Matthew 26:17-30 Apostles’ Creed / Third Article: Sanctified / Holied by the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Sacrament!
Most Holy Jesus – God in the flesh – there He sits. Heavy with His holiness He came down from heaven. The fullness of the deity dwells -- in the upper room – in the body of Jesus born of the Virgin Mary. He takes charge. The Most High and Holy Jesus does and says a Passover meal like none ever done before. And He does it for you! For your benefit!
Incredibly He does and says this Passover meal sitting smack dab in the midst of sinners! Sinners in the presence of the Most Holy God are usually toast! Adam and Eve defiled and estranged from God – thrown out of the garden! Bounced out of paradise! Remember the prophet Isaiah? “Woe to me,” he cried in the Lord’s presence at the temple. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live with a bunch of sinners just like me! As a sinner I’m history. Before the Lord unholy, polluted sinners like me deserve nothing but damnation!” (Isaiah 6:5). In the New Testament Peter said something similar when Jesus approached him one day: “Depart from me Lord for I am a filthy, rotten sinner!” That’s you! That’s me!
But Jesus stays after sinners. Peter. James. John. You. Me. Searches them out. Finds them. Puts them on His shoulders and carries them into the upper room – His ad hoc throne room – to do one of the most incredible and most powerful Passover meals ever!
Why? To unleash His wrath against His disciples, you and me (although we all deserve it)? To reduce to ashes sinners that dare to sit in His presence? No. Incredibly the Most Heavy With Holiness Jesus welcomes unholy, polluted sinners into His presence. To serve them! To gift them. TO HOLY THEM! TO SANCTIFY THEM!
With what? How? Well, listen to what He says when He takes bread and a cup of wine in His most holy hands. What He says – what He promises – is the heart of His giving – His promising. “Take this bread. Eat it. It is my body. Drink from this cup – all of you. It is my blood of the new testament poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Those are His words. His promises. And His words are “Spirit and truth,” (John 6:63). In other words, when Most Holy Jesus speaks, the very words He speaks are Holy Spirit filled. Holy Spirit goes on where Christ’s words go on! His words and the Holy Spirit go together. His Holy Spirited words doing and giving exactly what they say and promise. “My body. My blood. For all and for you. For the forgiveness of your sins.”
Most Holy Jesus, with His promissory word of absolution hooked to the bread and wine, welcomes sinners to His table. By means of His word He gives us His crucified and risen Body. Why? For what purpose?
The answer will just blow you away! Comfort you! Overjoy you! The reason Jesus gives you His Body with the bread is to holy you! To sanctify your bodies! So that you can be with Him and He can be with you in a beneficial way. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood,” Jesus promises, “abides in me and I in him,” (John 6:56). Paradise restored. Paradise recovered. New creations in Christ through His word of promise here in this meal. The Most High God comes down all the way into our messy, sin-infested lives in order to save His people from their sins. That’s precisely why we get out of our seats in the nave and go up to the altar in the sanctuary to receive the Sacrament. For there we enter into the heavenly realm of the Triune God Himself.
With His words that bestow exactly what they say, Most Holy Jesus shockingly and yet graciously shares and bestows His own holiness – His divine holiness with YOU, sinner! What’s yours – your sin and damnation – He takes. Answers for it. Atones for it. That’s Good Friday. So that what’s His – His holiness and purity -- is now yours given in the Sacrament. “Take and eat. This is my body.” So that right now your body is a temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells. Here, in this meal, is union with the Most High and Holy God. He comes. He serves. He gives. He is one with you and you are one with Him!
By means of His word He gives you His most holy blood to drink. With your mouth. Yes, as He gives you His blood to drink with the cup of wine He sprinkles your heart for cleansing. He purifies your conscience and your inner being with the very blood He shed on the cross to atone for all your sin! His crucified and risen blood that He gives you to drink frees you from the stain of your sin. This cup of wine is His blood that protects you from the powers of darkness! This is His blood that fills you with the Holy Spirit and all His gifts! This is His blood that transfuses you with His very own divine life! For where there is forgiveness of sin THERE IS LIFE AND SALVATION!
Now, if you’d rather not believe all that and call Jesus a liar, then the most holy body and blood of Jesus will not be for your benefit. Woe to you because the Sacrament will be like glass in your belly if you insist on pulling a Judas Iscariot and refuse to believe what Jesus says and gives with His words to sinners.
Jesus does not lie. This Sacrament is His last will and testament. He instituted it with all the seriousness of a sound mind and body on the night when He was betrayed. And on that very night before His Calvary death He names you as the heirs of His testament. The inheritance? His most holy body and blood that He gives by virtue of His words connected to the bread and wine. For you to eat and drink, not to sit and stare at! For the forgiveness of all your sins! And with His words He gives you His Spirit who calls you by the gospel, enlightens you with His gifts, sanctifies and keeps you in the truth faith as the Small Catechism confesses. Sanctifies. Yes, sanctifies you. Holies you!
All His doing. All His giving. And through Christ’s own testamentary words that do and give what they say in this meal, the Holy Spirit will keep you in the heavenly realms with Jesus both now and forever.
Have a happy and holy Maundy Thursday!
In the Name of Jesus.
