Devotion 170 – Maundy Thursday (Evening)

Opening Prayer

Lord, wash us and clothe us and make us worthy guests at Your Table. Amen.

Text: First Corinthians 11:23–29

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes. Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.

Devotion

Among the things the Lord shared with Paul by revelation was also the instruction about the Holy Supper. How important and significant this Sacrament is! It was instituted in the most solemn night of the Lord’s life on earth, and after His ascension He instructed Paul about it, when He calls him to be an Apostle. All the same words He used at the institution, He repeats to Paul. Exactly what the other Apostles shared from that night, Paul shared from his meeting with the Lord. Let us understand that the Holy Supper is of more importance for our Christian life than words can express, and let us regard it and use it thus!

It was this Thursday evening that He sat with His disciples in the room in Jerusalem. He had already offered Himself and was already anointed as One who had already died for our sins. Yet before His death, on this night when He ate the Passover with them, He wanted to institute the Sacrament which gives us His body and blood to eat and drink and which transports us to the time and place of His sacrificial death. In the hour of His death it must be done, that we may not only receive His body and blood, which He sacrificed for us, but may also sit at the altar on which the sacrifice was made, and proclaim the Lord’s death. “Then He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, saying: Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you. In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” The Passover Lamb was a striking picture of Jesus. Here there must be more than a picture and sign, and the Lord’s words expressly say: This is My body. With divine power He gives the disciples His glorified and heavenly body, while He still sits there in the form of a Servant. And with His almighty Word He commands that the bread and wine of the Sacrament shall always communicate to us this His body and blood.

As surely as Jesus Christ is truthful and almighty, so certainly “the Sacrament of the Altar is the true body and true blood of Jesus Christ under the bread and wine.”1 Yet just as the bread does not merely symbolize Christ’s body, neither does it cease to be bread and instead become the Lord’s body. No, when you eat the bread of the Supper, the Lord gives You His body in the consecrated bread. He makes no mention of the bread. Just as when you give a sick person healing and strengthening drops, you call it medicine and not water, even though you give it to him in water. Because Christ’s body and blood are united with the bread and wine in the Supper, Paul says: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” What a precious thing this Sacrament is! It also stands immovable until the end of time, and the Christians who use it proclaim thereby that Christ, God’s Son, died and lives and shall come again in glory.

Believers nowadays go to the Lord’s Table all too seldom. The ancient Christians used the Supper much more often. Don’t we really need to be strengthened in faith, to be refreshed in love, to be confirmed in hope, to come near to Jesus, to taste His heavenly sweetness, to remember powerfully His death, to be led deeper into the fellowship of His sufferings, to be joined more closely with one another in holy brotherly love, to be inflamed with the zeal to witness, in short, that Christ take shape in us? O how we need this! Then, dear brethren in the Lord, go to the Altar more often than you have before. Jesus is closer to us there than anywhere else here below. There He meets you. There He gives Himself to you. There you are with Him in that night of suffering and death. There you enter the fire of love and it enters you, for “whoever eats My flesh,” He Himself said: “and drinks My blood remains in me and I in him.” Blessed Meal, where I may receive my Lord Jesus! Heavenly feast of joy on earth! I will seek you often.

Now, since the Supper is the Lord’s body and blood by the power of the Lord’s Word, so that all, both believers and unbelievers who eat and drink there, in truth eat and drink Jesus’ holy body and blood, it is therefore so extremely important to examine oneself. The Spirit of God testifies that you will be guilty of the Lord’s body and blood if you eat it unworthily! You assault the Lord Himself. You betray Him, you give Him the kiss of Judas, you crucify Him and blaspheme Him, – you eat and drink to your judgment! For God’s sake examine yourself. He shall give you enlightenment for this. But if you recognize yourself as truly unworthy and desire from the heart to be cleansed from sin, and believe that the gifts of the Supper are Jesus’ body and blood, then you are prepared. Don’t stay away, as do many who despise the Lord’s command, when He says: “Do this in remembrance of Me!”

Closing Prayer

God, help us to eat Your Supper often and rightly and to be strengthened in faith, assured of grace, and to come to the eternal inward communion with You and all the saints. Keep us from using the Supper to our judgment. Forgive us all our sins against the Supper. Let Your Spirit, as often as we come, help us across time and space to sit with You among the Twelve in the upper room in Jerusalem that Maundy Thursday night, and there forget all else and taste only Your love. Amen.

Hymn

My heart to You I gladly bring,
So sorely wounded by my sin,
And healing find in that great tide
That flows from out Your wounded side.

Today I am my Savior’s guest;
My soul, consider this great feast;
He bids you now to sit at meat
With Him—and of Himself to eat.

Here tenders He in form of bread
His body, which for you did bleed;
And in the wine His royal blood,
Of grace, a precious purple flood.

Eat, drink, and in your heart be glad
For such food angels never had;
And for the cup your Lord now thank,
Which heaven’s angels never drank.

I trust and know what I obtain
Is far above my mind’s domain.
My Jesus here entire and whole
Is food and drink for my poor soul.

Look earthward, angels, now with me
And honor this great mystery,
That Jesus, set at God’s right hand,
Is here in bond of testament.

In heav’nly gladness dwells our Head,
Yet is He here in this blest bread.
There dwells He in his power divine,
Yet gives Himself in this blest wine.

How this can be I do not know;
He has not willed the way to show;
Such streams my reason ought not ford;
I only need to trust His Word.