Years ago, a band called Lobo sang about an international memorable event. Describing the impoverished plights of a boy from Chicago’s racial ghetto and a girl living among India’s “Untouchables,” the singers went on to shake their heads in wonder that both, on a “July afternoon,” along with the entire population of planet earth, heard and saw Neil Armstrong “walk upon the moon.”
Some incidents are so unusual or catastrophic or fraught with meaning that they cannot be forgotten, and all who were alive remember exactly what they were doing at the time. Pearl Harbor, Kennedy’s assassination, the lunar landing, 9/11... we remember.
So, too, this night. This night, rooted in the exodus, shared in the intimacy of the upper room, and rehearsed by ancient formulary throughout the world. I’ll never forget that night....
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
Don’t forget! Every year’s rehearsal of the Israel’s ancient exodus from Egypt is a re-presentation of the seminal event that determined her identity. Tonight, as we share the intimacy of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, it is important to recall what they, as deeply religious Jews, were thinking and feeling and experiencing. Passover was one of the highlights of the social and liturgical year, a time to gather with family and friends, and to draw all again into the drama of the initial sleepless night when all the world was turned upside down.
There are a number of things to keep in mind when reviewing the theological implications and literary location of this passage. First, it is the culmination of the last of the ten horrible plagues with which Yahweh assaulted Pharaoh and his Egypt. Exodus 7-11 describes a battle not between Israel and her oppressive national captors, but between Yahweh and Pharaoh. The plagues are the weapons of religious warfare wielded by Israel’s divine protector and suitor. While these miracles of divine judgment make for great Hollywood screenplay, it is not always apparent as to the reason for this extended weird display of divine power, especially when it is interspersed with notes that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, sometimes, in fact, seemingly as an act of Yahweh. Could not Yahweh have provided a less destructive and deadly exit strategy for Israel?
The plagues begin to make sense when they are viewed in the context of Egypt’s climate and culture. After the initial sparring with snakes to show magical skills, the stakes are raised far beyond human ability to merely manipulate the natural order. First the waters are turned to blood; then the marshes send out a massive, unwelcome pilgrimage of frogs; next the dust is beat into gnats, soon to be followed by even peskier flies; subsequently, the livestock gets sick from the dust, and this illness then spreads to human life in the form of boils and open sores; penultimately, the heavens send down mortar shells of hail, transport in a foreign army of locusts, and then withhold the light of the sun; finally, in an awful culmination, the firstborn of humans and animals across Egypt die suddenly.
Strange. But not quite as much when seen in three successive groupings. Among the many deities worshiped in ancient Egypt, none superceded a triumvirate composed by the Nile, the good earth, and the heavens which were the home of the sun. So it was that the initial plagues of bloody water and frogs both turned the Nile against the Egyptians, and showed the dominance of Yahweh over this critical source of national life.
The ante was then upped when Yahweh took on the farmland of Egypt, one of the great breadbaskets of the world. Instead of producing crops, Moses showed, by way of plagues three through six, how Yahweh could cause it to generate all manner of irritating and deadly pestilence, making it an enemy rather than a friend. Finally, in the third stage of plagues, the heavens themselves became menacing. Rather than providing the sheltering confidence of benign sameness, one day the heavens attacked with the hailstone mortar fire of an unseen enemy. Next these same heavens served as the highway of an invading army of locusts. Then old friend sun, the crowning deity of Egyptian religion, simply vanished for three days.
Finally, the link of life was severed when the firstborn died. The Egyptians believed that the firstborn carried the cultural significance of each family and species, so in a sudden and dramatic moment the very chain of life and being was severed. Furthermore, the pharaohs themselves were supposedly deity incarnate, descending directly from the sun by way of firstborn inheritance. Cutting this link eviscerated the life-potency of the Egyptian civilization not only for the present but also for the future. It was a true knockout punch.
Thus the plagues served not as gory illustration material for Sunday school papers, but rather as the divine initiatives in an escalating battle between Yahweh and the Pharaoh of Egypt over claims on the people of Israel. The plagues were a necessary prologue to the Sinai covenant because they showed the sovereignty of Yahweh as Suzerain not only over Israel but also over other contenders. Israel belongs to Yahweh both because of historic promises made to Abraham, and also by way of chivalrous combat in which Yahweh won back the prize of lover and human companion from the usurper who had stolen her away from the divine heart. Furthermore, Yahweh accomplished this act without the help of Israel’s own resources (no armies, no resistance movements, no terrorist tactics, no great escape plans), and in a decisive way that announced the limitations of the Egyptian religious and cultural resources.
This is why the final plague is paired with the institution of the Passover festival (Exodus 12). It would become an ongoing reminder that Israel was bought back by way of a blood-price redemption and that the nation owed its very existence to the love and fighting jealousy of its divine champion.
