Exodus 12.1-8, 11-14 Ordinances for the Passover meal.
1 Corinthians 11.23-26
‘For as often as you eat and drink, you proclaim the Lord’s death’
John 13.1-15
He loved them to the end.
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‘Jesus
is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ (John 1.29 & 1.36)
That
is the fundamental proclamation of John the Baptist.
Behold.
Jesus.
In
other words, look really closely at him and look at what that proclamation
means, that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
John’s
proclamation lies at the heart of every celebration of the Eucharist - as we
sing, ‘Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us/grant
us peace’ and when the body and blood of Christ is raised up and the priest
declares:
Behold, the Lamb of
God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world, blessed are those who are
called to the supper of the Lamb.
This
is sacrificial language, the language of offering a life to achieve life and
destroy sin.
It
is one of those gospel paradoxes: the Good Shepherd, Jesus, the one who will
lay down his life for the sheep (John 10.11) is also the Lamb.
And
it comes together tonight, as the ordinances of Exodus are fulfilled and a
sacrifice prepared.
Tonight,
at the Last Supper the sacrificial language of the blood of the lambs connects
with the blood of the Cross in the bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist.
In
our first reading we are in Egypt.
The
Israelites are captive, enslaved to Pharaoh, and they yearn to be free.
Moses
leads them, and God sends plagues upon Egypt to soften Pharaoh’s heart to
release the Israelites.
But
Pharaoh’s heart remains hardened in the face of them all.
It
is only the tenth plague that makes him relent, so that God’s people may be
free.
The
tenth plague is when God sends the angel of death to kill anyone who does not
sacrifice a lamb and smear the lamb’s blood on the lintel and doorposts of the
home in which they eat the lamb.
The
angel of death passes over those homes, sparing the inhabitants: that is
Passover, fundamental to Jews and Christians alike.
But
what could that possibly mean to us today?
St
John Chrysostom is clear: we are the People of God.
We
are in slavery to sin and our hearts are hardened to God.
The
angel of death stalks the land, that is to say those things that are spiritual
death - pride, anger, lust, envy, greed, avarice, sloth – these things can make
a home in us.
So
how do we resist the angel of death?
We
must eat the flesh of the Lamb, the Son of God; his blood must be on our
doorposts, and those doorposts are our lips.
As
Jesus says of himself:
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)
That
is profoundly sacrificial language again: Christ giving his life that we might
live.
The
words of the Last Supper are not recalling a half-buried memory about what
Jesus once told us to do, but an act of recollection of the reality of what
Christ does for us now.
St
Paul asks the rhetorical questions:
The cup of blessing that we bless, is
it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is
it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10.16)
The
point is that the Eucharist binds us in to the ‘full, perfect, and sufficient
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world’ that
Christ made ‘through his death upon the Cross for our redemption.’ (Book of
Common Prayer, 1662)
Taking
the bread and the wine at the supper and declaring them to be his Body and his
Blood was shocking to his disciples, and is shocking to us, no doubt, if we
pause to ponder it for a moment.
Why
did Jesus do this on the night he was betrayed?
It
was to make totally clear that he was giving himself as the one, true sacrifice;
that he would offer his body on the cross for you and for me.
That
is when he will be seen as the Sacrificial Lamb who takes away the sins of the
world.
The
Eucharist presents this sacrifice afresh.
That’s
why it is so much more than being
with fellow believers lovely though that is; more than hearing the word of God important though that is; more than hearing a sermon or enjoying beautiful
music, lovely on the ears as they are: no! it
is being present at the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, the same redeeming,
one, perfect sacrifice of Him who died and takes away the sins of the world;
your sins, my sins.
His
body will be broken on the Cross; his lifeblood will drain away through his
wounds and when a lance pierces his side from which blood and water flow.
We
will hear the death of Jesus presented by St John in his account of the Passion
tomorrow.
Jesus
makes it clear: this is a ritualised death; it is a sacrifice.
It
echoes the sacrifice of the lambs in the Temple, but as the Letter to the
Hebrews makes clear Christ is both the sacrifice and the sacrificed; the priest
and the victim.
He
enters the sanctuary not by the blood of lambs ‘but by means of his own blood’:
For 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, how 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. (Hebrews
9.12-14)
He
made one sacrifice in time.
He
draws us into that sacrifice eternally:
For as often as you eat
this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (1
Corinthians 11.26).
This
Last Supper is the origin story for Christian life and practice which takes us
on into Jesus’ betrayal and arrest in Gethsemane, his trial and death which
unfolds into tomorrow and the Sabbath Day.
The
Last Supper gives us the Eucharist, the sacrificial meal of the Church through
which we participate in the passion and sacrifice of Christ.
‘Jesus
is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’
What
do we see when we behold - truly behold - Jesus Christ?
We
behold the one who ‘emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being
born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’
(Philippians 2.7,8)
Yes,
we behold the one who, in the form of a servant, washed his disciples’ feet.
We
behold the one who goes to the very depths of death out of love for you and me,
to save your soul and mine.
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