Tag Archives: Maundy Thursday

Acts 13:38-39: A Holy Week Meditation

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Toward the end of the sermon Luke gives Paul in the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia we hear “Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” (Act 13:38-39 NRSV) The theme of forgiveness of sins is common in Acts; what’s Paul (Luke) talking about in v.39?

Fitzmyer’s commentary (1998) confirms that this is an old question. “It is sometimes said that Luke is here introducing a nuance, so that he makes Paul declare that the Mosaic Law would justify people from some things but not from all…it may be a misreading of Luke to insist on that nuance, as some interpreters have done” (pp.518-519). OK, if that’s not what Luke is doing, what is Luke doing?

Perhaps Lohfink’s chapter “Dying for Israel” in his Jesus of Nazareth (2012) is relevant. The people’s leadership’s decisive rejection of God’s eschatological messenger has created a new situation—and we’re off the Mosaic map (no paragraph that starts “Should you happen to murder God’s eschatological messenger, prepare these sacrifices…”). Recalling one of Jesus’ thinly veiled parables as recorded in Luke, after the vineyard tenants kill the owner’s “beloved son,” the owner “will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others” (20:16). If that’s the context/situation, the possibility of forgiveness becomes the question.

Nor is this simply a Jewish question. Pilate is our stand-in, equally culpable despite his clumsy attempt to distance himself from the whole affair (“So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted” (Luk 23:24).

The evening before, as Luke records:

“Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’” (22:19-20)

And here I pass the mic to Lohfink: “Therefore in this moment Jesus and Israel were faced with an entirely new situation, and that new situation demanded a new interpretation. To argue that Jesus never spoke before about his blood, about substitution and atonement, is not to the point. It assumes that the existence of individuals and of nations is carried on outside history. But the new interpretation Jesus gives in this very moment when the people of God is at the point of squandering its election for the sake of the world does not happen just anywhere and at any time. It happens at the Passover meal, at one of the holiest hours of the Jewish year. Jesus interprets his death as a final and definitive saving decree of God. Israel’s guilt, concentrated in Jesus’ death, is thus answered by God: he does not withdraw election from his people but instead truly allows that people to live, even though it has forfeited its life. That is precisely what the Bible means by ‘atonement’” (p.261).

Bread, Wine, Feet (Maundy Thursday, 4/17/2025)

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Readings

Passover. Our first reading marks its beginning. It celebrates the Lord’s power to save, to make a way where there is no way. It celebrates this God as champion of liberty, enemy of slavery. And here we are tonight, remembering how Jesus observed Passover that night.

Jesus did at least two things. He reinterpreted two of Passover’s symbols, the bread and the wine, to point to his coming death. Liberty, passing from slavery into freedom, demands more than defeating the current human Pharaoh. The underlying problem: our ancestral rebellion and distrust of God, and Jesus’ death deals with that. So, at every Eucharist, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”

That, it turns out, is the easy part. The harder part: changing our behavior so that we stop acting like little Pharaohs at every opportunity. So Jesus starts washing their feet and caps it with “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

“This is my body that is for you.… This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” “You also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Two sides of the same coin.

What’s going on here? Toward the end of the Gospel reading we heard “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Washing each other’s feet, leaving behind the endless competition for status: that’s finally about love. As is, for that matter, “This is my Body; this is my Blood.” As the Gospel of John says elsewhere “God so loved the world…”

Toward the end of the Song of Songs we hear “Set me as a seal upon your heart, / as a seal upon your arm; / for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave” (8:6a). Pharaoh’s kingdom is powered by death; only love will defeat it.

Maundy Thursday

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The Readings: Lamentations 2:10-18; 1 Corinthians 10:14-17; 11:27-32; Mark 14:12-25

This Maundy Thursday the last two readings focus on the Lord’s Supper.

I’ve extended the second reading for the sake of this exhortation: “Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” From the context it’s reasonably clear that Paul isn’t exhorting the hearers to confession before communion or to a proper eucharistic theology. At this time the Lord’s Supper was still part of a shared meal, and what horrifies Paul is that everyone is, so to speak, eating out of their own picnic basket, with the pride and callousness of the well-to-do on full display. And the one Body, Christ’s Body, the Church (1 Cor 10:17), suffers. In Israel some congruence was necessary between what happened in the temple and what happened outside the temple (e.g., Isa 1:10-17); in the Church some congruence between the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ at the Lord’s Supper and the ways all the members of Christ’s Body receive (treat) each other.

“Do this in remembrance of me.” “Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of human greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold…” (Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, 744).

But this week? Earlier this month Fr. Chris Arnold pointed us to Rev. Ruth Meyers’ “Spiritual Communion in a Season of Social Distancing”. Meyers notes various current strategies, highlighting the prayer for spiritual communion found in the Prayer Book for the Armed Services:

“In union, O Lord, with your faithful people at every altar of your Church, where the Holy Eucharist is now being celebrated, I desire to offer to you praise and thanksgiving. I remember your death, Lord Christ; I proclaim your resurrection; I await your coming in glory. Since I cannot receive you today in the Sacrament of your Body and Blood, I beseech you to come spiritually into my heart. Cleanse and strengthen me with your grace, Lord Jesus, and let me never be separated from you. May I live in you and you in me, in this life and in the life to come. Amen.”

Another reason why I’m thankful for our Companion Diocese in Masvingo (Zimbabwe).