Mark 14:12-26

Interpreting Jesus’ Death (2) – A New Covenant

Mark 14:12-26 – The Last Supper

That Jesus chose to arrive at Jerusalem for the feast of Passover was no accident. 

The Jewish Feast of Passover 

The feast commemorated God’s decisive action in liberating Israel’s ancestors from their slavery in Egypt before leading them into the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula where he had begun to form them as his own special people. According to the tradition, the liberating plan of God had involved their killing a lamb in sacrifice, sprinkling the doorposts of their residences with its blood, and then cooking and eating it. The blood of the sacrificed lamb on the doorposts was a sign designed to divert the hand of the angel who had gone through the length and breath of Egypt slaying the first born in every unmarked home, specifically of the Egyptians, who had not been made aware of the sign. In the ensuing confusion, the Israelites had made their escape into the Sinai desert, under the leadership of Moses (who had worked there as a shepherd for years and knew the area well). The tradition is recorded in Exodus 12:1-14.

Successive generations of Jews celebrated the feast annually. Among other things, their celebration involved their eating a lamb previously killed in sacrifice in the temple. Their meal was always a communal meal. They met and shared together as members of God’s chosen people. They firmly believed that the God who had liberated their ancestors was present still with them in their ritual celebration, continuing his liberating presence. They understood their action of remembering to be effectively “sacramental”: God became present to them, as God had been to their ancestors on that original fateful day. Their God who had covenanted with them was a faithful God.

Jesus and the disciples shared that same faith.

Their meal needed to be prepared. They needed somewhere to eat it. They needed to procure a lamb, have it killed and offered in sacrifice to God by the priests in the temple. They needed to cook it, and prepare the rest of the food to be eaten at the meal. Yet all this was to be done under the threat of trouble. They needed to proceed cautiously.

Jesus had apparently made contact previously with the unidentified owner of the house in the city. The disciples did not know the location of the house, and were not to draw attention by asking for it. They were to wait for a man carrying a jar of water and to follow him. (In the social system of the time, women were normally the carriers of water. A man carrying a jar would have been obvious to the disciples.) Mark’s narrative conveyed a sense of secrecy.

Mark usually referred to the “disciples”. Here, he spoke of the twelve. Perhaps in this instance he intended the disciples to be seen, not in their individuality but in their role as “corporate” representatives of the Christian community. What was about to happen would be of more than private concern: it would touch the basic constitution of the future community.

Mark prefaced Jesus’ Last Supper with mention of Judas’s betrayal. He would conclude it with reference to Peter’s denial and the disciples’ defection. In Mark’s mind Eucharist was not a meal of the perfect, but of sinners.

The reaction of the twelve to Jesus’ mention of betrayal was surprisingly inappropriate. Their concern focused on themselves and their own justification. They did not seem to hear or respond to the pain in the heart of Jesus. 

Their concern with justifying themselves may also have indicated unease about their own innocence. Perhaps each knew that, though not in fact guilty of actual betrayal, his wholehearted allegiance was shaky.

Sin in the Christian Community

“One of the twelve”. For Mark the potential for betrayal would always be present in the heart of the Christian community. And though it be source of pain, Jesus could live with that, and would not withdraw his offer of intimacy: “one dipping his hand in the dish with me".

Judas’s betrayal, indeed every person’s sin, was evil. Done in freedom, it need not, should not, have happened. Sin can never be justified. Certainly it is better not to be at all than to sin freely. Yet, given our existence (that cannot be reversed), God can forgive and bring life out of death, good out of evil. Such is the power of God!

Evil does not block the will of God. God does not prevent it, but turns it to his purpose. “The Son of man goes” to his death, indeed (and precedent for it can be found in the scriptural tradition), but God would turn Jesus’ execution into source of irrepressible life. Yet God’s power did not pretend that evil was good. Evil – the betrayal and eventual execution of Jesus - was not life-giving: God was.

As host for the meal, Jesus followed the usual ritual of the Passover meal but in the process made some significant changes.

The Passover Ritual

Quite early in each Passover meal, the head of the household would take a loaf of bread from the table, lift it up, break it into smaller pieces and then share with the assembled diners. As he did so, he would traditionally say: ”This is the bread of affliction which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt...” He would pronounce a long prayer of praise and thanks to God, recounting the original Passover meal in Egypt and the getting-into-motion of God’s project of liberation for his people. He would continue to reflect aloud on the events of the year that had passed since the previous Passover meal, searching for and highlighting God’s continuing liberating action as it had become real in the lives of those present.

Towards the end of the meal, after a series of formal drinks, he would finally lift one of the cups of wine – which they called “The Cup of Blessing” – and once again formally thank God for his faithfulness to his covenant with Israel. Then all would drink from that one cup as a sign of their solidarity with God and with each other: they pledged their assent to the covenant.

At different stages during the meal, and at the end, they would sing selected psalms.

