First Reading Exodus 24:3-11
3Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” 4And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. 6And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. 7Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” 8And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”9Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. 11And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.
| Psalm | Psalm 116:12–19 |
12I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. 13Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his servants. 14O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant and the child of your handmaid; you have freed me from my bonds. 15I will offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon the name of the Lord. 16I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, 17In the courts of the Lord’s house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem. Hallelujah! 18I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, 19In the courts of the house of the Lord in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!
Second Reading Hebrews 9:11-22
11But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. 15Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. 16For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” 21And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
Gospel Matthew 26:17-30
17Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?” 18He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’” 19And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. 20When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve. 21And as they were eating, he said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” 22And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, “Is it I, Lord?” 23He answered, “He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me. 24The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” 25Judas, who would betray him, answered, “Is it I, Rabbi?” He said to him, “You have said so.” 26Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” 27And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, 28for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” 30And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
More Than Meet the Eye
Grace, mercy and peace to you this Holy Thursday from God our Heavenly Father and from Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Tonight, in our liturgy, hymns, and Scripture Readings there’s blood all over the place. Perhaps the bloodiness of our readings strikes you as odd and primitive, unsettling, possibly even squeamish. But there’s more here than meets the eye, so we need to look under all this blood and listen carefully to God’s Word to find out exactly what’s going on.
If you go back to Exodus chapter 12, God sets the stage for the first Passover. The Lord had already visited nine plagues on Egypt; the Passover marked the tenth and final one. To every house that was not protected by the blood of consecrated lambs, and angel of the Lord came and struck down firstborn sons. On the other hand, the Lord instructed the destroyer to pass over houses marked by the blood of a lamb. This was such a momentous occasion that God commanded His people to celebrate the Passover annually as a memorial meal. Moses told the people, “When you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as He has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for He passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when He struck the Egyptians but spared our houses’” (Exodus 12:25–27a). Because of this, we need to take a hard look at the Passover. But dwelling only on the blood and violence, might cause us to stumble.
The apparent bloodshed, when viewed through a religious society that emphasizes God’s loving side, shocks our pacifist sensibilities and causes us to question, what kind of God would perpetrate such wrath against even helpless children? Add to that a second question that forces us to ask, doesn’t it seem morbid or cruel to memorialize such a bloody, gory event? As I said, we need to look deeper; there’s definitely more going on here than meets the eye.
After Moses announced the institution of the Passover, we’re told, “The people bowed their heads and worshiped” (Exodus 12:27b). They recognized that when the Lord speaks His will, the only proper response is worship. The Passover is all about the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods.” The Lord had said concerning the Passover, “On all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord” (Exodus 12:12).
The tenth plague was divine warfare against God’s idolatrous enemies, against the Egyptian false gods and the oppressors of His people. And later in Exodus, God said this: “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me” (20:5). This means that under all the Egyptian blood, we should not see innocent victims of a unpredictable god, but impenitent sinners receiving just judgment from the one Holy God. And all of God’s acts of judgment on idolaters—from the flood to the Passover, to the conquest of Canaan—all are intended to warn us about the consequences of idolatry and impenitence. They are previews of the final judgment. Furthermore, we should also see that this judgment is what we deserve and more.
For all our idolatrous sins, for every time we have not feared, loved, and trusted in the Lord our God with all our heart, we deserve for the destroyer to come and spill our blood on the ground, while our soul is taken swiftly to hell for eternal punishment. We must remember the Lord God almighty is no tame God. The apostle known for writing about God’s grace, St. Paul, also wrote this: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).
For their own sins, the Israelites deserved the same fate as the Egyptians. But when we look at the blood of the Passover lambs, we see more there than meets the eye. To the naked eye, the blood of lambs and the blood of the Egyptians would appear to be the same sticky red substance, but God attached His Word of grace to the lambs’ blood and gave His people a means of salvation from the destroyer. Under the blood of Passover lambs, we don’t find any merit or worthiness in the Israelites; what do find, however, is the promise of deliverance from the gracious and merciful Lord. So the Passover was to be celebrated by Israel above all, as a remembrance of His election and of His protection and salvation of them from their enemies.
