For the Forgiveness of Sins (Matthew 26:17-30)
For the Forgiveness of Sins
Maundy Thursday
April 2, 2026
Matthew 26:17-30
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Maundy Thursday receives its name from the Latin word for “commandment,” mandatum. That language comes from John’s Gospel, in which Jesus spends the night before his crucifixion celebrating the Passover meal with his disciples. After the meal, he washes their feet like a household servant and then gives them what he calls a “new commandment:” “love one another,” he says, “as I have loved you” (John 13:34). The love commandment is unique to John’s version of the story. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus also celebrates the Passover meal with his disciples on the night of his betrayal and arrest. But in place of the foot washing, Jesus instead blesses the bread and the cup, identifying them with his own body and blood and creating the sacrament of Communion. In Luke’s story, this moment also comes with a commandment: “Do this in remembrance of me” (22:19).
Tonight I’d like to focus our attention on the table. It has been a little over a year since we transitioned from a monthly to a weekly practice of Communion, a little over a year since we made the intentional decision to center the table in our worship space. Yet maybe we still wonder from time to time: Why is this so important? What’s really going on when we gather around Christ’s table? How, and for what, am I being formed week after week?
In a sermon called “The Duty of Constant Communion,” John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, set out “to show that it is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as [they] can.” He took about six paragraphs to make his initial argument and then twenty-two more paragraphs to answer the anticipated objections of his readers, including the objection that, in his words, “constant communion…abates our reverence for the sacrament.” That is, that coming to the table more often makes it less special. Wesley deftly distinguishes between two kinds of reverence, the natural excitement we feel for anything that is new or occasional enough to feel fresh, and the slow accumulation of what he calls “true religious reverence,” which comes from being blessed by faithful practice over time.[1]
Along with prayer and scripture reading, Wesley considered Communion to be one of the three chief “means of grace,” which he defines as practices ‘ordained of God as the ordinary channels of conveying [God’s] grace to the souls of [people].”[2] Because Jesus promised us explicitly that he would be present to us in this practice—‘This is my Body… Do this in remembrance of me’—we can trust that each time we come to the Table, something grace-filled will occur in us and between us. Why wouldn’t we want to experience that as often as we can?
Gustavo Guttiérez, the great Peruvian Catholic writer who helped develop liberation theology in Latin America, once wrote that “the breaking of the bread is at once the point of departure and the point of arrival of the Christian community.”[3]
Here’s what I think he meant by that. As a point of departure, the table confronts us with our foundational responsibilities as students of Jesus. It teaches us that, with God, everyone is welcomed, valued, and fed. We are sent out to declare God’s love for all people, to dissolve all hierarchies of status, power, and wealth, and to ensure that everyone receives their daily bread. This is a difficult calling that requires sacrifice and patience. From one perspective, we celebrate Communion under the sign of the cross, for the kingdom of heaven is not yet.
But as a point of arrival, the table offers us a glimpse, and a taste, of our destiny. There is deep joy here. One day, Christ will return to judge the nations, heal the earth’s wounds, wipe away every tear, and throw an eternal feast for the poor and the outcast, for every sinner saved by grace. Today is that day! if only, it seems, for a moment. Just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus knew the presence of the risen Christ when he broke bread with them at the end of a long day, so we too can encounter the real heart of God here. From this perspective we celebrate Communion under the sign of the resurrection, for the kingdom of heaven is already here.
In our Christian tradition there are three primary names for the sacrament: the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, and the Eucharist. They refer to the same thing, but each label produces its own spiritual mood and gifts.
The Lord’s Supper is the most solemn of the three. When we call breaking the bread the Lord’s Supper, we actively recall this as the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples. We meditate on the bread and cup as signs of his broken body and shed blood. In Christ, God has participated fully in our human condition, in our brokenness and vulnerability. In Christ, the Son of God gave up his life for us and for all creation. The Lord’s Supper invites reflection on the cross and calls us to consider Jesus’ solidarity with our pain, his love that outlasts and redeems our wounds, and his invitation to take up our own crosses and follow him.
When we call what we do here Holy Communion we place the most emphasis on our mystical belonging to one another in and as the Body of Christ. This is a feast, a banquet, a party! This is a time to regard one another with reverence, and to commit ourselves to each other in love. At this table we are reminded of God’s own Triune life, the eternal and perfectly unified community that is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When God created humankind in God’s image, God was making us for one another. “It is not good for the man to be alone,” God said when there was only Adam. We need each other to show the fullness of God. Giving and receiving love in perfect freedom is one thing that Communion shows us how to do.
Finally, the name Eucharist comes from the Greek verb eucharisteo, which means “I give thanks.” When we call Communion the Eucharist, we emphasize our gratitude. Just as we say grace before our daily meals, here at God’s table we lift up a prayer of thanksgiving. We say thank you for the whole story of creation and redemption—for God’s faithful love which was, is, and is to come. We say thank you for the goodness of the earth; thank you for God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; thank you for Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; thank you for the Church’s mission; thank you for our hope in the eventual healing of all creation. Great stories are told and retold at the family table. Great toasts are given at wedding banquets. At Christ’s table, we take the long view and rehearse the story of God’s love for creation.
Each time we break bread, we meditate on Jesus’ sacrificial life and death, relish the interweaving of our lives, and express our gratitude. Another way of putting this is that, as Lord’s Supper, the table helps us look inward to the purity of our hearts; as Holy Communion, the table helps us look outward at each other; and as the Eucharist, the table helps us look up in open-armed and open-hearted love for God. Even if we’re not feeling very spiritual some days when we come forward to receive his body and blood, we can be sure that the table is doing its work in, between, and upon us.
The great spiritual writer Henri Nouwen has a beautiful little book called Life of the Beloved. In it he explores how Jesus’ four actions with the bread at the last supper can be seen as a metaphor for the Christian life. Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread. In the same way, God takes, blesses, breaks, and gives each of us.
When we walk with God, there is a sense in which we all are taken, we are called and claimed by God’s grace. We belong to God. Then we are blessed, affirmed as God’s beloved in the context of a community. Then we are free to experience the reality and the surprising giftedness of brokenness. Life and love humble us. Our self-sufficiency or narrow affections have to be challenged by Christ’s radical love. We wake up to the suffering of others. Finally, we are ready to be turned outward in compassion and given to others. Through each of us, Christ offers himself as bread for the world.
As I consider Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Supper, here’s what strikes me. At the beginning of the meal, Jesus acknowledges that a betrayer sits among the group of disciples. At the end of the meal, Jesus predicts that Peter, the leader of the Twelve, will deny Jesus three times, and that all the disciples will desert Jesus by the end of the night. Even so, he passes the cup around to each of them and says, “Drink from it, all of you” (Matt 26:27, emphasis mine). All of you. All of us. Betrayers, deniers, deserters—we will all be forgiven of our sins. Not because we deserve it, but because Jesus freely poured out his life and love for us all. Like the twelve, we have all been caught up in the reconciliation of heaven and earth which Jesus has accomplished on the cross. And like eleven of them, we will be met by Christ at the table on the day of resurrection. No matter what disappointments, regrets, wounds, or failures we carry, there is forgiveness with God. Even when we fail him, he does not fail us.
As the liturgy says, “Christ our Lord invites to his table all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sins, and who seek to live in peace with one another.”
May we each hear and respond to that invitation as the Spirit leads.
Amen.