THE EUCHARIST MAKES PRESENT THE SAVING SACRIFICE OF CHRIST Fr. Steven Scherrer, MM, ThD www.dailybiblicalsermons.com Homily of Holy Thursday of the Lord s Supper, March 24, 2016 Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14, Psalm 115, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-15 Scripture quotations are from the RSV unless otherwise noted. The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me (1 Corinthians 11:23-24). Today is Holy Thursday, the day on which Jesus Christ, in the context of a Paschal meal (Luke 22:15), gave bread to his apostles, telling them, This is my body which is for you (1 Corinthians 11:24). He also told them, Do this in remembrance of me (1 Corinthians 11:24). He did the same with a cup of wine. He is giving over his body for them. This is clearly sacrificial language. He is sacrificing, giving over, giving up his body for them, for their sake, for their good. Not only was he sacrificing himself for them, but he was also setting up a sacrifice for them to continue offering after his death, in order to remember him, Do this in remembrance of me, he said to his apostles (1 Corinthians 11:24). And not only were they to do this in memory of him in general, but doing this was to be a proclamation of his death. He said, For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord s death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26). This was the institution of the Eucharist. What Jesus did at the Last Supper is what his apostles were to continue to do. They were to take bread and give it to other believers and say, This is my body which is for you (1 Corinthians 11:24). They were to do this to proclaim the Lord s death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26). Jesus words are true words. In saying, This is my body which is for you, the bread he gave them to eat was what he said it was, his body, even though it looked and seemed in every external way like bread. The reality is that it was now his body, which was sacrificed for us in his death on the cross. In fact, it was that very sacrifice which he would offer the next day on the cross.
Celebrating the Eucharist, doing this in remembrance of him, proclaims his death, because it makes his sacrificial death on the cross present for us. When we do this, his body and blood are sacrificed for our sake, for our salvation. This is why he said, This is my body which is for you. It is being offered up in sacrifice for us, for our sake, for our salvation. This is exactly what he will do the next day on the cross, offer up his body and shed his blood unto death in sacrifice for us, for our salvation. The Eucharist, the Mass, is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, on the cross, for our salvation, made present for us. Christ s sacrifice is not repeated by the Eucharist, but his one and only, unrepeatable sacrifice is made present for us, for our salvation, when we celebrate the Eucharist. That is why Jesus said that when you do this (celebrate the Eucharist) you proclaim the Lord s death (1 Corinthians 11:26). The Eucharist proclaims the Lord s death because it makes it present. We proclaim his death by making it present for the community of worshiping believers as their supreme act of worship and as the sacrifice that won redemption and forgiveness for their sins. His sacrifice on the cross, made present for us in the Mass, is our supreme act of worship, for it is the Son of God offering himself to his Father in a sacrifice of love and complete self gift; and we join ourselves to him as he makes this sacrifice and offer ourselves also to the Father in and together with his offering of himself. Hence the Mass is our supreme sacrifice, our highest act of worship. It is the sacrifice of the New Covenant, of the New Testament. It is our primary act of worship as Christians. The main reason why Christ offered this sacrifice on the cross was to atone for our sins, to overcome our alienation from God, caused by the sin of Adam and all our sins. It was to overcome death, which came into the world because of Adam s sin (Genesis 2:17; Romans 5:12), and to pay our debt of punishment which we owed God for Adam s sin and for our own sins. Jesus did this by taking our sins upon himself and suffering on the cross the just punishment due for them to pay our debt so that God could justly declare us to be henceforth righteous and acquitted and now reconciled to him and at peace with him. For our sake he [God] made him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ was loaded with our sins, and they were justly punished in him (Romans 8:3-4), on the cross (1 Peter 2:24), for our sake, so that we might be declared and made righteous. Because Christ was made to be sin by having our sins put on him, we become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). We become righteous not because of our own merits or works, but because of the reparation-making work of Christ on the cross for us. So St. Paul says, For our sake he [God] made him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). 2
Jesus made peace by the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:20), because the blood of his cross, shed in reparation for our sins, reconciles us to God by paying for us our debt of punishment we owed God for our sins but could not pay. His pain on the cross made reparation for our sins and reconciled us to God. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:19-20). We were reconciled to God by his death. And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him (Colossians 1:21-22). One man s act of righteousness (the death of Christ on the cross) reconciled us to God, paid our debt of punishment, and gives acquittal and life to all who believe in him. Then as one man s [Adam s] trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man s [Christ s] act of righteousness [his death on the cross] leads to acquittal and life for all men (Romans 5:18). Adam s sin is finally expiated, and the death it brought us is now overcome by Christ on the cross. Spiritual death is overcome, for we are now reconciled with God; and physical death is also overcome, for now, when we die, we can enter into eternal life in heaven with God, something that was not possible until Adam s sin was expiated by the death of the Son of God on the cross. Therefore as sin came into the world through one man [Adam] and death through sin, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ (Romans 5:12, 17). This is why Christ sacrificed himself on the cross, and this is why he gave us a memorial sacrifice, the Eucharist, which makes the once for all, one and only, unrepeatable sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross present for us believers for our salvation and redemption. And this sacrifice makes all the difference in our life. It removes our guilt and depression for our sins. As today s liturgy says, Christ is the one who brought us out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of tyranny into an eternal kingdom (Melito of Sardis, Office of Readings, Holy Thursday). Jesus was crucified during Passover time, and he instituted the Eucharist at a Passover supper (Luke 22:15). In doing so, he fulfilled what the Paschal lamb symbolized. The lamb was sacrificed and its blood was put on the door posts of the Israelites houses in Egypt to save them from the plague of the death of their firstborn. 3
Jesus fulfilled the role of the Passover lamb. He was the Lamb of God, sacrificed to take away the sin of the world (see John 1:29). His blood, shed on the cross, saves us from our sins and from death, which is the result of sin, because his suffering and death on the cross made reparation for our sins that satisfied divine justice on our behalf. As the blood of the Paschal lamb saved the Israelites from the plague of death of their firstborn, so the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3), made reparation for them and thereby propitiated divine justice on our behalf, for he is the one whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith (Romans 3:25 NKJV). And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world (1 John 2:2 NKJV). In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10 NKJV). Therefore, in all things He had to be made like his brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people (Hebrews 2:17 NKJV). And it is God himself who gave us this sacrifice of propitiation to offer to him as our act of worship, for he did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all (Romans 8:32). Jesus did this on the cross and is now in heaven where he intercedes for us before the Father by presenting to him his blood that he shed in reparation for our sins. It is precisely this act of reparation on the cross that propitiates God. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:11-12). Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own; for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:25-26). The Divine Office of yesterday and today is filled with references to the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins. He took all our sins upon himself and asked forgiveness for our offenses (Wednesday, Vespers, second antiphon). In Christ we have found deliverance; through his blood the forgiveness of our sins (ibid., third antiphon). He gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2, ibid., chapter). By your own blood, Lord, you brought us back to God (Thursday, Lauds, response). He freely gave himself up in sacrifice (ibid. Terce, response). God made Christ s sacrificial death the means of expiating the sins of all believers (ibid., Office of Readings, second response). 4
Indeed, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace (Ephesians 1:7). 5