This sermon was first delivered on a Maundy Thursday evening in a small village church practically in the shadow of Mount Ararat on the plains of Armenia.
(Read Luke 22:14-15 and Psalm 118: 22-24)
Jesus greatly desired to eat this Passover together with his disciples. This should amaze us. Jesus clearly knew that this was his last supper, that right after this supper come indescribable sufferings and agony. Who could look forward to that, or to anything leading to that? Jesus perfectly understood that the world was about to completely reject him, that soon he would be crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And yet Jesus says, “I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before my suffering.” How can this be?
In the book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 55, verses eight and nine, it says: God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways.... But as the skies are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
We can apply these words to all people, with the exception of only one: Jesus Christ. Jesus’ thoughts were, in fact, God’s thoughts and his ways God’s ways. Jesus’ desire and will were one with the Heavenly Father’s. And what exactly is the Heavenly Father’s desire? That all might be saved. “For God so loved the world...”, proclaims the Scripture. And Jesus also so loved the world, that he thirsted, he longed for the completion of redemption, regardless of the fact that redemption happened to cost him the highest price of all.
You remember how Jesus once said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I long for it to be fulfilled!” That clearly tells us how much Jesus shared one will, one heart and desire with his Father – the desire to save a perishing humanity and restore it to free relationship with God. And so it is with complete sincerity that Jesus says, “I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you....”
In America you might hear people say, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every day were Christmas?” Or perhaps, “For the believer, every day is Easter!” People say things like this because these are joyful, delightful, celebratory holidays. But it’s interesting that you’d never hear anyone say, “Oh, how I wish every day were Good Friday!”.
But if it weren’t for Good Friday, if it weren’t for the cross, then there’d be no Christmas, no Easter, no reason to rejoice, no Gospel at all.
The psalmist says, “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” So what day is it exactly he’s talking about? It’s the day of salvation. “This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our sight.” What exactly is it the Lord did which is so marvelous, so miraculous in our sight? He made Christ the cornerstone of salvation, the very center of His overflowingly benevolent design and intention towards us. This is definitely a marvel, a wonder. But what did it take? The psalmist goes on, “The stone which the builders rejected....” Without the rejection, there would be no cornerstone, no new day of salvation, nothing to rejoice and be glad about. For Jesus, the scorn and agony and dying had to take first place. And it is right on the edge, on the verge of this living nightmare that Jesus says, “How I longed to have this Passover meal with you....” This is the ultimate love, the true love that resounds across time and space to every human heart and gives itself without limit.
Isaiah 53:10 says, “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer.” For our well-being the Lord saw fit to do this. Who can comprehend love like that? It’s not for us to comprehend, but we can believe, we can receive, and we can offer ourselves back to this very love.
And when we love him, we accept not only his love but his sufferings, too. And his sufferings transform our lives. When we resist sin, the sufferings of Christ strengthen us, as the apostle Peter said (read 1 Peter 4:1).
The sufferings of Christ comfort us, as the apostle Paul said, (read 2 Corinthians 1:5).
His sufferings are close to us in our hope of the future, as Paul said in Philippians (read Phil. 3:10), and as Peter also said, (read 1 Peter 4:13).
Jesus told his disciples, “I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before my sufferings.” Do we desire to eat this Passover with him? Are we willing to turn away from anything the world might offer us in order to embrace the sufferings of Christ? Are his sufferings more precious to us than any of the pleasures of sin? Are we ready to die with him, in order to live with him? Will we accept that great love he holds out to us? And the last question: are we ready to take the body and blood of Christ, uniting ourselves to him, and then to get up from the table and follow him out there, to where he’s going, to the garden, to the scorn and torture, to the crucifixion and the tomb, and to resurrection?
If we’re ready, then let’s prepare our hearts, cleanse our consciences and ask the Lord to make it so that our thoughts are more and more like His thoughts and our ways more and more like His ways, so that we might be able to grasp deeper and deeper all the time just what it really means that “the stone which the builders rejected has been made the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our sight. It is the Lord who made this day; let’s rejoice and be glad in it!”
