Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Maundy Thursday Service: In a Moment Like This

Pastor Phillips’ Sermon

Maundy Thursday Service, March 20, 2008

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Tonight is a night of remembrance, a night when we reflect back on all those things that Jesus endured, how they celebrated the Passover, how He spoke with such solemnity giving them words to remember and hang onto and the different things that took place. He washed the feet of the disciples. They celebrated that special meal, the Lord’s Supper. How they went out to the garden, how Judas betrayed Him.

One of the most compelling characters in this story, though, is Peter. Tonight, I’m going to take a few moments to try to get into the mind of Peter and to portray him in what he must have been thinking that night. We find him after all of the night’s events had taken place and he’s by himself and he’s agonizing over the denial of Jesus which he had just committed. “How could I forget?” he laments. “After all we’ve been through together, how could I forget and deny Him like that?” “How could I forget the first time that I saw Jesus? My brother and I, we were fishermen and we were throwing our nets out into the lake and we were pulling them back hoping to catch enough fish to feed ourselves and maybe provide a little income for our family and then, all of a sudden, Jesus was standing there on the shore and He called out to us, ‘Come, follow me,’ and we knew. I don’t know how we knew but we knew in our hearts that it was the right thing to do. So we just put aside our nets and went with Him.”

“How could I forget? How could I forget that time when my mother-in-law was really sick and she had that terrible fever? She couldn’t get out of bed and Jesus came to my house and He went right up to her and He touched her and immediately the fever left her and she got up and served us dinner. But it didn’t stop there. That whole evening, people were bringing their friends and family members and their neighbors, anyone who was sick or possessed by an evil spirit and they were all bringing them to Jesus and He healed every single one of them. How could I forget that time when all the disciples were gathered together and Jesus spoke to us and He said, ‘I give you authority over evil spirits and authority to heal every kind of sickness.’”

“It was amazing. He sent us out to the villages and towns in the countryside and He told us, ‘Preach that the kingdom of heaven is near and heal the sick and cast out the demons.’ And that’s exactly what we did. We couldn’t believe it. The power of God was in us. And we spoke words that gave life to the people we met. We touched people and they were healed just like when Jesus did it.”

“How could I forget that time when all of us, except for Jesus, were in the boat and we were rowing and trying to cross the sea and it was a real windy night. We were rowing with all of our might but we weren’t getting anywhere. The wind was against us and we were going directly into it and we felt like we were standing still even though we kept rowing and rowing. And then, all of a sudden, we looked out across the waters and we could see Him but we didn’t know it was Him. We could see Him and it looked like a ghost. We didn’t know what it was. And some of the men cried out in fear. Some of them even cried like babies. And He called out to us and said, ‘Do not be afraid. It is I.’ And I called out to Him, ‘If it is you, Lord, let me come to you on the water.’ So He said, ‘Come.’ And I did, at least for a few steps. I took a couple of steps and, all of a sudden, I got scared and I began to sink and I called out, ‘Lord, save me.’ And before I could say another word, His hand grabbed mine and He pulled me up and then we walked together back to the boat.”

“Another time, I remember Jesus talking to us and He said, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ We answered, ‘Some say John the Baptist. Others say Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ And then He said, ‘But what about you? Who do you say that I am?’ And I just about jumped out of my seat. I stood up and I shouted, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’ And all the others agreed with me.”

“Then there was that time, I’ll never forget it, that time when we went with Him on the mountain. It was me and John and James and we went up on the mountain with Him and it was just the most amazing experience. Moses and Elijah appeared and Jesus was talking with them and His appearance was changed, transfigured, transformed. It was so unbelievable. His face was as bright as the sun and the clothes as white as lightening. We were afraid but again, He came to us and He touched us. He said, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ And when we looked up, there was no one there but Jesus. We walked down the mountain with Him and as we walked, He said, ‘Now don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.’”

“How could I forget all those wonderful experiences with Jesus? How could I forget all those things that He said to us and then deny Him? I was the one who said, ‘I will die for you.’ I was the one who took out my sword and cut off the ear of the servant. I was the one who said, ‘I don’t know the man.’”

You know, it seems ironic that tonight I pretended to be Peter but the truth is, I act like Peter all the time. Oh, there are many times when God has done wonderful things for me and helped me with difficult situations and when Jesus died on the cross for my sins. And there are times when I forget all that. When I know God’s way but I choose my way, I choose sin. I choose sin. And in my actions, I don’t know the man.

When I think about that, I get a hint of how Peter must have felt on that night when he denied Jesus. The story goes that when he denied Jesus, the rooster crowed and his eyes met with Jesus, eye to eye, and he wept bitterly. Christian legend says from that point on, the rest of his life, any time he heard a rooster crow, he was taken instantly back to that moment and he wept again for denying His Savior. How awful. Our sin, the very thing that Jesus suffered and died for, is truly something to grieve. And when we are grieving, that’s when we remember something else about that night, something Jesus said, something Jesus did. They had just finished the meal and He took out the bread and He broke it and gave thanks and He gave it to them and He said, “Take and eat, this is my body given for you for the forgiveness of your sins.” And then He took the cup of wine and He gave it to them and He said, “This is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.”

Tonight, it would be pretty easy for us to remember Peter’s sin and our sin and walk away with that awful feeling but that is not the dominant thought tonight. The dominant thought is forgiveness, that when we sin, that’s what Jesus died for and as we have denied Him, He has given to us a wonderful sacrament of His body and blood that we can come to whenever it’s offered and receive complete and free forgiveness. And that’s the thought tonight, not our sin, but His forgiveness. Amen.