Sermon Illustrations for Maundy Thursday (2016)
Illustration
Object:
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
This reading provides detail on the ancient celebration of Passover. The people are told that the family needs to get a year-old male goat or sheep. If one’s family is too small to eat the entire animal, they are to invite the neighbors to celebrate with their family. Eat the entire animal in one setting; leftovers are forbidden. Important detail is provided about how and where to wipe the animal’s blood as well as how to prepare the meal -- right down to how the meat dish is to be roasted with the head, legs, and internal organs intact.
The pastor who decides to read this passage in its entirety on Maundy Thursday might be met at the door with questions like “Haven’t we as Christians abandoned those Old Testament practices?” and “Who cares about the history of Passover? We celebrate the Lord’s Supper, not Passover.” Someone might even ask “Why should we care about the history of anything?”
One might need to be ready to respond to that species of question by saying something like: “We study the history of things in order to better understand the present. If we don’t keep reminding ourselves of the important lessons of history, we will have to learn those lessons by trial and error in our own time. History reminds us of the great acts of God and the faithful responses of people in past generations. When we chase it into a corner and look at it closely, we can say that the study of history provides an antidote to the hubris of the present.”
R. Robert C.
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
Nine months after his coronation in 2013, Pope Francis became the most talked-about individual on Facebook. Facebook at that time had over 1.2 billion users worldwide. Religion News Service wrote, “It’s the latest sign of the influence he’s having not just on the church, but the wider culture.”
Application: The words and symbolic actions that Jesus shared at the Last Supper, and how it is still practiced today in the communion service, indicates his lasting influence on culture.
Ron L.
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
This lesson reminds us that Christians, no less than Jews, perpetually observe the Passover. On that subject John Wesley observed: “As long as we live we must continue feeding upon Christ and rejoicing in him always, with thankful mention of the great things he has done for us” (Commentary on the Bible, p. 72). We join with the Jewish community at Passover and in our celebration of the Lord’s Supper in other ways. As early African monk Macarius the Egyptian noted, just as the Hebrews having observed the Passover leave and move on, so individuals having received the Holy Spirit and eaten of Christ progress and move on into life (Pseudo-Macarius, p. 236). A good meal, the nourishment it gives, is what it takes to move on. And a banquet with a lot of people at the table is much more memorable. At the Lord’s Supper we eat a meal, celebrate a banquet that includes millions of guests from all over the world, both Christians and Jews!
Mark E.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Jesus was a master at taking the ordinary and using it for extraordinary purposes: water as metaphor for eternal life through faithfulness; the lost sheep as the lost among the faithful; the difficulty of being faithful when wealth is our idol, described as the challenge of a camel going through a needle. So it is no surprise that Jesus uses the opportunity of the Passover meal to use the Elijah cup and the bread of the people to describe what is to come.
Jesus takes bread and likens it to his soon-to-be broken body, and the cup and likens it to his soon-to-be shed blood. But the purpose of the bread and cup is to unite the faithful, to connect us in community with all the believers and followers of the Way from generations past and into the future. We are called to love one another, to share with one another, to surrender for one another in the love and faith that Jesus exemplifies. That is the Table to which we come, the call on our hearts and minds, the reminder that God is among us. That is what we celebrate and what we are called to remember.
Bonnie B.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
The stone wall encircling the tiny cemetery was broken in places. The iron gate at the entrance was beginning to rust. The grass was cut infrequently. The graves there were mostly from the late 1800s. Visitors to this memorial site were rare, so there were no flowers. That was true for every grave but one. By the stone engraved with the name RUSKIN, who’d died in 1873, was a bouquet of roses. Each week a new arrangement of flowers appeared by this old tombstone. In this forgotten sacred ground, there was a remembered memorial. Who did it? Who would come week after week to place flowers on a grave so old?