As Jesus took the loaf of bread and broke it before handing it to the gathered disciples, instead of the usual designation, Jesus proclaimed that this bread was his own body!

Before handing around the Cup of Blessing, he likewise proclaimed that the wine was his blood: blood (that would be poured out for the many on the morrow) sealing the covenant between God and his people.

He saw their drinking of the cup of wine (his blood poured out for the many – the blood of the new covenant) as a prelude to the final triumphal celebration of the Kingdom, indeed, as the definitive event enabling the imminent advent of the Kingdom.

Interpreting the Last Supper

What happened at Jesus’ Last Supper? Largely depending on people’s ideological stance, interpretations have stretched across a broad spectrum. 

a) Some Christians see in the Last Supper the sacramental anticipation of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, the “real presence” of Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and indeed the formal institution of the priesthood. 

Christians of Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and to some extent even Lutheran Churches would belong to this group – with varying shades of nuance.

They see clear symbolism in the ritual. They also believe that what is symbolised is sacramentally made present in the ritual.

b) Others say that the Last Supper simply symbolised what was to happen on the Cross. For them any re-enacting of the Last Supper event in the Christian community is no more than symbolic. They see in the Christian Eucharist no more than the saving action of Jesus present in a way similar to God’s saving presence and action in any Jewish Passover.

Mark’s community had already made its own interpretation of these events. It is impossible to know whether in his narrative Mark was giving a concise version of the original Supper (that was well known to them and adequately understood - and so required no further elaboration), or whether the community’s on-going manner of celebrating the “breaking of the bread” determined Mark’s account of the original event – the details of which may not in fact have been clearly known. 

Why Did Jesus Die?

Mark’s purpose in placing the Last Supper narrative before the actual crucifixion of Jesus was multi-layered. 

• He did it, firstly, because it happened that way. 
• He did it also because its regular ritual re-presentation had become a major event in the life of the Christian community. 
• He did it, thirdly, because it clarified the meaning of Jesus’ death.

There was an inevitability about Jesus’ execution. Some of those with vested interests in power and the maintenance of the status quo agreed that his incisive and constant challenge to many of the institutions of Israel needed to be stopped.

The early Christians saw more to his death, however, than the mere working out of historical necessity. The humiliation and degradation of crucifixion were a formidable obstacle to the credibility of their message. To maintain that this dehumanised and apparently powerless individual was in fact beloved by God and saviour of the world was an unlikely story. They sought to reverse its otherwise crippling impact.

They did this by showing that Jesus was not in fact powerless. He deliberately went to his death. His death, indeed, became the context in which he expressed totally his commitment to his message of human dignity, his own and of others. His death showed his own personal faithfulness and utter integrity. It was also the expression of his love for people. Searching for images in their familiar literature, his followers interpreted his blood as the blood that metaphorically sealed the covenant between God and his people, the seal of the Kingdom experience.

The Last Supper narrative became the setting to explicitly affirm these deeper meanings of his death. As he took the bread, broken into pieces so that it could be eaten by the guests, he saw in it his body soon to be destroyed on the cross in order that his saving life could become available to others. He said a definite “yes” to what was to happen. He was not the passive victim of stronger forces.

He interpreted his blood as the blood of the covenant – shed by him for a definitive purpose. He saw it shed “for many” - the many who would avail themselves of the offer of the covenant. (The phrase “for the many” does not imply any exclusion of others. The phrase, in the Greek, commonly meant an open-ended, undefined plurality, as distinguished from “the few”. It meant “for all”.)

Jesus then referred to his celebrating the effective advent of the Kingdom, coming not just “after” his death, but so associated with it as to be understood as brought about by his death.

Yet, in all this reflection, it is important to see that the significant element in Jesus’ death was not necessarily the way it happened but the inner response of Jesus for which it called. There is no need to conclude that the shedding of his blood was a necessary condition for the coming of the Kingdom. It was his faithfulness to love that mattered. His painful death was what in fact happened: so the shedding of his blood can be vividly seen as sealing the covenant ushering in the Kingdom. Jesus’ mission would have been equally accomplished had he died peacefully from old age. Yet the details of his brutal death serve to highlight to all who have eyes to see the depth of his conviction; and for him they also provided the context in which he actualised depths of his own spirit that he otherwise would not have needed to access. 

Jesus’ death was not a price exacted by God to dispel the offence of humanity’s sin. Jesus was not a victim of God’s violence. Jesus freely chose death because demanded by an unjust and violent world. For Jesus to choose otherwise would have been to betray his commitment to truth and love, and so to undermine his integrity. Instead, Jesus revealed violence for what it was: he maintained his personal innocence; he maintained the innocence of God. He met the violence of the world - the sin of the world - and absorbed it, not by counter-violence but by love; and throughout it all he knew himself to be motivated and empowered by God.

Next >> Mark 14:26-31