate himself with the debtors he adjusts how much they owe, ...
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Sermon - Maundy Thursday 2025 - 1 Corinthians 11:23-32

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Christ on the Cross with Three Angels , Albrecht Durer, 1523 Redemption made Manifest Not merely performing a drama The redemptive body and blood of Christ are made new again In this sanctuary the most precious treasure in the world is delivered to us What happens here in the Divine Service, and throughout the church year, is not some sort of a theatrical play or a dramatic retelling of history. Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday and culminating on Easter Sunday is often treated like a spectacle, something to be observed like attending one of the shows at Chanhassen, only this is more emotionally driven. Dramas are entertaining, but they’re foreign to the Divine Service, because this is no mere playacting but it is the real deal. See, if this were merely a spectacle, something you observe, then ultimately what happens here is just a bunch of empty rituals. If they’re empty rituals, then you might treat them like a joke or some sort of casual enterprise. But instead, since this is th...
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Sermon - Maundy Thursday 2024

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Last Supper , Jacopo Bassano, 1546 Food that Matters Food is important to us This Lord’s Supper is more important We want to eat healthful food The Lord’s Supper is medicine of immortality, except to those who eat unworthily Food is kind of a big deal. We eat it every day. We have multiple rooms in our houses dedicated to food. The most frequented stores sell food, like grocery stores, restaurants, and gas stations. When we get together with others one of the central activities is typically eating. Even our churches have kitchens and dining rooms as big as our sanctuaries. Food is kind of a big deal in the Bible, too. The opening chapters of Genesis are about God creating a world to feed us with, and Adam and Eve falling into sin with the action of eating wrongly. Throughout the Bible food is everywhere, from Old Testament dietary laws to the heavenly wedding feast in Paradise with the Lamb of God. Today we heard about one of the most significant events among the Israelites, the Exodus...
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Sermon - Maundy Thursday 2023 - 1 Cor. 11:23-32

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In communion we receive the Lord’s humble service Jesus humbly delivers to us His true body and blood: For the forgiveness of our sins; To serve us by His death We humbly receive Jesus’ body and blood: We examine ourselves, We confess our sins, We receive forgiveness, strength, and life On Maundy Thursday in Roman Catholic churches and various types of Baptist and Pentecostal churches the focus of the service is on the rite of foot washing. The pope will often make a big deal about washing a dozen poor peoples’ feet. Now there’s nothing wrong with doing a foot washing ceremony, but it does kind of miss the point to make a show of washing feet. Jesus washed their feet as an example of His humility, love, and service, telling them that they should also humbly love and serve one another daily. “ I have given you an example, that you should do just as I have done to you… just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. ” The early church continued to wash feet, not so much as a ...
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Sermon - Maundy Thursday 2022 - John 13:1-15, 34-35

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Jesus asked: “ Do you understand what I have done to you? ” What is it that Jesus has done to us? The apostles didn’t get it that evening, but they did later, and so the apostle John explains that Jesus loves His own people who are in the world, and He loves them to the end. This doesn’t mean that Jesus loves us until the end of this world, but rather that He loves us completely, to the telos, to the fulfillment of all things. This love of Jesus for His people was exemplified when He washed His apostles’ feet.  The significance of this action was more than just cleaning their dirty feet, but it helped to illustrate the depths of Jesus’ love for His people. When Jesus celebrated this last supper with His apostles, it was a very intimate and private meal, almost secretive even. Only Peter and John knew the location of the meal and made the arrangements, possibly to prevent Judas from betraying Jesus before the appointed time. Since it was such a private meal they weren’t interrupted ...
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Sermon - Maundy Thursday 2021

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  The yearly Passover meal for the Israelites was a memorial meal, by which they recalled God’s loving providence for them in sparing them from death and delivering them from bondage in Egypt. When they celebrated the Passover, the actual Passover wasn’t happening again, they weren’t reenacting the Passover, it was just a memorial. Many protestants view Communion the same way: just a memorial, a time to remember what Jesus sacrificed for us. But those protestants couldn’t be further from the truth. There is some value in remembering what Jesus did for us, it’s good to ruminate and ponder the profound work of redemption Christ performed on our behalf. But remembering a past event pales in comparison to participating in the event itself! To make this abundantly clear, would you rather just remember a loved one or be with that loved one presently? Obviously being with the person is far better than just remembering the person. So the Lord’s Supper is no mere memorial; we’re not just re...
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Sermon - Maundy Thursday 2020

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“ Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ” If we were to consider all of the events that took place on Maundy Thursday, we’d be here all evening, since a lot happened that day. So out of everything that happened, the church has historically focused on two particular things for us to contemplate this evening: The foot washing and the Sacrament of the Altar. In both of these actions of Christ we see what it means for Jesus to love His people by humbly serving them. Firstly turning to the foot washing, what a strange scene is recorded for us: “ Jesus laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. ” While this might be a strange image for us, it was customary in the ancien...
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Sermon - Maundy Thursday 2019 - 1 Cor. 11:23-32

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On this day in which we reflect upon the institution of the Lord’s Supper, we would do well to regard this holy meal as one of the great gifts of God to us His dearly beloved church. Amidst the severely splintered christendom on earth, one of the most contentious topics is that of communion. With such a great divide in the church on this matter, we mustn't’ waver on it one bit, but we must faithfully hold fast to the Lord’s Supper which Jesus has given to us. So this evening, very briefly, let us consider how an error made in regards to communion results in errors made in regards to the clarity of scripture, the presence of Jesus with His church, and of the very forgiveness of our sins. One of the most flagrant errors in our day pertains to when Jesus says “ This is my body; this is my blood. ” Since the days of the Reformation, Christians had begun doubt those words of Christ, asserting that Jesus’ body and blood cannot be present in the sacrament of the altar. Surely, they s...
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Sermon - Maundy Thursday 2018 - John 13:1-15,33-35

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For many centuries the church has gathered together on Maundy Thursday, the night when Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, the night when Jesus was betrayed by Judas, to hear the gospel account from St. John of Jesus washing His disciples’ feet. Interestingly enough, nowhere in John’s Gospel does Jesus institute the Lord’s Supper. That account is present in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 1 Corinthians, but not John. Nevertheless, we do learn something about the Lord’s Supper in John’s Gospel as well. John’s not instituting a new sacrament of foot washing, He’s teaching us about the Lord’s Supper by teaching us about Jesus’ humility. For when we learn about Jesus we also learn about His supper. Tonight we learn that Christ loves us by His humble service through cleansing us of our sins. Tonight’s Gospel is framed within the context of the crucifixion: “ When Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father. ” Not only that, but more specifically it’s framed withi...
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