Countless artists have painted the final supper of Jesus with his disciples, each one attempting to capture its meaning and message. Some depict it similarly to Leonardo da Vinci’s famous paining, and some have depicted it with what they believe is careful accuracy. Each artist attempts to convey the details and the significance of this event, but none can fully capture it for us. Just so, each of the New Testament accounts of the last supper represent the efforts of a literary artist who is passing on to us the tradition as it has been received, while at the same time shaping it to meet the pastoral needs of particular faith communities, and with their own personal interpretation of what it means.
The difference in the account of this event to Mark and Matthew is minimal. Both depict the last meal of Jesus as a Passover feast, with the disciples making extensive preparation for the meal. Mark gives some extra details in the preparation requirements that Matthew leaves out; Mark tells us that Jesus instructs the disciples to “a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, 'The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there” (Mark 14:13-15). In Matthew’s account, we do not know what the man is carrying in his jar, and this man is the owner of the house they will eat the Passover in. One major difference between Mark and Matthew is the amount of information given about who will betray Jesus. In Matthew, when the disciples ask Jesus who is the one who will betray him, Jesus comes right out and says to Judas “It is you” (Mat 26:25). However in Mark when Jesus is asked who, he simply tells them it is one of the twelve at the table. It is not made clear in Mark if Jesus knows that it is Judas who will betray him.
The tradition known to Mark and Matthew is slightly different. There is an explicit instruction by Jesus to "take and eat." He speaks not of his body given "for you," but of his blood given "for many." Matthew adds "for the forgiveness of sins" (26:28). The command "Do this in remembrance of me" is missing. All four relate Jesus' words over the cup to the covenant. In Mark and Matthew Jesus speaks of the "blood of the covenant," echoing Moses' words when sprinkling the Israelites (Exodus 24:5-8) as they professed adherence to the covenant. Matthew's Gospel was written for a largely Jewish audience. Explanations that are essential for us were completely superfluous for them. So, when the writer of Matthew gathered the components of Jesus' thought and arranged them into five lengthy sermons, it was perfectly obvious that such a construct was a parallel to the five books of the Pentateuch.
Luke’s Gospel presents an account that is similar to Mark and Matthew’s, but Luke goes into more detail. The order of events is slightly different for Luke – Jesus gives the disciples the bread and wine before he tells them that one will betray him. After this, the gospel continues and describes events that are not present in any of the other gospels. Luke displaces one of Jesus’ speeches that occurred earlier in the other two Synoptics to the last supper. The disciples begin to wonder which one of them will be the greatest, to which Jesus responds “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27). Luke took this from Jesus’ speech to the disciples after James and John request to be at his side in the kingdom of heaven in both Mark and Matthew where he said “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:43; Matt. 20:26). Additionally here, Luke puts Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial before Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives, and Luke tells us what Jesus did there, whereas Mark and Matthew simply tell us that he went there to pray. Here, the offering of the bread and wine is treated less importantly than it was in the other two Gospels. Luke’s Jesus gives more importance to talking about the one of the twelve who will betray him. He still breaks bread and talks about the new covenant, but in both Mark and Matthew the two things are separated in the gospel, but here Luke has them both in the same speech to the disciples (Luke 22:20-23). Luke’s Jesus also seems more exasperated with the disciples. Here he again presents them with a sort of parable; Jesus told the disciples that even though without their worldly possessions they still lack nothing, but that they should take those belongings and buy swords with them. (Luke 22:35-37) He was trying to tell them that in faith they lack nothing but they needed to be prepared for the persecution that would come to them soon. However as usual for the disciples they took his words literally and brought him two swords, to which Jesus responded “That is enough” (Luke 22:38). There is some debate over whether or not he was responding this way out of annoyance, or simply saying that the two swords will be all they need. In the context of the story I am inclined to believe that Jesus was simply frustrated by the lack of understanding they were displaying. This was not the first time he had spoken figuratively and the disciples took him literally and Jesus saw that even just before his death they still just hadn’t caught on to his method of teaching in the way he wanted them to.
It is no surprise that John’s account of Jesus’ last gathering with the disciples before his death is completely different. John does not have Jesus and the disciples having a Passover meal together, but has Jesus washing the feet of the disciples the day before the Passover. An idea that John imposes here and throughout the gospel is that Jesus is holy and exalted by God, but is also in a subservient position. We see that here in the act of washing the disciples feet which was a task reserved for slaves at the time (John 13:4-8). In John Jesus went to Jerusalem to eat the Passover, but this time John puts the time of Jesus’ death earlier than the other three Gospels so that it coincides with the time the Jews were faithfully slaughtering the lambs for Passover for the purpose of his metaphor of Jesus being the “Lamb of God”. However it isn’t a very effective metaphor: a lamb is a follower and Jesus was set up to be a leader. In the context of Jesus being on the same level as the rest of the people and still a follower of God it does make sense, but John is trying to uplift Jesus’ status so the idea is a bit conflicting. The Eucharist is missing from this gospel because he was trying to remove Jewish influence. The sacrament of bread and wine was based on a prior Jewish feast, and John replaces it with a new sacrament that is specifically Christian (Bloom, 142). Considering the demographic of Christians around the time it’s not surprising that John’s new sacrament didn’t exactly catch on. John has a marked preoccupation with the fact that he was not the first to write a story of Jesus’ life, and if we are to believe John none of them got it right before him. Throughout the gospel John writes in his anxiety about being a late comer to the evangelistic scene; he presents Jesus as the one who came late (after John the Baptist), but who existed prior in time (Bloom 131). It is clear that John is writing in a time where John the Baptist is considered more important than Jesus because he came first. In his essay “John’s Understanding of History”, Kee claims that John is likely being more historically accurate concerning the chronology of the Passion story, and when Jesus’ death and last meal was in relation to the Passover. However, the only real evidence he cites for this is an apparent contradiction between Luke 22:8 and 22:15 (Kee, 232). He is missing the point of verse 15 – Luke was not implying that Jesus would not live to eat the Passover; he was saying that he will not drink the fourth cup of the Passover meal until he returns to earth. There are places where John has obviously and purposely rearranged the chronology of events and events themselves to highlight his theological message, so there is little reason to believe that here John is being more accurate than the synoptics, unless we are to believe John when he says that all the other gospels just didn’t get it right.
Each gospel author presents the story of Jesus’ last gathering with his disciples, and a different image of who Jesus was to them. There may not be concrete evidence as to who wrote these gospels – if they were written by those who kenw Jesus, or those who knew of him through the tradition of their sect, but it is obvious that they each have a unique historical, theological and emotional understanding of who Jesus was, and their perspective changes the story. Because of this, the “true” image of Jesus may be manipulated in the gospels, but the message is not lost due to these differences.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold.
Modern Critical Interpretation: The Gospels. New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 1988
Kee, Howard Clark.
Jesus in History: An Approach to the Study of the Gospels. New York, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996.
The Quest Study Bible, NIV. Phyllis Elshof, gen. ed. Michigan, Zondervan, 2003
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