Maundy Thursday, The Passover and The Birthday of the Church

 

People sometimes talk about the day of Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the first Christians, as the birthday of the church.

I’ve always thought of that as a slightly dubious debatable claim.

Weren’t Jesus and his disciples and the group around them a kind of church before Pentecost?

And wasn’t there a sort of church, an organised people of God, in Old Testament times?

 

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden could be seen as the people of God, in God’s place, under his loving rule.

There’s a picture of the church, if you like.

 

Of course there are differences between the New Testament church and the Old Testament church, but the story of the people of God goes back to the very first page of the Bible.

As Christian believers, that whole story is ours and we’re to see ourselves as caught up in the big story of God’s dealings with humanity.

 

So what about the people of Israel?

When would you say all that got going?

With the call of Abraham?

With Jacob, who became known as Israel, and his sons and the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel?

 

God’s promises begin to work themselves out in the pages of Scripture but then, of course, because of famine, the people of Israel end up in Egypt.

The promise of a promised lands seems far off, and yet they are able to maintain their distinctive identity as a people.

 

You could call the events around the Exodus and the Passover the real establishment of Israel as a people, a nation.

They’re about to come out of their slavery in Egypt and gain their independence again.

The Law of Moses given to them at Sinai gives them a sort of constitution:

Their national life takes on a formal, regulated, recognisable political shape.

They are no longer slaves and are able to organise their own life.

The promises of God are taking shape.  

Do you see?

The Exodus marks a new development in the life of the people of God.  

 

And there are hints of that in our reading, perhaps.

The Passover and the Exodus are their founding events, which they are always to remember.

The Lord tells Moses that this month is to be for them the first month.

Time for them is re-set, as it was for the Western world with the birth of Christ.

 

Passover is a commemoration for them for generations to come, a celebration, a festival to the LORD, a lasting ordinance.

It’s to keep the memory of this event alive.

 

The Passover is God’s mighty saving work, his judgement on Egypt and her gods, and the deliverance of his people that forms and shapes them as people of God.

What God does creates them and gives them their identity.

This is their founding event, their story, how they came to be a distinctive people.

They’re always to remember this as their story, their salvation.

Perhaps we could even call it their birthday, or their re-birth day when they are, as it were, born again to serve God.

 

Many many years later of course there will be generations who never experienced life in slavery in Egypt, and yet every year they remember their deliverance at this meal.

They participate in the Passover as the celebration of their salvation.

 

And so it is for the Christian church today.

It is the events of Easter which form the church.

Though we weren’t eyewitnesses of the cross or the empty tomb, we are Christ’s people – the people of his death and resurrection.

Though Jesus never washed our feet, he has made us clean.

He loves us and serves us.

He died and rose for us.   

He feeds.

We participate in him.

We remember him, he remembers us.

We are bound together with Jesus and with all his people down through history.

This is our story, our meal, in which we all participate.

This meal forms us as we gather here at The Lord’s Table.

This meal makes us visible as the church in the world.   

 

Like the ancient people of Israel, we are a people on a journey.

We don’t have to eat this meal with our bags packed and our hiking boots on, but we are on the move, just as the people of Israel were.  

We are a people with a destiny – a destination – a calling.

A people on the move to heaven and the new creation with our Lord leading the way, gone before us.

The Lord’s Supper is bread for the journey to sustain us as a pilgrim people.

It is wine to celebrate God’s salvation and to anticipate the coming of his kingdom in all its fullness.

 

It’s a strange detail, perhaps, that the people of Israel have to set apart the Passover lamb for four days and take care of it.

It’s almost as if it becomes part of the family.  

They identify with it.

It will represent them and takes their place.

The lamb will die and they will live.

 

And Jesus is our Passover Lamb who came and lived with us and identified with us.

He bore the curse and wrath of God in our place that we might live.

God sees the blood of God the Son and passes over our sins.

 

Jesus is the perfect lamb without defect who takes our place as the ultimate sacrifice for sin.

We all depend on him and share in him.

In this supper we plead the blood of Christ.

This meal is a memorial to God in which we ask God to look on the blood of Christ and forgive us.

Just as God would look on the rainbow and remember his covenant with Noah, so the Lord looks on this meal and remembers his covenant with us in the blood of Christ.  

 

So this meal tells again our story of rescue, deliverance and salvation.

Of freedom.

Of a new identity and purpose to worship the Lord as his special people set apart for him, saved by his blood, heading to the promised land, living distinctively for and with him in a sometimes-hostile world.

 

So, if we like, we could call the Exodus and the Passover a kind of birthday of the church.

Certainly we could call Easter the great founding event which includes us.

Easter is the central event of history which redefines everything and shapes our identity, purpose and destiny.

 

This Easter, may we rejoice afresh to be bound together as the people of God and to be included in this great drama of redemption and deliverance.

And let us live as the special people, holy to him in the world, pressing on to worship and serve him according to his word.

Let us live as those who have Jesus’ new commandment: to love one another as he has loved us.