Later God would attach His word of forgiveness to the blood of lambs, goats, and bulls in the sacrificial system operated by the priests at the tabernacle and the temple. Through the pouring out of blood in the Most Holy Place, God provided a means of cleansing and forgiveness for His people’s sins. As the Holy Spirit inspired the writer of Hebrews to say, “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (9:22). And this leads us to find more than meets the eye in the Upper Room on the night when Jesus was betrayed.
It was a Passover Meal, so Israel’s deliverance from Egypt was in view, and the recently shed blood of Passover lambs would be fresh on the disciples’ minds. To be sure, they had celebrated this meal dozens of times with their families from their childhood, and they knew the Passover liturgy by heart. They thought they knew what was coming as they celebrated it with Jesus, but they would be wrong. There would be way more than meets the eye, when Jesus, the Lord of Israel Incarnate, revises the Passover liturgy.
St. Mark writes, “As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them” (14:22). Up to this point, everything is as expected, there has been no surprises. But then Jesus drops the bombshell: over the bread Jesus said, “Take eat, this is My body” (v. 22). The disciples must have looked at one another with bewildered glances. Some of the disciple might have remembered an earlier time when Jesus said something similar, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). Then Jesus seems to slip back into the regular liturgy: “He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank of it.” Okay, back to normal, the disciples must have thought, looking at each other with relief.
Perhaps they had just misheard Jesus earlier. But then the other shoe drops! Jesus “said to them, ‘This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’” (v. 24). Or as I prefer to render the Greek: “poured out on behalf of the masses.” Once again, Jesus blows their minds! It’s during this unprecedented Passover Meal, that Jesus teaches three main things to us and His disciples.
First, that in a short while, His body would be given and His blood shed on the cross—and that under the apparently senseless slaughter of a Righteous Man, they should see His death as a ransom for the masses of humanity, for the sins of the whole world. This is God’s final judgment on sin, and from that day forward, the only sin that condemns to hell remains idolatry in its broadest sense, and more specifically, the idolatry of rejecting Jesus and His death for the life of the world.
Second, Jesus teaches that in a mysterious and supernatural way, there was more than meets the eye under the simple bread and wine of an ordinary Passover Meal—now, through His sacrifice and by the power of His Word, the bread, now consecrated, truly is His body and the wine truly is His blood, given to His disciples, and to all who would receive in faith, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Further, by His words “Do this,” He instituted the Lord’s Supper for His Church to proclaim His death till the end of time (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:26).
Third, Jesus was teaching them that the Passover and the sacrificial system of Israel were types, or prefigurements, of His once-for-all sacrificial death on the cross, but now these Old Testament ceremonies must give way to the New Testament in His blood.
John the Baptist had pointed to Jesus and proclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Later, St. Paul would write, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7).
At the Last Supper and on Good Friday, John’s preaching was fulfilled, when God’s holy, spotless Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ, finally offered His life as a ransom for the masses, so that we sinners don’t have to get what we deserve, instead we receive what Jesus has earned for us. Everything in the Old Testament was pointing forward to the coming of the Lord in the flesh as the Messiah to redeem His people and win forgiveness, not just for the Jewish people, but for all who would believe. There’s another peculiar part of the Old Testament that finds its fulfillment and explanation here.
The Lord had told Israel, “If any one of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Leviticus 17:10–11). The blood of animals in the Old Testament was reserved for atonement for the people’s sins, but the prohibition on its consumption would end with the institution of the Lord’s Supper, the New Testament in Christ’s blood.
Now and until Christ returns, the atoning blood of Jesus would be sacramentally fed to God’s people in, with, and under the wine of Holy Communion. And what is in that blood that doesn’t meet the eye? Life! The blood of Jesus delivers to us the forgiveness of sins and serves as the antidote to death. God said, “The life is in the blood,” and that’s what Christ’s disciples receive as the life-giving blood of Jesus is received by us in the Lord’s Supper: “For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.”
Every time we come in faith to Jesus to be nourished on His body given and His blood shed for us, Jesus promises, “Whoever eats of My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:54–56).
Amen
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