All of this was gathered, year by year, into the annual Passover rites. More than just a polite religious pageant, Passover recalled the bloody battle in which a captor (Pharaoh) and a lover (Yahweh) fought for the right to claim Israel’s hand. This event determined where Israel would live (so the instructions to make ready for hasty travel), who would provide for her needs, and to whom she would hold ultimate allegiance.
No Christian can fail to see the continuity between this Passover celebration and the remarkable Eucharist meal that Jesus turned it into. Whenever the story of Jesus’ Last Supper is rehearsed, it is important to remember that it, too, along with the first Passover celebration, ended with a call to rise and go hence. To celebrate Maundy Thursday is to be dressed for the road and move off in haste into the night, following the shekinah glory light that leads to the promised land, Easter, and beyond.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
It is evident from the manner in which Paul phrases his words in these verses that the formula for recalling Jesus’ institution of the Lord’s Supper was already a common and ritualized liturgical construct by 53 AD. Paul was in Ephesus on his third mission journey and was carrying on extended correspondence with his unruly former congregation in Corinth. Recently three leaders from that church (Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus) had carried to Paul a report of the divisions and moral problems in their home congregation, along with a list of theological and practical questions that apparently were causing a good deal of argument among the members. At this point in his letter of reply, Paul is explaining appropriate behaviors and liturgical acts when celebrating the Lord’s Supper.
While these words need most to be spoken as a solemn call to those gathering to remember Jesus and his crucifixion on this night fraught with meaning, there are some interesting aspects of their instruction about which to reflect. First, why would Jesus use the bread rather than the lamb as one of the two elements around which to build a memorial meal? After all, the lamb was central to the Passover, and the bread seems to be only a peripheral nod to the travel haste that accompanied the ceremony. Moreover, Jesus himself would be the ultimate Passover lamb (see John 1:29; Hebrews 9-10; Revelation 5, 12), and it might seem that an ongoing memorial would best use the flesh of that animal as a tangible means by which to symbolically ingest Christ (see Jesus’ own words in John 6).
Yet, there are good reasons for Jesus not to use the rack of lamb as a communion memorial. For one thing, underlying Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice was its once-for-all character. If he were to call for repeated animal slaying after his own death had brought the need for bloodletting to an end (see Hebrews 10), animal sacrifices could have been misconstrued and misused. Symbols can take on strange lives of their own (see, for instance, what King Hezekiah had to do with the bronze snake of Moses that had traveled with the Israelites for several hundred years: 2 Kings 18:4) and must be chosen with care.
At the same time, the bread of the Passover was freighted with more theological significance than is betrayed by the mere instructions to prepare it in haste in anticipation of a quick flight from Egypt. Without refrigeration or preservatives, bread was baked fresh each day in ancient Israel. Moreover, there was no packaged dry yeast to throw into the dough in order to stimulate its rapid rise. Instead, the sourdough method of natural fermentation was employed to expand the loaf before baking. In order to accelerate this process, a small lump of one day’s dough would be saved in a bowl to be added to the next day’s new batch. Its fermentation, well underway, would quickly spread through the new loaf, rushing the rising.
But this meant, of course, that there was a clear link in each day’s bread with those that had come before. Every fresh batch of dough was “contaminated” with a bit of fermenting stuff from yesterday’s craft. So when the call came for the Israelites to prepare to leave Egypt behind, it was not only haste that kept the leaven from the new bread batter. It was also a theological and sociological determination that nothing of the life of Egypt was to travel with them into their new future. Even their daily bread was not to be contaminated by the dough of meals from their slave days.
Jesus would teach on this often in his public ministry, comparing sin to leavening or yeast, carried from the past into the present and contaminating our lives. We need to start over, with no lingering link to the past. In fact, Jesus himself, in the virgin birth, would be something of the same. Because of the miracle of Mary’s divine insemination, Jesus was truly sinless, not linked biologically to the contamination of pollution that has been passed along from generation to generation of the human race.
So tonight, as some of the church’s oldest words of instruction and institution are recited again, and the bread is broken and the cup is passed, call people’s attention to the fact that they are part of the yeast-free fellowship. Just as their Lord was born pure, a herald of a new age, so they who share in his meal are leaving their sinful past behind, and are wedded by the Spirit to the bridegroom whose coming they anticipate this night above all nights.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
The gospel of John is unlike any other biblical or extra-biblical writing. Certainly, it rightly forms part of the “gospel quartet” of the New Testament. But even a quick read will show significant differences from these other uniquely Christian writings. First, the fourth gospel has a global philosophic introduction, which places the story of Jesus in a comprehensive cosmological frame of reference. Second, it is often more cryptic in its conversational narratives than are the other gospels, making it harder to understand how or why some of these interlocutions could have taken place. Third, while it acknowledges that Jesus did many miracles, it reports only seven of these during his public ministry, and elevates the significance of these by attaching to them deeper and more complex secondary meanings. Fourth, there are extended monologues by Jesus scattered through the pages of John’s gospel that are both mystical and doctrinal, and have no clear parallel to the manner of Jesus’ teachings or conversations as recorded by the synoptics. In short, the fourth gospel is a wild ride in a theme park of its own.
