Sermon for April 1, 2021 Maundy Thursday House of Prayer Lutheran Church

1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35 Rev. Karl-John N. Stone

An important part of the work of God in the world is to form people into a community, because we need the love and support of other people to make it through life (not to mention making it through a pandemic).

This work of God goes all the way back--back to the Garden of Eden. As the creation story goes, God created Adam and provided all kinds of animals to keep him company--but none of them were enough. He needed a helper, he couldn’t make it on his own, so God created Eve. With the two of them, God formed a new community. But as the story goes, because of their sin they fell from grace. As punishment, they had to leave the Garden of Eden forever. Life became harder as a result of their sin, yet even so, God continued to bless them.

God has created us with a deep need for community. We all need helpers, people to rely on, people to offer love and support so we can all make it through life.

Forming communities didn’t stop with Adam and Eve. Throughout human history, God has kept forming communities, especially with what we call the “covenants”--covenants are special promises of faithfulness between God and his people.

For example, God made a covenant with Noah. Things had gotten so bad on earth with the way people were treating one another--yet Noah was righteous. So God sent a flood to “wipe the slate clean” so to speak, and God promised that from Noah’s family a new community would form. You see a special sign of that covenant whenever you see a rainbow in the sky.

Or how about God’s covenant with the Hebrew slaves? Over the course of hundreds of years, after they had migrated from the land of Canaan to Egypt, these Hebrew descendants of Jacob went from favored status (being relatives of Joseph, the son of Jacob, who was Pharaoh's second in command)--to being slaves oppressed by a Pharaoh who no longer remembered the great deeds Joseph had done to help Egypt prosper.

The Hebrews cried out to the Lord in the oppression. They wanted to be free--so the Lord heard their cry and sent Moses. The Passover, which our Jewish cousins are celebrating this week, is the annual remembrance of the mighty acts of God to free the Hebrews from Egypt, under the leadership of Moses (who led them out of Egypt, through 40 years of wandering in the desert wilderness, until finally God delivered them to the Promised Land. Over the course of those 40 years, God took this rag-tag bunch of former slaves and formed them into a new community, giving them a “covenant of the law”--new laws to live by--including the 10 Commandments, which teach how true freedom is found when we place God first in our lives, and when we treat all people with love, dignity, and respect.

Tonight is Maundy Thursday, and this is another key part of the story of our faith in a God who forms communities and makes covenants. The original Maundy Thursday happened on the night Jesus when was betrayed by Judas, one of his 12 disciples. This was more than just a sin against Jesus--it was a betrayal of the whole community of Jesus’ followers that he had been building for three years, beginning in the little seaside fishing village of Capernaum, and he kept growing his community until now it including people even in the big city of Jerusalem.

Jesus knew that the way of the cross lay before him, and he did not try to hide or run away from it, even as he realized a betrayer was in their midst. He took the way of the cross upon himself willingly, as the ultimate way to defeat the power of sin and death forever. He willingly sacrificed himself as the Passover Lamb of God, so that humanity could finally be free of our all too common desire to want to impose sacrifice on others. Jesus has made us free to embrace his way of peace, mercy, and justice which is truly what God desires.

But as he approached the time to finally accomplish his mission, Jesus also knew that his time walking this earth was short; that his followers would need a new way to form a community after he ascended into heaven, and they would need a new way for Jesus to be physically present among them when they gathered together. So at the Last Supper--a simple meal shared with his 12 disciples, including even Judas who betrayed him--Jesus instituted a new covenant--a new and special promise of faithfulness between God and God’s people. This new covenant was given in bread and wine, and it’s renewed whenever we come together and in faith break the bread and drink the cup, and remember the Lord’s death upon the cross to accomplish our salvation.

Through this covenant of Holy Communion, God keeps forming his people as a community, where through faith we can receive true freedom by placing God first in life, and by treating all people with love, dignity, and respect.

While we as a congregation are unable to be all together in person tonight and celebrate this great gift of Holy Communion together, we still remember it, as our Lord told us to do. And we will celebrate this new covenant in Christ’s body and blood again very soon. I hope I’ll be able to see many of you at our drive-in service on Easter Sunday at 9am, or even on April 18th when we resume in person Sunday worship at House of Prayer at 8am (with appropriate social distance precautions)--and we will celebrate Holy Communion, and being together again. We’ve had to do a lot of fasting during this pandemic as far as the Lord’s Supper goes. But our Lord intimately knows the weaknesses of our human condition that have made this fasting necessary--and our Lord has not forgotten us! Christ is always present with you in faith, and he will be truly present among us when we break the bread of life and lift the cup of salvation, as God keeps on forming us as his community of disciples. Amen.