Homily: “Cost of Discipleship”

Text: Exodus 12:1-14

Maundy Thursday (A)

March 20, 2008

Scripture introduction.  Some of us have just participated downstairs in a symbolic Seder meal, modified for use in a Christian context.  That meal helps us understand the faith of our Jewish friends and gives us a renewed appreciation of this critical event in the life of ancient Israel, the night on which the Holy God delivered them from captivity and slavery in Egypt.  In our first reading tonight, from the Old Testament book of Exodus, God instructed the people about what to do on that very night, the Passover of the Lord, when the angel of death would “pass over” the houses of the Israelites because they had smeared the blood of a lamb upon their doorposts.  God had other instructions, too, about how to eat their last meal before departing, and about repeating this meal each year as a remembrance of their ancient covenant with God. 

As Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story,[1] the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion was the annual Passover meal.  Jesus used the elements that were present—the bread and the wine—and pushed the symbolism into new territory.  In the hands of Jesus the cup now symbolized the New Covenant, one sealed not with the blood of a lamb, but rather with his own blood.  In the same way, the unleavened bread broken during the Passover meal symbolized his body, which would be broken for them.  As the lamb’s blood of the old covenant was proof of the saving relationship between the Israelites and their God, so the blood of Christ, through the New Covenant, is proof of God’s love for us.  

Homily.  During these final days of Holy Week—Maundy Thursday and Good Friday—we consider the cost of our salvation, the price that was paid on our behalf.  Because not everyone is able to come to these weekday services, last Sunday’s service had two parts—not only the joy of Palm Sunday, but also a gospel account of the painful events later in Holy Week.  We do not seek to be gloomy or over-emotional, but we want to focus on, and thereby hold in our memory, what Jesus did for us.

Already we have seen that the original Passover, quite literally, required sacrifice.  Each family was to slaughter a lamb, and not just any lamb, but one without any blemish, the most valuable.  Surely, this would have been costly, a fact that is suggested by God’s recognition that not every family could afford this, so some might be required to share.  We did not read the entire passage from Exodus, but it goes on to describe how the people are not allowed to eat any leaven in their bread.  Friends, unleavened bread is tasteless and unenjoyable.  There is a cost to giving up leaven.  We might also consider the tragic cost to the Egyptians—the death of the first-born male in every family from the royalty to the prisoner and even on down to the livestock.  And while we might not think of it immediately, there was a cost to the children of Israel in leaving Egypt.  Any time we leave a home behind, we leave something of ourselves there, too.  Surely, there was relief at their release from slavery, but we know from Exodus and Numbers that as the children of Israel experienced nomadic life in the Wilderness, they later came to grieve the things they had left behind in Egypt—the settled lifestyle and the security of knowing where their next good meal was coming from.

As we have observed, Jesus used the symbolism of that meal to foreshadow for his disciples the cost that he would be required to pay, sooner than any of them could have imagined.  And now we, remembering these events are reminded of his self-sacrifice for us.  As we observe the Lord’s Supper in a few minutes, our hearts carry many emotions.  On the one hand, even tonight it is appropriate actually to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, full of the joy of being in the presence of Christ and anticipating the time when we will feast at the heavenly banquet.  But, especially tonight, we also remember and consider carefully what must have been going through Jesus’ mind as he considered the bitter suffering that lay ahead.  His broken body and his spilled blood loom large on Maundy Thursday.  We remember the terrible cost.

After Communion tonight we will read from John’s gospel, which contains the longest account of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples.  Curiously, John places the meal the day before Passover.[2]  So John’s story does not include Jesus’ institution of the Lord’s Supper.  Rather, the focus is on the new commandment that Jesus gives his disciples.  For centuries Maundy Thursday has been the day on which Christians have read the verses in which Jesus says, “Behold, I give you a new commandment.”  In the Latin of the Middle Ages, the word for commandment would have been pronounced “maundatum,” which was shortened by the unschooled English peasants to “Maundy.”  And what was the new commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples during that last supper?  That they love one another, just as he had loved them.[3]  He left no doubt that this was costly love, for later that evening he described the kind of love he had for them, saying, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  And as Jesus continued, this was not some abstract possibility.  Knowing what he was about to endure, he said, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.”[4] 

Whether we look at the Old Testament Passover meal or the accounts of the Last Supper from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, or from John, the meal symbolizes redemption, but redemption that comes at a price.  In a way, the movement of our service this evening shows the shifting of those costs.  In the Old Testament Passover, the people themselves pay the price.  As we move to the Last Supper, in which Jesus speaks of his coming sacrificial death, we realize that our salvation comes at a price that we do not pay.  It is a gift from God in Christ.  Finally, when we consider the New Commandment that Jesus gave—that we love one another with costly love—we realize what should be our response to the extravagant gift we have received.    

I want to conclude these brief remarks tonight by asking you to complete the sermon in your own minds.  I want you to ask yourselves a question.  As you do, please do not use the question as an occasion for making yourself feel guilty.  No longer need we feel guilty before God because Christ has paid the cost of our redemption and forgiveness.  This question is directed not to the past, but to the future.  And here it is;  please answer it silently between now and Easter:  “Considering how Christ has loved me, how will I love my brothers and sisters?  That is, what will be the cost of my discipleship?”[5]