Yet, it is also so homey and comfortable that elements of it are like old slacks and shirts worn easily. The Greek language, through which the text is communicated, is basic and simple, so that beginner students can quickly read it. Many of its teachings from the lips of Jesus have become the inextricable metaphors and motifs by which we know him and ourselves — the good shepherd, the light of the world, the resurrection and the life, the vine, and so on. Some of the conversations Jesus has with others are recorded in a manner that makes us feel we were the only ones they were penned for and we are always sitting next to Jesus again when we read them. Even our Christian theology and worldview has been so shaped by themes from this document over the centuries, that we cannot separate it from us, or imagine Christianity apart from these 21 chapters. The gospel according to John is a key element of biblical faith.
Although its literary development is markedly different from that of the synoptic gospels, there is a very clear pattern to John’s rehearsal of thought and portrayal of Jesus’ activities and teachings in this gospel. A significant transition in referential time takes place between chapters 12 and 13 (related to the coming of the “the hour” for Jesus; note 2:4; 4:23; 7:6; 12:23; 13:1; 17:1), and this change is further accentuated by the grouping of all of Jesus’ “miraculous signs,” as John calls them, into the first twelve chapters. For these reasons the first part of John’s gospel is often called “The Book of Signs,” while the last part wears well the name “The Book of Glory.” A highly significant prologue opens the gospel (1:1-18), and an epilogue obviously written by another party and added after the initial gospel was completed (ch. 21) brings it to a close.
Following Mark’s lead, the synoptic gospels clearly identify the final meal that Jesus shared with his disciples as a Passover celebration. Strangely, for all the other symbolism in the fourth gospel, John clearly steers away from that connection here in chapter 13. Why?
The answer appears to have several parts to it. First, John deliberately times the events of Jesus’ final week so that Jesus is tried and sentenced to death on Friday morning (at the same time as the unblemished Passover lambs were being selected) and crucified during the precise hours when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the temple courtyard. In this way John accomplishes a purpose that he indicated at the beginning of his gospel, to portray Jesus as the “Lamb of God” (1:36). For this reason it was important to John not to identify the Last Supper as the Passover, since Jesus must die with the lambs that were being slaughtered prior to that meal.
Second, this does not immediately mean that either John or the synoptics are telling the story wrongly. Instead, there were actually several different calendars functioning among the Jews of the day, marking the celebration of the Passover with slight variations. These came into being due either to the chronological ordering of each new day (Roman: sunrise to sunrise, or Jewish: sundown to sundown), or the perceived occasion of the new moon that began the month (adjusted differently by Babylonian and Palestinian rabbis).
Thus, Jesus and his disciples probably ate a Passover meal together, as the synoptics identify it, but one that was tied to a different calendar than that used by the bulk of the Jerusalem population. In this way, John could leverage the different schedule to communicate a particular emphasis in his portrayal of Jesus’ symbolic identity.
Two features of this short narrative are extremely important to note. First, even as Jesus is exploring and declaring his “glory,” he cloaks himself as a servant. He kneels before those who are socially and theologically his inferiors, washing their feet and declaring to them the reversal of status in this kingdom of God that stretches by service, rather than pouncing with power.
Second, Jesus institutes the “new command” of the church on this night. It is not a different command, as he himself has noted elsewhere (see Matthew 22:39-40), but it is the activation and summation of what the Ten Commandments were all about. Love is to be the critical characteristic that defines the fellowship of the faith centered on Jesus’ own acts of love and obedience. It is from this “new command,” as expressed in the Latin language, that Maundy Thursday derives its name.
Application
A “Christ in the Passover” demonstration would be perfect for tonight. Perhaps someone from a messianic Jewish community or a local seminary or Bible school can help reenact the Hebrew Passover and show how Jesus transformed it into the church’s celebration of Holy Communion. Don’t preach too much tonight. Rehearse the story. Remind those gathered of its meaning. Then, in quietness, with reverence, sing the great hymns, feel the awful passion, and celebrate the meal.
An Alternative Application
John 13:1-17, 31b-35. Since it is Maundy (“New Command”) Thursday, there must be words spoken about love: Jesus’ love (“no one has greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”) and ours (“see how they love!”).