Remembering is important. Joshua, as the Israelites entered the Promised Land, was instructed to do some things so that their children’s children would remember what the Lord did. In this passage, Paul is reminding his readers and us of one of the central facets of our faith. Jesus said, “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Jesus wanted his disciples and us to remember what he was about to do. Remember the sacrifice. Remember the cross. We rejoice in the resurrection, as we should. An exclamation point emphatically proclaims “He lives!” Before the joy of the empty tomb, there is the sobering reminder of the cross and the price of sin. Remember the cross. Remember the sacrifice. Remember his death.
A woman in her mid-30s parked her car on the empty road by the old cemetery. She carried flowers. She opened the creaky gate and walked through the tall grass to the stone that read RUSKIN. She knelt down, picked up last week’s flowers, and put the new flowers next to the stone. She came each week to remember the man that had brought her family to this country; to a new life and a chance for freedom. Her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother had passed on his story. She wanted to remember him. She wanted to honor him. Remembering is important.
Bill T.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
We should remember that Paul was not present at the Last Supper -- but he believed in it. This was because he had met the Lord in person on one of his trips. Once we have met our Lord by some means -- either a miracle or a “coincidence” or some religious experience -- we also believe this story. Because we believe it we can pass it on to others, as has been done up to this very day in the communion services we attend. It should be more than the pastor who passes this on. We should also pass it on to our children so they can believe also. Most of those who believe told me some reason they had for believing -- not just because the pastor said so or because their family had followed this practice for generations.
There is one interesting difference in our communion from that Last Supper. Notice that the supper begins with the blessing of the bread, but the cup of wine only came after a dinner! Today we leave out the supper. We don’t really need it as long as we have faith that the Lord’s Supper represents a new contract or covenant with God’s people. It does not negate all the former covenants of God. It is adding a new covenant to all the rest.
It is an important proof of our faith if we continue to take this supper until he comes again.
When we were teens, sometimes our folks were called away and told us to watch out for our brothers and sisters until they got back. We knew what was coming if we were not faithful in this task. Scripture tells us what can happen to us if we are no longer faithful in the things the Lord has commanded us to do. So we have to keep our nose in God’s word to find out what we are supposed to do. That is a job that never ends!
Every week our Lord’s Supper can be a new beginning in our spiritual life. Don’t miss it!
Bob O.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
The Christian house churches were meant to replace the Roman households which converts had formerly participated in. Such households included extended family, servants, slaves, artisans, skilled laborers, and everyone else involved in the craft, manufacture, or agricultural product that supported this large group. The household gave thanks together to the sponsoring god, something that was impossible for newly minted Christians to take part in. The house churches of Corinth worked together, prayed together, and ate together. Yet in this letter Paul must address some of the barriers that prevented the people from breaking bread at the common table. In this passage, Paul emphasizes that their meals are patterned after the meal Jesus shared with his disciples. It takes place in the real world, one in which betrayers may be present, but it must not be forgotten that with the breaking of the bread we are the broken Body of Christ and that we are drinking from the cup of the New Covenant.
This meal is a remembrance -- we are like battlefield re-enactors, in that we have made ourselves a part of an ancient story. Now it is our story. We are here!
Notice that in this communion we are proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. That’s the hard part of this drama. We live the death of Jesus in our everyday living. We are the living reminder of what has happened and what is happening as well.
Frank R.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
In 1495, the noted artist Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to decorate a wall in a dining hall next to a church in Milan, Italy. He was specifically asked to create a portrait of Christ’s Last Supper with his disciples. Leonardo chose to paint the moment Christ announced that among them is a traitor. The disciples gather around Jesus. The reactions of each can be seen on their shocked faces. It took the artist more than three years to finish the project, but the result is one of the most familiar works of art in the western world.
A joke that has circulated for decades is that when da Vinci was trying to organize the scene, he instructed those portraying the disciples: “If you want in this picture, you all have to get on same side of the table with Jesus.” While somewhat irreverent, that joke is far from blasphemous. In fact, it cuts right to the heart of the Maundy Thursday message.
