Maundy Thursday

I remember once on a Saturday evening I was watching some nature show on the Discovery channel, when my dad came in from outside. He looked at me and said, “Oh, good, you’ll appreciate this. Come outside and see the real Discovery channel. I was intrigued, and I got up and followed him outside. In between two trees, glistening in the moonlight, was a spider’s web being carefully woven together. I watched as the spider was seemingly running on air building this incredible structure and was struck with wonder. I wasn’t thinking so much about how the spider was making the web, what kind of spider it was, or even my own personal feelings about spiders which, incidentally, are largely negative. My heart was simply captured by the wonder of this creature unfolding his web in front of me in such a way that I still think about that nearly twenty years later. My father was correct about this moment being the real Discovery channel, because I wasn’t just learning, I was discovering. 
Too often we approach the Bible and important theological concepts as a set of facts merely to learn, to commit to our memories instead of seeing it as a revelation of the Person of Jesus Christ. The Lord’s Supper, a picture of the Lord’s work and its blessing for us has so often been reduced to a set of theological precepts that don’t include beholding Christ. Now, please hear me: I’m not saying that precision in theology isn’t important. It is critical. But the reason it is critical is not because you have to pass a theological examination to get into heaven. Peter isn’t going to ask you to quote the Westminster Catechism to him. But theological precision is critical because you want to know your Lord who loves you so much as well as you can. I want to know my wife’s shoe size, or her favorite flower, or what kind of work she would do if she weren’t an artist not because I am trying to pass a test but because I want to know my wife as completely as I can. It is the same way with Jesus—we should desire to know Him for His own sake.   
We have covered what our understanding of this Supper is in previous sermons. Yes, this table is a table of blessing, whereby we commune by faith with our Lord Jesus Christ in a real, spiritual way. No, this is not the literal body and blood of Christ as if Jesus needs to have His body broken again for our salvation. Jesus did the work to save us from our sin and He did it completely—it is finished. There is no more sin among the elect to be atoned for anymore. Yet that does not mean that Jesus isn’t still working for us, ministering to us. He is continuing to nourish us, support us, pray for us, and bless us with His presence as we see signified and in a way accomplished in and through this Supper. That’s why this isn’t just a memorial as if all of the important work Jesus already did and is done with us. No, He continues to feed us after He washed us. There is no more sin to pay for, no more forgiveness to grant, but there is a deeper intimacy with Jesus to be had, and that is exactly what He gives us in this supper: Himself. 
Having said all of that, that’s not what I want to explore in detail tonight. I want us to focus on Jesus, as the point, the purpose of this Supper. We don’t commune with Jesus in order to get some other blessing. The communion with Jesus is the blessing, is the strengthening of our faith. It all comes back to Him, and we seek Him and love Him because of Who He is, not what He gives to us. 
We can think of it this way, have you ever visited your grandparents when you were a small child, and upon seeing them you say, “What did you get me?” Have you done that? Maybe you’re on the other side of that question now! If that’s the question, then what is that visit really about? Is it about seeing your grandparents, or is it about receiving the gift? When we are young, we can excuse enthusiasm for things, because children haven’t been around long enough to know what a profound gift a person is. As you get older, that gets clearer. Suddenly, when you are a teenager, or if God so chooses, a full-grown adult with grandparents, you see the value of who they are as people. Suddenly, you just want to see them. You cherish them for who they are. 
That’s where I want us to grow towards in our relationship with Jesus. So let’s talk about Jesus. Let’s use this supper that is in front of us to remind us of the Beloved. This Supper blesses us in three ways that all go back to the person and work of Jesus. This supper blesses us by reminding us of what Jesus did for us in the past, by repeating our fellowship with Jesus in the present, and by revealing to us Jesus’ return in the future. 
Reminding us of what Jesus did for us in the past
The Supper is a visual picture of the Gospel which is, quite simply, Jesus died for you. He did so in the most definitive of ways. God, as God, cannot die. Nothing is more powerful than God to force Him to stop existing, and He needs nothing to sustain His life. He is neither dependant nor subservient. But the payment of sin requires death. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, Scripture says. So the Person of the Son, at the Father’s wish, takes on humanity. He becomes human while remaining fully God. By doing this, He takes on a nature that is weak, subject to external forces, and has needs. God can now feel pain, deprivation, and displeasure. And He does it for you, while you were yet a sinner. In the tearing of the bread we are reminded of this body that He took on was broken. When we pour the fruit of the vine, we are reminded of blood that was poured out to the very bottom. His body wasn’t scratched; it was broken. Jesus didn’t just bleed. He died. The death of the Son of God! Why, it seems almost a contradiction of terms. The innocent dying for the guilty as an ultimately good thing strikes us as scandalous! Yet that is precisely what we are saying in this supper, only we make it personal. The Innocent One died for me, the Guilty One, and that Innocent One was the very Son of God. The Holy One paid my debt, what could possibly be left to pay? My sin is dead and gone, and I am free! When I taste of this supper I am reminded of the grace and love of God that is complete. There is nothing I add to it. The Lord’s Supper isn’t a potluck where we all bring something to the table, it is a royal dinner served by the King Himself. To bring your own food is an insult to the Host Who has thought of and provided everything! 
