Maundy Thursday Communion Service (with meal)
At the beginning of the meal the person leading the service says;
Jesus and his disciples
had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of the Passover.
The Passover was a
weeklong celebration in the capital city, where they remembered the time when,
through God's guidance, Moses brought them out of captivity in Egypt, the
sacrificial lambs were brought to the temple, because, in the time of the
Exodus, the blood of lambs was used as a marker on the doors so that the angel
of death would pass over those houses.
As part of the celebration
Jesus and his disciples joined together in a traditional meal in an upper room
that they had hired for the occasion. A meal of thanksgiving for their freedom
Let us raise a cup to
freedom; to freedom
We raise our thanks to the
father of creation; Thanks be to God, amen.
Song: STF 410/H&P 774 Lord Thy/Your Church on Earth is Seeking
©Hugh Sherlock (1905-1998)
But their freedom was not complete;
it was temporary and rooted in earthly promises.
A new promise was to be
made here in this room by Jesus. Moses, great though he was, was only a man,
speaking the words of God. But Jesus was God in human form;
And on the night before Jesus
died, in that upper room he took the bread and broke it and gave it to his
disciples saying something like this, take this and eat it, imagine that this
is my body which is being broken for you.
And as we share this bread
we may share these words;
In the breaking of this
bread we are broken;
Like the body of Christ; we
are broken
As we share in his self
sacrifice; So we are remade in the image of God
We share
together in the meal and the bread shared out becomes part of that meal
During the
meal the following readings are read by various people;
Exodus 12:1-14 (NIV)
Psalm 116:13-14 (NIV)
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
(NIV)
Mark 14:23-26 (NIV)
John 13:3-11, 15-17, 34
(NIV)
At the end of the meal the person
leading the service says;
In the days of Leviticus
when the priests made animal sacrifices, the priests would say that no one
should drink the blood, because it contained the spirit of the animal. The
spirit of the animal was poured out for the sins of the people. When Jesus
offered himself as sacrifice on the cross, he declared an end to the sacrifice
because his spirit was poured out for the forgiveness of all sins for all time.
For this was not the spirit of one of God's creatures, but the spirit of God
himself being poured out for all people.
Knowing what was about to
happen, at the end of the meal he took the cup and gave it to his disciples
saying something on the lines of; drink from it all of you and as you do,
imagine that this is my blood which is about to be poured out for you, to seal
the new promise which God is making with all people.
The wine is
poured from a central cup into small cups which are passed around the table
This is God's spirit
poured out. It is freely poured out for all. Amen
We all drink
from the cups
And Jesus told them to do
this whenever they met to remember him. Do what, I wonder?
Well John tells us that
after the meal Jesus washed their feet, and insisted that they washed each
other's feet, a humble act of service. It is above all things our call to serve
each other as Christ has served us and to serve those who have not yet known
Christ, just as once we did not know Christ.
We serve each other and
the world in the breaking and in the pouring.
We do this in
remembrance of Jesus
Song:
CMP162/STF272 From heaven you came
© Graham Kendrick 1983
It may well have been
customary to end such a meal with the agreement to meet again in Jerusalem next
year at the Passover, but having previously told them that he was the vine and
they were his branches, he simply said 'I won't have the chance to share in the
fruits of this vine until I see you again in the Kingdom.' amen
We all leave
in silence
