Luke 22:7-13

 

Jesus’ Last Supper – Preparation

Luke 22: 7-13  -  Disciples Prepare the Passover Meal

7 The day of Unleavened Bread came
and it was necessary to sacrifice the paschal lamb.
8 He sent Peter and John, saying,
“Go and get the Passover meal ready for us to eat it.”

Preparation of the meal would have required their procuring a lamb (from the traders in the temple), having it killed in sacrifice by one of the priests on duty and then cooked somewhere by someone. The other foods and drink for the meal would also have had to be bought and prepared.

The Passover Meal was essentially a family meal. In Jesus’ mind, the group of disciples now formed a family unit. They had no family home in Jerusalem. They would have to find somewhere to eat, since the meal was too significant to be celebrated in the open air out on the Mount of Olives.

Peter and John were assigned the task of preparing. Jesus may have especially trusted them; or they may simply have been reliably practical. (Along with James, they had been witnesses to Jesus’ transfiguration.) 

9 They said to him, “ Where do you want us to get things ready?”
10 He told them, “ Look, as you enter the city,
a man carrying a water jar will meet you.
Follow him into the house where he enters.
11 Then say to the owner of the house,
‘The Teacher asks you,
‘Where is the guest room
where I can eat the Passover with my disciples?’’
12 He will show you a large upstairs room already set up.
Get things ready there.” 

Jesus had a clear sense of the danger of arrest. He knew the depth of the bitter opposition of the chief priests and elders, and their determination to get rid of him. He and the disciples needed to act unobtrusively to escape notice. The preparations needed to be made in broad daylight. It may not have been wise for Jesus himself to show up publicly. He would come rather under cover of evening. So he sent the two disciples.

Women were usually water-carriers, not men. A man carrying a jar of water would have been easily noticed. The whole operation had a clear sense of secrecy. Judas would not have known the whereabouts of the room.

13 They set off and found things just as he said,
and prepared the Passover.

Luke’s account of the incident gave the sense that the meeting with the water-carrier was not coincidental but planned. Had Jesus himself already dialogued with the owner of the house about their rendezvous? Was the owner a friend or disciple of Jesus unknown to the disciples, or perhaps a professional boarding-house operator? Luke shed no further light.

The incident was not unlike the previous preparations for Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The ambiguity of the narrative may have been Luke’s way of also indicating that what was happening was in some sense foreseen by God and inevitable, the enactment in human history of the ongoing cosmic struggle of good and evil.

Next >> Luke 22:14-20