Repeating our fellowship with Jesus in the present
But this isn’t just a reminder of what Jesus has done in the past, but it is a repetition of our fellowship with Jesus. Jesus didn’t just die, rise again, ascend into heaven, and is now just waiting in heaven for us to finally show up. Instead, He walks with us the whole way. In John 6, Jesus uses this metaphor of eating his flesh and drinking His blood. And this is offensive to the people he says this to, so I’ve wondered why Jesus did this. At first, I just assumed that this was a way of showing us who was committed to following Him, that even when He said something confusing, the truly committed would just keep on following Him. Maybe that is part of it, but I think there is more. John 6 comes right after Jesus feeding the five thousand. He leaves and the crowd searches around to find Him. They ask Him to reproduce this sign, you know, just one more time, and then they will believe. Of course Jesus realizes this and points out that it isn’t about free bread, but about Him. You don’t come to eat bread, because that is not where true life is found, you come to eat Jesus. It is only in Jesus, not in what Jesus gives you that you find Life. You don’t find Jesus by looking in peace. You look in Jesus and there is peace. You don’t find Jesus by finding forgiveness, you find forgiveness by finding Jesus. 
So what better gift can Jesus give you in the Lord’s Supper than Himself? That is what Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17. When we read the word “participation” or “partaking” the word behind that translation is the word for “fellowship.” You fellowship with Jesus in this cup of blessing. Listen to FF Bruce, “The true sustenance and refreshment of our spiritual life are to be found only in him who died that we might live. In all ways in which his people feed on him by faith – not only the Holy Table, but in reading, and hearing the word of God, or in private, or united prayer and meditation, (to mention no more) – they may fulfill the conditions which he lays down here [that of eating His flesh and drinking his blood], and receive the promised blessings (160). Do you hear what he is saying? By making use of all the means which God uses to bless us do we find Christ. But it must be said that there is something special about the Lord’s Supper. 
Let’s look at the other means of grace God gives to us and see how they compare to the Lord’s Supper. The Bible promises to strengthen the believer, but it is also the means by which faith is produced in the unbeliever (Romans 10:17), so the Bible is for unbelievers, too. Prayer is the means by which we get in tune with God’s will as Christians, but it is also the means by which we cry out to God in saving faith (Acts 16:31). The Lord’s Supper, by contrast, is the only means of grace reserved for those who have already put their trust in Christ. This is something special, folks. This is dinner with the Friend of Sinners, the One who sticks closer than a brother, the Bridegroom of the Church.  
I remember the rehearsal dinner for my wedding. It was such a sweet meal of fellowship with my bride-to-be in anticipation of the day to come when we would be united forever. Though, yes, there were many people there who were deeply important to me there, I only saw my bride. It wouldn’t have been a good meal without her there, in fact, if she hadn’t been there, it would have been the saddest meal of my life. But even a dinner as special as that was looking forward to something, a marriage within which all future meals would be together. And the Lord’s Supper is no different. 
In this supper is a revealing of the return of Jesus. There is something very subtle in Luke 22:14. Jesus says that He isn’t going to eat of the fruit of the vine until it is fulfilled in The Kingdom of God. Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed to His death, was already speaking of His coming victory, even beyond rising from the grave. Christ in that moment is looking forward to the time described in Revelation 19, the marriage feast. One of my favorite things about eating out is getting appetizers. It is food that promises even more food. It’s such a great experience, especially when it is good food because that promises that the main course will be even sweeter. This is one of those cases. The Lord’s supper we have here, with all of its benefits to us remind what Christ has done, repeats to us what Christ is doing, points us to what Christ is yet to do, and it is His greatest work yet! The best is yet to be, beloved. We have even more of Christ to experience. 

There is a story of the theologian Thomas Aquinas. Thomas has an entire system of thought named after him due to the literal thousands of pages he wrote on philosophy, theology, and ethics, books which, while not right in everything, still have an impact nearly 800 years after his death. Yet, in the months before he died, it was said that he had a vision of Jesus during a church service. This master thinker and prolific writer suddenly stopped writing. When asked why, he said, “I can do no more. The end of my labors has come. Such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw. Now I await the end of my life after that of my works.” Now I don’t know what he saw or if that story is even strictly true, but it does capture the point very well that there is more, so much more for us to see. God has given us so much in His Word, and what is true there will be true in heaven. Yes we should seek to know this book and study it like correspondence from a lover, but let it drive us to look forward to the day when we meet the Author Face to Face. Until then, let us fellowship with Him in this Supper. 


Work Cited 
Bruce, F.F. The Gospel of John and the Epistles