THE HOLY SUPPER.
There were two more days before the Passover Feast when Jesus would eat
the Paschal Supper with His disciples. He spent the time with them
trying to help them to bear the great trial that was before them, and
which would shake their faith in Him to the utmost. They still
believed that some great miracle would break around them like light in
the darkness, and that Jesus would be acknowledged as the Messiah for
whom the whole nation was waiting and yet the shadow grew deeper. The
faith of one had failed. Judas had secretly hoped that Jesus would be
made king, and that His disciples would be honored with riches and
power, but little by little this hope had been dying, and little by
little his heart had been turning away from his Master and his
brethren, until, with the resolve to forsake the Lord, he opened the
door of his heart to Satan, who began to enter in and possess him.
The high priest and the elders were plotting against Jesus in their
council, and Judas, leaving Bethany and the company of the Lord and His
disciples, went over the road he had so often walked with Jesus with a
thought from Satan burning in his heart. He loved money more than
everything else, and there was but one thing that would bring it now
since all hope of Jesus becoming a king was past.
He went to the Temple and asked to be taken before the rulers, and he
said to them, "What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you?"
There was a bargain made at once, and out of the Temple treasury they
weighed him thirty pieces of silver, and he carried them away with the
promise that he would watch Jesus, and tell them when and where they
could take Him. He did not remember that five hundred years before the
prophet Zechariah had written, "So they weighed for my price thirty
pieces of silver."
On Thursday morning, the first day of the Feast, Jesus sent Peter and
John to prepare a place where He should hold the Paschal Supper with
His disciples in the evening. He told them to go into the city, and
there they would meet a man bearing a pitcher of water, and if they
would follow him he would show them a large upper room furnished.
There they were to make ready the Passover.
[Illustration: The Passover supper]
They found it as He had said, and when the lamb had been slain at the
Temple, the feast prepared, and the hour was come, the Lord sat down
with the twelve. It was the last time that He would break the bread of
the Passover with them before He suffered, and it was to be the first
Holy Supper of the Christian Church. "With desire I have desired to
eat this Passover with you before I suffer;" He said, "for I say unto
you that I will not any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the
Kingdom of God." Before Him were the cakes of unleavened bread, the
wine, the water and the herbs, while the Paschal Lamb was on a side
table. After the blessing and the thanks, the Lord filled a cup with
wine and water, and blessing and tasting it passed it to His disciples.
It was the custom for the master of the feast to wash his hands at this
point, and Jesus rose, and laid aside His tunic, and tying a long towel
around His waist, poured water into a large basin and going to His
disciples knelt down to wash their feet. They had been contending as
to who should sit nearest to the Lord, and so be accounted greatest,
and He thus taught them a lesson of humility. He told them that they
were not to be among those who hold authority. "But he that is
greatest among you let him be as the younger," He said, "and he that is
chief as he that doth serve." The disciples looked on astonished and
distressed, for their Master was doing the work that slaves were in the
habit of doing, and Peter cried, "Lord, dost thou wash my feet?" Jesus
said gently, "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know
hereafter." "Thou shalt never wash my feet;" said the loving,
impulsive Peter, and Jesus answered, "If I wash thee not thou hast no
part with me." "Lord, not my feet only," the humbled disciple said,
"but also my hands and my head!" When He sat down with them again He
talked tenderly to them of serving each other as He had served them,
adding, "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." With a
troubled spirit He said, "Behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is
with me on the table." Then the disciples began to inquire sorrowfully
among themselves who it could be, and to ask the Lord in turn, "Is it
I?" Even Judas, close beside Him, asked the same question, but the
disciples did not hear the Lord's reply. Peter, beckoning to John,
signed to him to ask the Master, for John sat next the Lord, and leaned
upon His breast. When he asked, "Lord, who is it?" Jesus said, perhaps
in a whisper to John,
"He it is to whom I shall give a sop when I have dipped it," and He
gave it to Judas Iscariot. Then Satan entered fully into the angry,
covetous heart of Judas, and when Jesus said to him in a low voice,
"That thou doest do quickly," he rose and went out into the night.
Alone with His faithful friends, the Lord took bread and blessed it and
broke it, and gave to them, saying, "Take, eat, this is my body; this
do in remembrance of me." And He took the cup, saying, "Drink ye all
of it, for this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for
many for the remission of sins."
And so the Lord founded the Holy Supper of His Church, the mystery and
the holiness of which you will know more and more as you grow in the
heavenly life, and receive through His Spirit the new wine of the
Kingdom. John, the beloved disciple, kept for us the wonderful and
precious words that the Lord spoke after the Holy Supper. They are
full of a love for His children so deep and wide that we can never hope
to measure it. They are written in the fourteenth, fifteenth,
sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters of John's Gospel, and every child
should hide them in his memory and heart before he is grown, and in
after life they will be bread in time of spiritual famine. Looking
around upon their troubled faces at the table the Lord said to His
disciples, "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe
also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a
place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and receive you unto myself, that when I am there ye may be
also." He answered their questions, and He promised them the
Comforter--the Holy Spirit of Truth, who would teach them all things,
and make all the dark things clear. He also promised certainly to come
back to them and not leave them orphans.
After they had sung a psalm they arose from the table, but they
lingered for the Lord's last words and His prayer. He charged them to
be steadfast and live from Him, as a branch lives from the vine, for He
was the true spiritual Vine, and without Him they could do nothing. He
told them of His great love for them, and that they must love one
another through all the suffering and persecution that was before them,
and trust to the Spirit of Truth, who would guide them in all things,
and teach them the things He would say to them, but which they were not
yet able to bear. And He promised that whatever they should ask the
Father in His name should be given them. Then lifting up His eyes to
heaven He prayed for His disciples, and for all disciples who should
believe on Him through their word, that they might be one with each
other and with Him as He was one with the Father, and, being made clean
from the evil that is in the world that they should be with Him forever
in heaven. After the prayer they went out of the city, and over the
brook Kedron into a garden where Jesus had often sat with His disciples.