Sharing Love, Seeking Justice: Maundy Thursday

April 17, 2025

Welcome to our 2025 series of Holy Week devotionals, a gift from New Brunswick Theological Seminary, eight days of devotions leading to the Feast of the Resurrection.

Maundy Thursday

The Lord’s Supper

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord.  _{Exodus 12:1-4, 11, NRSVue}

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  _{1 Corinthians 11:23-26 NRSVue}

The Hebrews had waited for more than 400 years for God to respond to their cries. Crushed under the weight of Egyptian bondage the people waited for deliverance. God would rescue a baby who would rescue God’s people—Moses, the one drawn from the Nile River. God would use Moses to triumph over a hard-hearted pharaoh. God would use Moses to gain the release of God’s people. Ten plagues would devastate Egypt before Pharoah let God’s people go. As the people prepared to leave the land of bondage, they would inaugurate the first Passover where a slain lamb, and its blood, would mark a meal and a message. A meal of unleavened bread and lamb eaten hastily at midnight, a symbol of God’s Passover, the night God delivered the people from Pharoah’s hand by passing over every house that had the lamb’s blood over its doorposts.

Many centuries later, descendants of the Exodus found themselves also waiting for a deliverer, one who would free them from the yoke of Roman oppression. And, once again, God would send a deliverer, not to save the people from human aggression, but to save them and all who would come after them from themselves. The incarnate Christ would enter this world as a baby, live with and among the people. He would seek and save the lost, set captures free, bind the brokenhearted – save them (and us) from sin. The people wanted a warrior, but God sent a Savior. And as his earthly ministry came to its destined end, he too would share a meal and a message with his disciples, where they would partake in a different Passover, a final meal to mark the slaying of another lamb, God’s only son – Jesus, the Lamb of God.

On Maundy Thursday, we the people of God remember and commemorate the Passover over, the institution of the Lord’s last supper, Jesus’s last night with his disciples. Just as Jesus invited his disciples to share in this last meal with him, we too are invited to sit at the table. We too are invited to examine ourselves. We too are invited to remember his sacrifice and ask ourselves where and what sacrifices we can make on behalf of others. Jesus will be crucified the next day following that meal. We observe Maundy Thursday during Holy Week so that we never forget that a meal preceded a message – a message of God’s love and God’s sacrifice.

– Terry Ann Smith
  Associate Dean of Certificate Program
  Associate Professor of Biblical Studies

Prayer:
              This Maundy Thursday we express our sincere gratitude
              to join with others who will remember and commemorate the Lord’s Supper,
              your last meal before you would fulfill your purposes on this earth—to save us.
              Thank you, God, for your sacrifice that continues to bear witness
              to your love for all humanity as we remember what the Lord’s Supper represents,
              your broken body and your shed blood,
              reminded that each time we partake of it,
              we commemorate your death until you return.
              In the name of our Christ, we pray. Amen.