The Last Supper

It was Passover week in Jerusalem, and Jesus knew what was coming. John says it at the start of the chapter: he knew his time had come, and having loved his own, he loved them to the end. That's the frame for everything at the table. Luke adds that he'd sent Peter and John ahead to find a room, following a man carrying a water jar, and that when they sat down he told them he'd wanted this meal with them badly, before he suffered.

Then, during supper, he got up. He took off his outer clothes, tied a towel round his waist, poured water into a basin, and started washing the disciples' feet. This was the job of the lowest servant in a house, and nobody had done it that evening. The text doesn't say how long the room was silent.

Peter couldn't handle it. You're washing my feet? Never. Jesus told him that if he didn't, Peter had no part with him, and Peter, being Peter, swung the other way: then do my hands and head too. Jesus said someone who's bathed only needs their feet washed, and then added that not all of them were clean. He knew who was going to hand him over, and he'd just washed that man's feet along with the rest.

He put his robe back on, sat down, and asked if they understood. You call me teacher and Lord, and you're right. So if I've washed your feet, wash each other's. I've given you an example. Then a line that's easy to skip: knowing this isn't the point, doing it is.

Luke fills in the meal itself. Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said this is my body, given for you, do this to remember me. After supper he took the cup and called it the new covenant in his blood, poured out for you. The disciples had been eating Passover their whole lives. He'd just rewritten what it pointed to, with himself at the center.

The mood in the room was not holy. John says Jesus was troubled and told them one of them would betray him, and they looked at each other lost. Peter got the disciple next to Jesus to ask who. Jesus handed a piece of bread to Judas and told him to do what he was going to do quickly. Nobody at the table understood; some thought he'd been sent to buy supplies. Judas went out. John writes three words: it was night.

Luke records that the remaining eleven then had an argument about which of them was the greatest. At that table. On that night. Jesus didn't shout at them. He told them kings lord it over people, but not you; the greatest is the one who serves, and I'm among you as one who serves. Then he warned Peter that before the rooster crowed he'd deny him three times. Peter said he was ready for prison and death. He wasn't.

After Judas had gone, Jesus gave the others one new commandment: love one another the way I've loved you. That, he said, is how anyone will know you belong to me. He said it with a towel still damp, to a room that included the man who'd deny him and ten men who'd just been fighting about rank.