Digesting Grace

Digesting Grace

The Maundy of Thursday

This is my body which is for you…this cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this, in remembrance of me.  1 Corinthians 12:24-25

Maundy (meaning “commandment”) Thursday commemorates the day of passion week in which Jesus and His disciples gathered together in the upper room to celebrate the Passover meal together.  The passover meal was to remember God’s grace to God’s people.  Not because they earned his favor but because they were His own.  A meal that commemorated the bittersweetness of grace which God had shown their people.  

As the covering of a lamb’s blood in the first passover painted the doorway to a family home, deliverance from death was theirs.  A lamb’s blood given to shield God’s people from the angel of death who came down to bring holy judgment upon unprotected families in the taking of breath from each household’s first-born.  

There was a routine to a Passover seder supper.  An order by which the elements of the meal are given.  With each bitter herb, vinegar or unleavened bread tasted, came a remembrance of God’s covenant of grace between Him and His chosen people, to deliver them from an oppressor and promise to them a new home.  

Jesus as he held the bread in his hands, surprised the disciples with a deviation from the norm.  Holding in his bread the matzo, the unleavened bread, the bread which marked the haste of having to leave their slave dwellings and follow Moses out.  He said in essence, as he held the bread in his hand, this is me.  A broken body given for you.  No leaven in this bread.  The bread in his hands was a perfect man offered for a yeasty, sin-filled people.  

And the cup lifted to declare, as they drank the last swallow of the four drinks of wine marking each of God’s promise in Exodus 6:6-7:  ”I will bring out," "I will deliver," "I will redeem," and "I will take.”  This cup is a new covenant.  A covenant of no longer having to look back upon a physical deliverance that took place in Egypt but look ahead, just hours ahead, of a spiritual deliverance which would take place in God’s holy city, Jerusalem.  As the Lamb of God’s blood would be poured out to bring redemption, a buying back of God’s people, from their sin.  His perfect blood would mark every Christian’s doorpost of their heart.  The shedding of blood promising the forgiveness of sin (Hebrews 9:22). 

Just hours later, as the passover meal was still being digested in their stomachs, they beheld their Master, breathe his last and cry out “it is accomplished!”  Everything He promised was true!  Behold the body.  Behold the blood.  Behold the Lamb of God who was and is and forever will be our passover meal!

Thoughts for Reflection

Ever have a tradition in your family changed suddenly?  What was your initial response?

What do you think the disciples might have been anticipating as Jesus held the bread and the wine in his hands?