A, Maundy Thursday - John 13:15–17,34 "Holy or Hardhearted Passover"

John 13:15–17,34 (ESV)  For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.  Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.  If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

God always seeks to save humanity.  His focus is on life.  God’s intention to bring life to us, is his work of redemption.  For his work to be effective in the lives of those called as his church, it depends on one’s response to the salvation he seeks to give! 

Having been made holy by the blood of Jesus spilt on the cross, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, if one responds with holiness, this is allowing the Holy Spirit to generate faith within.  So, the person humbles their heart and lives a life of repentance.   This life gives the freedom to confess one’s sin and forgive others knowing this pleases God our Father. 

All these are a participation in the good works of holiness, as the Holy Spirit wills within each the desire to be what God has recreated his reborn to be.  “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10 ESV)

Those who know this, allow the Holy Spirit to bring them to confession, believe in their absolution, and are blessed.  Forgiven, one can forgive!  Loved, one can love as Jesus loves!

However, some do not respond positively to God’s work of salvation in sending Jesus to the cross.  They reject it outright, claiming they are good, not evil, and don’t need God’s work.

Then there are those who appear to hear and believe God’s work of salvation, but when push comes to shove, they do not allow the Holy Spirit to bring their human spirit to repentance in the blood of Jesus Christ. 

These two groups, those who reject Jesus Christ completely, and those who reject the Holy Spirit bringing them to Jesus Christ, participate in the works of hardheartedness and are not blessed. Without receiving forgiveness, one cannot forgive.  Without receiving Jesus’ love, one cannot love as Jesus loves!

In the lead up to the initial Passover in Egypt, Pharaoh stands as one whose heart is hardened. 

God gives room for Pharaoh to change his mind and repent.  But each time the hardness returns Pharaoh back to his original state of being. 

But Pharaoh, who stubbornly considered himself the earthly representation of the Egyptian sun god Ra, was no match against God our Father, who spoke through the seemingly weak and flawed mouth of Moses.

In fact, in Moses, God was using the weak things of the world to shame the wise and powerful, so God’s almighty glory would shine all the more.

God made Moses like God to Pharaoh.  (Ex 7:1)  But God also makes Pharaoh hardhearted so he would not listen to Moses.  Moses spoke with “uncircumcised lips”.  (Ex 6:30)  In other words, he did not speak with eloquent ability so Pharaoh might be persuaded by gifted rhetoric. 

God made this inarticulate Israelite like God to Pharaoh, so that God’s glory would shine all the more brightly over the hardhearted Pharaoh as Egypt descends deeper into darkness.  Each time Moses approached Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s retreat to hardness became easier and stronger. 

Like Pharaoh, all who resist God, do so each successive time, with greater ease and increased hardheartedness.  The stakes become so high, one completely rejects God in favour of one’s own goodness and godliness.

Judas Iscariot, unlike Pharaoh, believed in God.  However, he believed for his own advantage.  Like Pharaoh he too was hardhearted.  Over time, as Jesus neared Jerusalem and the cross, Judas became more distant from Jesus Christ.  Like the increase of Pharaoh’s heart being hardened in each successive plague, so too was Judas’ heart, as Jesus did less and less in being the Messiah Judas expected. 

Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, of which Judas was one.  And after dipping the morsel of bread and giving it to Judas, Satan enters him and Jesus says,  “What you are going to do, do quickly!” (John 31:27)  After Judas took the bread and ate it, he left to betray Jesus.  The Gospel of John records after he left, “It was night.”  (Jn 13:30) 

Judas, like true believers, knew, but unlike true followers, did not want to do what the Master was doing.  In his hardheartedness, he sought to bless himself in what he was doing and entered the darkness of eternal death in doing so! 

Judas and Pharaoh stand together in their hardheartedness and life passes over them.  Their love was for themselves, and not as the love God had for sinful humanity.

Thousands of years apart, these events begin and end the old covenant Passover!  The alpha and omega of Passovers.  The first and the last of effective Passovers!  Now, Jesus Christ has absorbed the Passover in his death and gives us life in the Holy Spirit by his resurrection.

Death did not pass over Pharaoh, Judas, and Jesus.  Whose love out of the three is worth following to receive life?  The new mandate from where we get the name, Maundy Thursday, is to love as Jesus has loved us.  For us to love as Jesus has loved us, we need to be washed and forgiven!  Unless Jesus washes us and gives us his Holy Spirit we have no share with him – no salvation and no ability to love as Jesus loves!  (Jn 13:8)

Jesus’ mandate is a clear warning to all in the church to continue allowing God the Holy Spirit to bring us to God the Son, so what was won on the cross does not pass over us!

God our Father is patient with us, but testing his patience is dangerous.  Do we wish to place ourselves in a position of hardheartedness, where we have passed the point of no return, and contribute to our final destruction?  As did Pharaoh and Judas?  Just as the Lord made a distinction between Israel and Egypt in the Passover, those who persist in their defiance and pride in resisting the Holy Spirit will be plagued with death and won’t be passed onto eternal life with God our Father.

God seeks to glorify Lutherans in Australia who follow and listen to him.  He wishes to bestow upon all believers in Jesus Christ, life.  Because of our sinful human nature, we would return to being like Pharaoh or Judas, if, after receiving Jesus Christ we did not receive the Holy Spirit, to engender faith within and continually gather us and return us to Jesus Christ.  God wants to pass over us with eternal death, so we are passed onto eternal life, this is why we receive the Holy Spirit.

The Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand is an organisation in which God’s church exists as a part of God’s kingdom.  But it depends on how those in the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand (LCANZ) respond to his work of love, which saves and makes each individual holy.  In short, you need Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, for you to be at peace with God the Father.

For the best part of twenty years the LCANZ has been asking if we should ordain women along with men.  Five times we have prayed and voted.  God has said,  “No”, through the vote, upholding what he says to us in his Word.

After each vote there has been increased hardheartedness towards God saying, “No”!  With ease new motions are put to synod, with increasing desire and deception, God’s love is being redefined to that of the world’s definition of love and equality.  In equalling ourselves to God, we have not humbled ourselves, confessed, received forgiveness, and sought to love others as Jesus has loved us.

Plagued by renewed motions of disobedience against what God has intended through our prayerful votes, the LCANZ is now in a dangerous position as we gravitate the way of hardheartedness, grieving the Holy Spirit, and putting our holiness in jeopardy.  If we walk out on God’s will, we can expect the night of darkness just as Judas did!

Jesus is our example, despite not having a hard heart, he put his divinity aside, and entrusted his human spirit to the Holy Spirit.   We are understudies of his humility, so we might receive and live in his holiness.

The men who wilfully allow disobedience to happen in our church do so to their detriment.  God cuts to the core of our existence, dealing with life and death.  When Pharaoh was judged by God, it was the oldest males who died in the Passover.  If God was about equality as the world defines it, the oldest females would have died too. 

So too called male leaders will be judged who seek to subvert the male office of Christ’s love and servanthood, with a love that is self-centred and hardhearted.  Just as throughout history all men called into the ordained ministry in God’s church have been accountable to the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Pray for the LCANZ, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” (Hebrews 13:17a ESV)

Let the Holy Spirit bring us all back to the foot of the Cross, and live peacefully in God’s forgiveness, with God’s words of caution, “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”  (Hebrews 10:26–27, 31 ESV)

Let us pray.  Lord God Holy Spirit soften our hearts, help us receive forgiveness, believe forgiveness, and share Christ’s forgiveness with each other, so we might not only receive your bread for today, but having passed over death, receive it from you at the table of the Father’s eternal feast forever.  Amen.