Maundy Thursday April 18, 2019
Maundy Thursday
April 18, 2019
“Is God Real? The Real Jesus Gives His Real Body and Blood”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Over the next four days and four sermons (tonight, Good Friday, and two Easter morning), we’ll be answering a universal problem that all people deal with, “Is God real?” There’s no doubt that God seems to be absent and remote in much of life. We don’t see Him and touch Him the way we see and touch each other. You and I have all had times where we’ve questioned, “Is God truly there? How do I know for sure?”
The reason that we have these doubts so often is because we look for God in the wrong places. And one of those biggest places we look for God is in our emotions. We look to “feel” God. If somebody says, “Is God real?” we think the answer is something along the lines of, “Yes, He’s real because I feel Him.” What we mean, of course, is that our emotions are telling us God is real. We feel happy or peaceful at Church so God must be real. We feel joy when we think of God so He must be real. We feel that everything always works out so God must be real. We saw some little sign in our lives and felt God was with us. This kind of thing.
But emotions are fickle and easily manipulated. One minute we might feel good and the next minute feel terrible. One minute feel God is there and then next feel that He couldn’t possibly exist. Feelings are no measure for God. Now Holy Week services do appeal to our emotions such as the solemn and dark service of Good Friday tomorrow or the bright and musical services of Easter morning. Yet we don’t judge that God is there just because we feel something. God isn’t found in feelings.
Yet people continue to search for Him there. It’s called mysticism and it’s alive and well today. Yoga is mysticism. It’s trying to find God in our inner feelings. Meditation and mindfulness is all mysticism. It’s trying to find God in the spirit and emotions. There are whole “churches” (somebody gave me an article recently about one in Minnesota) where the people simply get together to meditate, fine tune their inner emotions, and achieve “mindfulness”. Search for meditation church online and see how many you find.
So we don’t want to be led astray by mysticism. The devil works on our emotions as well. You can trust them. And the Christian faith doesn’t ask you to trust your feelings to find God. In fact, we could go even further and say that the Christian faith doesn’t even ask you to trust your mind and reason to find God. The Christian faith is fundamentally different from all other religions and spiritualities—we don’t go to find God; He comes and finds us.
When we ask the question over the next four days, “Is God real?” the answer is, ‘Yes. He is Jesus.” Jesus isn’t somebody you go looking for in your emotions. Jesus is a real, living, flesh and blood person—as real as you and me.
If you go back to the Old Testament, before Jesus was conceived and born, God showed He was real in all kinds of ways. “In many and various ways God spoke to His people of old by the prophets.” Many and various ways like a burning bush to Moses, like fire and brimstone from heaven to Sodom and Gomorrah, like dreams to Joseph. These folks knew God was real. Often times God just spoke directly to people like Abraham or Moses or Joshua or Samuel. Do you think the Israelites said, “Is God real?” when they wake up every morning and find manna on the ground for them to eat? Do you think they walked through the waters of the Red Sea on dry ground and said, “Hmm, I wonder if God is real?”
They had their own problems—like listening to God and obeying Him. But questioning if He was real or not wasn’t always their problem, except in those times when God stayed away from them because He was angry with them. Now those many and various ways God spoke to His people was from of old. But now? “Now, in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son.”
God wants you to know He’s real. He’s not trying to hide from you. He’s not playing games with you or testing you to see if you can feel Him or make sense of Him. God wants you to know He’s real. That’s why He came down to earth and entered the womb of the Virgin Mary. That’s why He was born and why shepherds and Wise Men came to visit Him and hold Him and google over Him.
That’s why He taught crowds and fed thousands and healed people and cast out demons. God wants you to know He’s real. Now Jesus knew that that specific 33 years of His life here on earth was coming to an end. On the night when He was betrayed, this night, He got together for the Passover meal with His disciples in the Upper Room and told them He was leaving.
He was leaving but He wasn’t really leaving. That’s was His theme over and over and over. He was leaving but He wasn’t leaving. They wouldn’t see Him anymore the way they had previously seen Him. But He would still be with them. He wouldn’t leave them as orphans. He would send them the Holy Spirit. And if they kept His Word then the Father and the Son would come and make their home with them.
So right now, in 2019, Jesus isn’t here the exact way that He was here for 33 years when He walked on this earth. But, in many and various ways, God speaks to you and me through His Son. The many and various ways are His Word and Sacraments. That’s where you look for God. And that’s where you know He’s real. Is God real? Yes, He is Jesus. And He comes to us in His Word and Sacraments.
And tonight we look at one of those very specific ways that Jesus comes to you and you know He’s real. And that’s in His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper.
Now even here in the Lord’s Supper we often look for God in our emotions. We come up here and kneel and think we should “feel” God’s presence with us. But God never said that. Jesus never said that. He didn’t say, “Take and eat, and you will feel that I am with you when you do this in remembrance of Me. You will feel My presence.” No, He didn’t say that.
Many churches today teach that Jesus’ body and blood aren’t really here. That it’s just bread and wine. When you do that, then the only judgment you have left is your feelings and your spirit. So when you take Communion they teach that your spirit goes up to be with Jesus in heaven. Do you see what’s happening there? It finding God in your emotions. In your spirit. And emotions are shaky ground for finding God.
That’s not what Jesus said. That’s not what He wants for us. He wants to come to us and for us to know He is real. “Take and eat, this is My body.” I said earlier that we can’t see or touch God. But that’s not totally true. In the Lord’s Supper we see and touch and taste God. Jesus wanted His disciples and you to have a concrete place where they would know He’s real, where He would find them and give them forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit. And He said that it’s right here in this bread and wine.
And if you say, “Well, how can I know that’s real?” Because Jesus is real, that’s how. The same Jesus who healed diseases and calmed storms and fed thousands and rose from the dead on Easter morning—that Jesus said that this bread is His body and this wine is His blood. You know it’s real because Jesus is real and His Word is true.
So we do this tonight again in remembrance of Him. On this very night when He spoke to His disciples some 1,986 years ago (or very close to that), we come up to this altar to know that God is real. He is Jesus. The Jesus who died and rose for you. And if He’s real, then you know what that means. If He’s real, then that means you are really loved. That means you are really forgiven here in His body and blood. That means you really have peace.
And, finally, that means He really goes inside of you and lives in you. And that brings me to my last simple point. Jesus was very adamant on this night that the job of His disciples was to go and serve others the way He had served them. To love others the way He had loved them. He washes their feet to give them an example.
How will other people know that God is real? When you leave this altar with Jesus living in you and you go and serve and love others. They will see that there’s something different about you and they’ll want to know what it is. And you will tell them the difference is Jesus. That you serve a real and living God. And they’ll say, “But how do you know God’s real?” Simple. He is Jesus.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.