Exodus 12:1-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-32; St John 13:1-15, 34-35
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
The first account of eating in Holy Scripture is the narrative of man’s fall into sin. God had, in fatherly divine goodness and mercy, created Man and Woman, and graciously given them everything they need to sustain this body and life. Yet in an action and disposition of monumental and cataclysmic proportions, they chose to partake of the one thing which God had not given them - the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Among the abundant gifts of the Garden was the Tree of Life, which had the promise of eternal life with God and fellowship with Him in the Blessed Holy Trinity. By eating of this Tree and fasting from the other, Adam and his wife offered true, spiritual worship to the Lord their God. But they chose to partake of the one tree God had not given them.
Sin and death were conceived and born in them. You are their progeny. You have inherited their genes. Sin and death were passed to the entire human race through eating. For the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil carried the promise of death and separation from God. From the dust they were taken and to dust they shall now go.
Other stories of eating in the Old Testament build on this. Esau’s porridge. Noah’s food stores. Israel’s manna and water. Elijah’s ravens and widow. In each of these stories God’s food carried God’s promise of life. The Word of the Lord declared what the food was and how it was to be used. If the people rejected God’s Word of promise the food that they ate brought them the curse of death. If the people believed God’s Word of promise, the food that they ate brought them blessing of life.
The Word of God makes the food what it is. Father either receives or rejects the gift. And concerning the water from the rock, the Scriptures themselves teach that Christ was Himself the Rock from which Israel drank during their sojourn through the wilderness (1 Cor 10:4). He was not symbolically present. He was truly present to nourish them with life-giving water.
The most important story of eating in the Old Testament, though, was the story of the Passover. The Passover defined Israel as a people and established their identity as God’s chosen nation and royal priesthood. A people set apart for Himself. It was their most important Festival for it brought and celebrated the Lord’s deliverance of Israel from their slavery and bondage in Egypt.
The Firstborn of Israel were not spared from death because of any merit or worthiness in them. They were delivered on account of the Lamb, which was sacrificed in their place. Its blood covered them. Its flesh fed them. But it is not as though any animal could merit atonement or redemption, but it rescued them only by the Word of the Lord, by the grace and mercy of God.
For by His Word He had commanded an unblemished lamb for each household in the land. The lamb’s blood was to be smeared upon the doorposts and lintels of each home. The lamb’s precious blood would cause the Angel of Death to passover the house, for death had already occurred within. The people would eat the roasted lamb, receiving the Lord’s gift of salvation through it according to the promise of His Word.
Thus the Passover consisted of two fundamental and inseparable actions: the slaughter of the innocent lamb and the eating of its flesh. These two actions were one. By the shedding of the lamb’s blood to cover the people, the victory over death and slavery in Egypt was secured. By the eating of the lamb, the victory was received by the faithful.
Moses calls the Passover an everlasting ordinance, a statue, because it finds its fulfillment in Christ for all eternity.
On account of His fatherly divine, goodness and mercy, God instituted the Passover, the sacrifice and the eating, as the Prophecy and Promise of Christ Jesus, the very Lamb of God, whose sacrifice takes away the sins of the world and the eating of His Body and Blood bestows redemption, the forgiveness of sins. In Him is the fulfillment of all the Law and the Prophets, of the Exodus from Egypt and the Good Land of Canaan.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the firstborn Son of God from all eternity, begotten of His Father before all worlds, who has also been conceived and born as the promised Seed of the Woman, of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. In His own flesh and blood He is the Ram caught by His horns upon the branches of His Tree. He is the Lamb that God has provided for Himself in place of all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.
He is given and poured out upon the Altar of His Cross as the Mercy Seat Sacrifice for your sins. And not for yours only, but for the sins of the world world. His Sacrifice has been completed, once and for all, and there is no more sacrifice for sin. His Victory is certain, finished, perfected, and complete.
Yet, the Lord’s Passover requires not only that His Lamb be sacrificed, but that His holy, precious Blood, and innocent suffering and death, be applied to you. It should mark and cover you. And that you should eat His sacred Flesh in repentance and faith, with praise and thanksgiving to the Name of the Lord.