Our Lord is coming to the end of his earthly ministry. In order to prepare his followers for his departure from their midst, he models a life of service to them by washing their feet. He then summarizes what he expects from them by offering the mandate to love one another, for it is in loving one another that others will know that they are his disciples.
A message in this for us is that if we want to be identified in the picture as followers of Christ, we need to get on the serving, loving side of the table with Jesus.
R. Robert C.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
After being awarded the Heisman Trophy and appearing on the cover of Time magazine, Roger Staubach decided he would celebrate his notoriety. So he went to the Playboy Club and stood outside the door. You needed a special key to be admitted, and Staubach was convinced that a keyholder would invite him in. But there he stood unrecognized. Several days later he went to the theater with his family, and as he waited by the door patrons began to hand him their tickets (thinking that he was an usher). In reply to that incident his mother said, “That’ll keep you humble, Roger.”
Application: In the washing of the disciples’ feet, Jesus demonstrates to us humility.
Ron L.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
American life is infected by the malady of self-promotion -- it is thought to be the only way to succeed. It is like John Calvin once wrote: “...every man thinks more highly of himself than he ought, and despises almost every other person” (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. XVIII/1, p. 60). All the more startling it is that Jesus lowers himself to wash someone else’s feet. This is a love that can change American life, as it sends the message that “less [of us and of self-promotion] is more [love and happiness].” God is all about doing things that don’t promote envy or proclaiming to the world how important he is. That is why Jesus comes as a member of the working class to a people who had been colonized, why God himself dies and washes his followers’ feet. He does not show off his credentials, and he does not want followers who do. Our Lord seems to teach us something like 19th-century American author Louisa May Alcott once wrote: “You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty.”
Observe and celebrate Jesus’ power in this story, in the accounts of Holy Week. This is a God who, as French Enlightenment scholar Blaise Pascal tells us, loves more ardently than we ever loved our own self-seeking foulness (Pensees, p. 315). That love helps us avoid the mistakes British poet Edith Sitwell warns us and American society not to make: “I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.”
Mark E.
This reading provides detail on the ancient celebration of Passover. The people are told that the family needs to get a year-old male goat or sheep. If one’s family is too small to eat the entire animal, they are to invite the neighbors to celebrate with their family. Eat the entire animal in one setting; leftovers are forbidden. Important detail is provided about how and where to wipe the animal’s blood as well as how to prepare the meal -- right down to how the meat dish is to be roasted with the head, legs, and internal organs intact.
The pastor who decides to read this passage in its entirety on Maundy Thursday might be met at the door with questions like “Haven’t we as Christians abandoned those Old Testament practices?” and “Who cares about the history of Passover? We celebrate the Lord’s Supper, not Passover.” Someone might even ask “Why should we care about the history of anything?”
One might need to be ready to respond to that species of question by saying something like: “We study the history of things in order to better understand the present. If we don’t keep reminding ourselves of the important lessons of history, we will have to learn those lessons by trial and error in our own time. History reminds us of the great acts of God and the faithful responses of people in past generations. When we chase it into a corner and look at it closely, we can say that the study of history provides an antidote to the hubris of the present.”
R. Robert C.
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
Nine months after his coronation in 2013, Pope Francis became the most talked-about individual on Facebook. Facebook at that time had over 1.2 billion users worldwide. Religion News Service wrote, “It’s the latest sign of the influence he’s having not just on the church, but the wider culture.”
Application: The words and symbolic actions that Jesus shared at the Last Supper, and how it is still practiced today in the communion service, indicates his lasting influence on culture.
Ron L.
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
This lesson reminds us that Christians, no less than Jews, perpetually observe the Passover. On that subject John Wesley observed: “As long as we live we must continue feeding upon Christ and rejoicing in him always, with thankful mention of the great things he has done for us” (Commentary on the Bible, p. 72). We join with the Jewish community at Passover and in our celebration of the Lord’s Supper in other ways. As early African monk Macarius the Egyptian noted, just as the Hebrews having observed the Passover leave and move on, so individuals having received the Holy Spirit and eaten of Christ progress and move on into life (Pseudo-Macarius, p. 236). A good meal, the nourishment it gives, is what it takes to move on. And a banquet with a lot of people at the table is much more memorable. At the Lord’s Supper we eat a meal, celebrate a banquet that includes millions of guests from all over the world, both Christians and Jews!
