The arrangements echo the beginning. At his birth there was no place for his family in the guest room (Luke 2:7). Now, preparing his last meal, he sends Peter and John with instructions that sound like a prearranged signal: a man carrying a jar of water, and a message to the master of the house, 11"Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?" It is the same word Luke used at the nativity, and this time the answer is 12"a large upper room furnished." The room unavailable at his birth stands ready when he asks for it. They 13"found it just as he had told them." Nothing about this evening is improvised. Luke notes that it is the day on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed (verse 7), and the Lamb is at the table.
At the table Jesus names what the meal means to him: 15"I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." It is a longing, and no one at the table could mistake it for duty. He tells them it will be his last until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God (verse 16). Every Passover before pointed forward to something, and this one is the hinge.
Then Jesus does what no head of a household had done at this meal. He takes the bread, the same unleavened bread Israel ate in haste on the night of its deliverance, and reinterprets it: this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me (verse 19). Bread that recalled hurried freedom now points to a body about to be broken. He takes the cup after supper: 20"This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood." Moses sealed Israel's covenant at Sinai with the blood of sacrificed animals (Exodus 24:8). This meal looks back to Jesus, a body given and blood poured out to establish the covenant Jeremiah promised, written on hearts (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
Into that intimate moment Jesus speaks a sentence that lands like ice water: 21"the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table." The betrayer is close enough to share the dish, present at the meal that institutes the covenant his own hand will help break within hours. Jesus holds two things together. The Son of Man goes as it has been determined, and woe to the man by whom he is betrayed (verse 22). Divine purpose and human responsibility sit at the same table, in the same sentence, and neither erases the other.
The disciples respond by questioning one another about which of them it could be (verse 23). No one at the table feels entirely above suspicion, not even in his own eyes.
Come to the table this week with earnest desire, and ask the question the disciples asked: is it I?
Prayer
Father, thank you for a body given and blood poured out, remembered every time bread is broken and a cup is shared among your people. Thank you that even betrayal, foreseen and accounted for, could not derail the covenant your Son was establishing that night. Let us come to this table as he came to it, with earnest desire, and examine our hearts honestly. In Jesus' name, amen.