It is true that you are already clean by the Word that He has spoken to you. For He has called you by the Gospel, enlightened you with His gifts. And in Holy Baptism He has washed you with water and His Word. He pours out His Spirit upon you through the forgiveness of your sins.
But consider your life and circumstances in this world. Examine yourself, as the Holy Scriptures and the Small Catechism admonish and instruct you. Consider your station in life according to the Ten Commandments, and judge yourself honestly in the light of God’s Word. You do not love your neighbor as Christ the Lord loves you, but you do continue to sin day after day in thought, word, and actions. Indeed you are surrounded on all sides, without and within, by sin and death, and by the assaults and temptations of the devil, the world, and your own fallen and perishing flesh.
Your covetous lust can so easily lead you astray, into sin and vice, and finally death, as happened in the tragic case of Judas.
How often do you compromise yourself for money or pleasure? How often do you excuse your selfishness and sin, supposing that you are in a position to call the shots? Beware, beloved, so pursue that path is to open your heart, your body and life, to Satan and his wicked ways.
If the Lord Jesus does not continue to wash you, to cleanse you with His Blood and feed you with His Flesh, you shall have no part with Him. If He does not catechize you in and by His Word, you shall perish. You shall be consumed and destroyed by the angel of death on account of your unbelief and sin.
Repent. Do not be like Simon Peter, questioning and resisting the Word of the Lord and His Means of the Gospel.
Rather, hear the Word of Christ; trust Him to serve you in His divine Love. Remain here, in the House of His God and Father, and so keep the Feast at His Table. Live and love as a child of God. Thank, praise, serve and obey Him according to His divine and holy love, and give no place to the devil in your heart, mind, or behavior. Where you have fallen into temptation and sin, return to the Lord your God by fleeing to His mercy in Christ Jesus.
Your life as a Christian ought to one of joyful faith and confidence. How shall we not give thanks, especially on a night like this, in which our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, instituted His blessed Sacrament of His holy Body and precious Blood, under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink.
Here He gathers the Passover and the Manna, Elijah’s ravens and widow, Noah’s food, the tabernacle’s showbread, Joseph’s provisions, the Tree and its fruit, and all the eating and drinking of the Old Testament and distills it down into the chalice, the New Testament in His Blood.
It was the Passover which Jesus celebrated with His disciples on Maundy Thursday. Not because it was coming to an end, but because the Passover was coming to its fulfillment in Him. He took the cup of blessing from the Passover meal and gave it to His disciples with the words, Drink of it, all of you, this cup is the New Testament in My Blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
The Old Testament Passover, with its types and shadows, has come to fulfillment in His innocent suffering and death upon the Cross, and in our reception of His Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper. These two actions are one. Through the shedding of His blood, our salvation was secured, once and for all, freedom from bondage to sin, death, and the power of the devil. And in the Sacrament of the Altar He gives us to eat and drink of this salvation in His true Body and Blood. These are one great saving event.
And knowing your failure and need, confessing your sins and receiving the forgiveness of Christ your Savior, you are returned to the cleansing and life-giving waters of your Holy Baptism by the right use of His Word in Confession and Holy Absolution. And as He remembers you in love and speaks to you in peace here in His Supper, so in eating the Flesh with which He feeds you, and drinking the Blood with which He removes your sins, you proclaim His death until He comes.
Here at the Table of the Lord is where and how you learn to love and serve your neighbor as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is where and how He loves you and serves you as His own children, sustaining you with His Body and Life throughout your sojourn in the wilderness.
Here is the Hour of His Glory, where He is glorified in His grace and mercy as your Savior. Because here is where the Glory of His Cross, His victory over sin and death, and the power of His bodily Resurrection are all given to you, poured out for you, for the forgiveness of all your sins.
Here the devil cannot have your tyrannize you. Not while the Word of Christ rings in yours ears, your heart, your body and mind. Your sin cannot accuse or harm you, not while you cling in faith to the forgiveness of the Gospel. Even death cannot touch you forever; not while you rest and remain in the Body and Blood of the Lamb.
