Holy Thursday

I don't really think it was much like Da Vinci's Last Supper.  For one thing--tablecloths?  I don't know if they used them much in Judea, especially not in small upper-room celebrations of Passover, hastily assembled by fishermen.

Perhaps it was more like this.  Look at the disciples--they seem confused, as who wouldn't be, when the Messiah is in your midst making innovations on a ritual that is as old as Moses.  Not to mention He is talking about dying, and you're beginning to wonder if He means it, after all.  Perhaps it isn't a metaphor.

(I don't think, by the way, that Judas really carried his money out in the open like that--he was a prudent fellow, and not given to what he would consider stupid mistakes with money--nor that John the Beloved fell asleep in the platter of roast lamb.)

We're having lamb tonight, and our own version of a seder plate--spinach, flatbread, apples, and red wine.

We're reading the story of the Exodus, and the story of the Last Supper.

Sit at your table and linger over your wine (or grape juice), sopping up bits of lamb juice with a bit of unleavened bread (tortillas, pitas, whatever if you can't find matzoh).  Imagine the mood, changing from festal and a bit competitive as the disciples find their arguments cut short when He, of all people, starts washing feet.

Judas's feet among the rest.

And then the garden.  He's praying, and you can't keep awake.  You can smell the crushed grass under His sandals when He wakes you.  Torches are guttering in the darkness.  There's the clank of metal, the hiss of a sword exiting its sheath, and then suddenly there's a face you recognize.

(Note: Of course the Romans did not wear sixteenth-century plate mail.  Just look at the faces.  See Peter {or is it supposed to be John?}, behind the Lord?  He's getting ready to square off and fight.  See how the Lord's hands are folded?  He's not resisting arrest.  They're not taking Him, He is choosing to go.)

Everything begins, from the perspective of the disciples, to go wrong.

Everything will continue, to human eyes, to go wrong.  Peter's last stand comes to nothing.  Nobody with government connections can do a thing.  It's even chances whether Christ's followers will be rounded up and imprisoned with him.  For hours you don't know what's happening to Him.

You thought He was coming into His kingdom, but now Palm Sunday seems such a long time ago.

Now it is getting dark.

Tonight we eat roast lamb, we wash feet, and we remember.

Breanna