Mark E.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Jesus was a master at taking the ordinary and using it for extraordinary purposes: water as metaphor for eternal life through faithfulness; the lost sheep as the lost among the faithful; the difficulty of being faithful when wealth is our idol, described as the challenge of a camel going through a needle. So it is no surprise that Jesus uses the opportunity of the Passover meal to use the Elijah cup and the bread of the people to describe what is to come.
Jesus takes bread and likens it to his soon-to-be broken body, and the cup and likens it to his soon-to-be shed blood. But the purpose of the bread and cup is to unite the faithful, to connect us in community with all the believers and followers of the Way from generations past and into the future. We are called to love one another, to share with one another, to surrender for one another in the love and faith that Jesus exemplifies. That is the Table to which we come, the call on our hearts and minds, the reminder that God is among us. That is what we celebrate and what we are called to remember.
Bonnie B.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
The stone wall encircling the tiny cemetery was broken in places. The iron gate at the entrance was beginning to rust. The grass was cut infrequently. The graves there were mostly from the late 1800s. Visitors to this memorial site were rare, so there were no flowers. That was true for every grave but one. By the stone engraved with the name RUSKIN, who’d died in 1873, was a bouquet of roses. Each week a new arrangement of flowers appeared by this old tombstone. In this forgotten sacred ground, there was a remembered memorial. Who did it? Who would come week after week to place flowers on a grave so old?
Remembering is important. Joshua, as the Israelites entered the Promised Land, was instructed to do some things so that their children’s children would remember what the Lord did. In this passage, Paul is reminding his readers and us of one of the central facets of our faith. Jesus said, “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Jesus wanted his disciples and us to remember what he was about to do. Remember the sacrifice. Remember the cross. We rejoice in the resurrection, as we should. An exclamation point emphatically proclaims “He lives!” Before the joy of the empty tomb, there is the sobering reminder of the cross and the price of sin. Remember the cross. Remember the sacrifice. Remember his death.
A woman in her mid-30s parked her car on the empty road by the old cemetery. She carried flowers. She opened the creaky gate and walked through the tall grass to the stone that read RUSKIN. She knelt down, picked up last week’s flowers, and put the new flowers next to the stone. She came each week to remember the man that had brought her family to this country; to a new life and a chance for freedom. Her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother had passed on his story. She wanted to remember him. She wanted to honor him. Remembering is important.
Bill T.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
We should remember that Paul was not present at the Last Supper -- but he believed in it. This was because he had met the Lord in person on one of his trips. Once we have met our Lord by some means -- either a miracle or a “coincidence” or some religious experience -- we also believe this story. Because we believe it we can pass it on to others, as has been done up to this very day in the communion services we attend. It should be more than the pastor who passes this on. We should also pass it on to our children so they can believe also. Most of those who believe told me some reason they had for believing -- not just because the pastor said so or because their family had followed this practice for generations.
There is one interesting difference in our communion from that Last Supper. Notice that the supper begins with the blessing of the bread, but the cup of wine only came after a dinner! Today we leave out the supper. We don’t really need it as long as we have faith that the Lord’s Supper represents a new contract or covenant with God’s people. It does not negate all the former covenants of God. It is adding a new covenant to all the rest.
It is an important proof of our faith if we continue to take this supper until he comes again.
When we were teens, sometimes our folks were called away and told us to watch out for our brothers and sisters until they got back. We knew what was coming if we were not faithful in this task. Scripture tells us what can happen to us if we are no longer faithful in the things the Lord has commanded us to do. So we have to keep our nose in God’s word to find out what we are supposed to do. That is a job that never ends!