It is the Lord’s Passover and you are His Israel indeed, whom He sets are from bondage and brings through the wilderness into the good Land that He has promised; that you may live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
The first account of eating in Holy Scripture is the narrative of man’s fall into sin. God had, in fatherly divine goodness and mercy, created Man and Woman, and graciously given them everything they need to sustain this body and life. Yet in an action and disposition of monumental and cataclysmic proportions, they chose to partake of the one thing which God had not given them - the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Among the abundant gifts of the Garden was the Tree of Life, which had the promise of eternal life with God and fellowship with Him in the Blessed Holy Trinity. By eating of this Tree and fasting from the other, Adam and his wife offered true, spiritual worship to the Lord their God. But they chose to partake of the one tree God had not given them.
Sin and death were conceived and born in them. You are their progeny. You have inherited their genes. Sin and death were passed to the entire human race through eating. For the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil carried the promise of death and separation from God. From the dust they were taken and to dust they shall now go.
Other stories of eating in the Old Testament build on this. Esau’s porridge. Noah’s food stores. Israel’s manna and water. Elijah’s ravens and widow. In each of these stories God’s food carried God’s promise of life. The Word of the Lord declared what the food was and how it was to be used. If the people rejected God’s Word of promise the food that they ate brought them the curse of death. If the people believed God’s Word of promise, the food that they ate brought them blessing of life.
The Word of God makes the food what it is. Father either receives or rejects the gift. And concerning the water from the rock, the Scriptures themselves teach that Christ was Himself the Rock from which Israel drank during their sojourn through the wilderness (1 Cor 10:4). He was not symbolically present. He was truly present to nourish them with life-giving water.
The most important story of eating in the Old Testament, though, was the story of the Passover. The Passover defined Israel as a people and established their identity as God’s chosen nation and royal priesthood. A people set apart for Himself. It was their most important Festival for it brought and celebrated the Lord’s deliverance of Israel from their slavery and bondage in Egypt.
The Firstborn of Israel were not spared from death because of any merit or worthiness in them. They were delivered on account of the Lamb, which was sacrificed in their place. Its blood covered them. Its flesh fed them. But it is not as though any animal could merit atonement or redemption, but it rescued them only by the Word of the Lord, by the grace and mercy of God.
For by His Word He had commanded an unblemished lamb for each household in the land. The lamb’s blood was to be smeared upon the doorposts and lintels of each home. The lamb’s precious blood would cause the Angel of Death to passover the house, for death had already occurred within. The people would eat the roasted lamb, receiving the Lord’s gift of salvation through it according to the promise of His Word.
Thus the Passover consisted of two fundamental and inseparable actions: the slaughter of the innocent lamb and the eating of its flesh. These two actions were one. By the shedding of the lamb’s blood to cover the people, the victory over death and slavery in Egypt was secured. By the eating of the lamb, the victory was received by the faithful.
Moses calls the Passover an everlasting ordinance, a statue, because it finds its fulfillment in Christ for all eternity.
On account of His fatherly divine, goodness and mercy, God instituted the Passover, the sacrifice and the eating, as the Prophecy and Promise of Christ Jesus, the very Lamb of God, whose sacrifice takes away the sins of the world and the eating of His Body and Blood bestows redemption, the forgiveness of sins. In Him is the fulfillment of all the Law and the Prophets, of the Exodus from Egypt and the Good Land of Canaan.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the firstborn Son of God from all eternity, begotten of His Father before all worlds, who has also been conceived and born as the promised Seed of the Woman, of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. In His own flesh and blood He is the Ram caught by His horns upon the branches of His Tree. He is the Lamb that God has provided for Himself in place of all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.
He is given and poured out upon the Altar of His Cross as the Mercy Seat Sacrifice for your sins. And not for yours only, but for the sins of the world world. His Sacrifice has been completed, once and for all, and there is no more sacrifice for sin. His Victory is certain, finished, perfected, and complete.
Yet, the Lord’s Passover requires not only that His Lamb be sacrificed, but that His holy, precious Blood, and innocent suffering and death, be applied to you. It should mark and cover you. And that you should eat His sacred Flesh in repentance and faith, with praise and thanksgiving to the Name of the Lord.
It is true that you are already clean by the Word that He has spoken to you. For He has called you by the Gospel, enlightened you with His gifts. And in Holy Baptism He has washed you with water and His Word. He pours out His Spirit upon you through the forgiveness of your sins.
But consider your life and circumstances in this world. Examine yourself, as the Holy Scriptures and the Small Catechism admonish and instruct you. Consider your station in life according to the Ten Commandments, and judge yourself honestly in the light of God’s Word. You do not love your neighbor as Christ the Lord loves you, but you do continue to sin day after day in thought, word, and actions. Indeed you are surrounded on all sides, without and within, by sin and death, and by the assaults and temptations of the devil, the world, and your own fallen and perishing flesh.
Your covetous lust can so easily lead you astray, into sin and vice, and finally death, as happened in the tragic case of Judas.
How often do you compromise yourself for money or pleasure? How often do you excuse your selfishness and sin, supposing that you are in a position to call the shots? Beware, beloved, so pursue that path is to open your heart, your body and life, to Satan and his wicked ways.
If the Lord Jesus does not continue to wash you, to cleanse you with His Blood and feed you with His Flesh, you shall have no part with Him. If He does not catechize you in and by His Word, you shall perish. You shall be consumed and destroyed by the angel of death on account of your unbelief and sin.
Repent. Do not be like Simon Peter, questioning and resisting the Word of the Lord and His Means of the Gospel.
Rather, hear the Word of Christ; trust Him to serve you in His divine Love. Remain here, in the House of His God and Father, and so keep the Feast at His Table. Live and love as a child of God. Thank, praise, serve and obey Him according to His divine and holy love, and give no place to the devil in your heart, mind, or behavior. Where you have fallen into temptation and sin, return to the Lord your God by fleeing to His mercy in Christ Jesus.
Your life as a Christian ought to one of joyful faith and confidence. How shall we not give thanks, especially on a night like this, in which our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, instituted His blessed Sacrament of His holy Body and precious Blood, under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink.
Here He gathers the Passover and the Manna, Elijah’s ravens and widow, Noah’s food, the tabernacle’s showbread, Joseph’s provisions, the Tree and its fruit, and all the eating and drinking of the Old Testament and distills it down into the chalice, the New Testament in His Blood.
It was the Passover which Jesus celebrated with His disciples on Maundy Thursday. Not because it was coming to an end, but because the Passover was coming to its fulfillment in Him. He took the cup of blessing from the Passover meal and gave it to His disciples with the words, Drink of it, all of you, this cup is the New Testament in My Blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
The Old Testament Passover, with its types and shadows, has come to fulfillment in His innocent suffering and death upon the Cross, and in our reception of His Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper. These two actions are one. Through the shedding of His blood, our salvation was secured, once and for all, freedom from bondage to sin, death, and the power of the devil. And in the Sacrament of the Altar He gives us to eat and drink of this salvation in His true Body and Blood. These are one great saving event.
And knowing your failure and need, confessing your sins and receiving the forgiveness of Christ your Savior, you are returned to the cleansing and life-giving waters of your Holy Baptism by the right use of His Word in Confession and Holy Absolution. And as He remembers you in love and speaks to you in peace here in His Supper, so in eating the Flesh with which He feeds you, and drinking the Blood with which He removes your sins, you proclaim His death until He comes.
Here at the Table of the Lord is where and how you learn to love and serve your neighbor as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is where and how He loves you and serves you as His own children, sustaining you with His Body and Life throughout your sojourn in the wilderness.
Here is the Hour of His Glory, where He is glorified in His grace and mercy as your Savior. Because here is where the Glory of His Cross, His victory over sin and death, and the power of His bodily Resurrection are all given to you, poured out for you, for the forgiveness of all your sins.
Here the devil cannot have your tyrannize you. Not while the Word of Christ rings in yours ears, your heart, your body and mind. Your sin cannot accuse or harm you, not while you cling in faith to the forgiveness of the Gospel. Even death cannot touch you forever; not while you rest and remain in the Body and Blood of the Lamb.
It is the Lord’s Passover and you are His Israel indeed, whom He sets are from bondage and brings through the wilderness into the good Land that He has promised; that you may live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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