Every week our Lord’s Supper can be a new beginning in our spiritual life. Don’t miss it!
Bob O.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
The Christian house churches were meant to replace the Roman households which converts had formerly participated in. Such households included extended family, servants, slaves, artisans, skilled laborers, and everyone else involved in the craft, manufacture, or agricultural product that supported this large group. The household gave thanks together to the sponsoring god, something that was impossible for newly minted Christians to take part in. The house churches of Corinth worked together, prayed together, and ate together. Yet in this letter Paul must address some of the barriers that prevented the people from breaking bread at the common table. In this passage, Paul emphasizes that their meals are patterned after the meal Jesus shared with his disciples. It takes place in the real world, one in which betrayers may be present, but it must not be forgotten that with the breaking of the bread we are the broken Body of Christ and that we are drinking from the cup of the New Covenant.
This meal is a remembrance -- we are like battlefield re-enactors, in that we have made ourselves a part of an ancient story. Now it is our story. We are here!
Notice that in this communion we are proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. That’s the hard part of this drama. We live the death of Jesus in our everyday living. We are the living reminder of what has happened and what is happening as well.
Frank R.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
In 1495, the noted artist Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to decorate a wall in a dining hall next to a church in Milan, Italy. He was specifically asked to create a portrait of Christ’s Last Supper with his disciples. Leonardo chose to paint the moment Christ announced that among them is a traitor. The disciples gather around Jesus. The reactions of each can be seen on their shocked faces. It took the artist more than three years to finish the project, but the result is one of the most familiar works of art in the western world.
A joke that has circulated for decades is that when da Vinci was trying to organize the scene, he instructed those portraying the disciples: “If you want in this picture, you all have to get on same side of the table with Jesus.” While somewhat irreverent, that joke is far from blasphemous. In fact, it cuts right to the heart of the Maundy Thursday message.
Our Lord is coming to the end of his earthly ministry. In order to prepare his followers for his departure from their midst, he models a life of service to them by washing their feet. He then summarizes what he expects from them by offering the mandate to love one another, for it is in loving one another that others will know that they are his disciples.
A message in this for us is that if we want to be identified in the picture as followers of Christ, we need to get on the serving, loving side of the table with Jesus.
R. Robert C.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
After being awarded the Heisman Trophy and appearing on the cover of Time magazine, Roger Staubach decided he would celebrate his notoriety. So he went to the Playboy Club and stood outside the door. You needed a special key to be admitted, and Staubach was convinced that a keyholder would invite him in. But there he stood unrecognized. Several days later he went to the theater with his family, and as he waited by the door patrons began to hand him their tickets (thinking that he was an usher). In reply to that incident his mother said, “That’ll keep you humble, Roger.”
Application: In the washing of the disciples’ feet, Jesus demonstrates to us humility.
Ron L.
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
American life is infected by the malady of self-promotion -- it is thought to be the only way to succeed. It is like John Calvin once wrote: “...every man thinks more highly of himself than he ought, and despises almost every other person” (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. XVIII/1, p. 60). All the more startling it is that Jesus lowers himself to wash someone else’s feet. This is a love that can change American life, as it sends the message that “less [of us and of self-promotion] is more [love and happiness].” God is all about doing things that don’t promote envy or proclaiming to the world how important he is. That is why Jesus comes as a member of the working class to a people who had been colonized, why God himself dies and washes his followers’ feet. He does not show off his credentials, and he does not want followers who do. Our Lord seems to teach us something like 19th-century American author Louisa May Alcott once wrote: “You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty.”
Observe and celebrate Jesus’ power in this story, in the accounts of Holy Week. This is a God who, as French Enlightenment scholar Blaise Pascal tells us, loves more ardently than we ever loved our own self-seeking foulness (Pensees, p. 315). That love helps us avoid the mistakes British poet Edith Sitwell warns us and American society not to make: “I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.”
Mark E.
