'And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover,
the disciples said unto Him, Where wilt Thou that we go and prepare
that Thou mayest eat the Passover? 13. And He sendeth forth two of His
disciples, and saith unto them, Go ye into the city, and there shall
meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water: follow him. 14. And
wheresoever he shall go in, say ye to the goodman of the house, The
Master saith, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the
Passover with My disciples? 15. And he will shew you a large upper
room furnished and prepared: there make ready for us. 16. And His
disciples went forth, and came into the city, and found as He had said
unto them: and they made ready the Passover. 17. And in the evening He
cometh with the twelve. 18. And as they sat and did eat, Jesus said,
Verily I say unto you, One of you which eateth with Me shall betray
Me. 19. And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto Him one by
one, Is it I? and another said, Is it I? 20. And He answered and said
unto them, It is one of the twelve, that dippeth with Me in the dish.
21. The Son of Man indeed goeth, as it is written of Him: but woe to
that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! good were it for that man
if he had never been born. 22. And as they did eat, Jesus took bread,
and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this
is My body. 23. And He took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He
gave it to them: and they all drank of it. 24. And He said unto them,
This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many. 25.
Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine,
until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God. 26. And when
they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.'--Mark
xiv. 12-26.
This passage falls into three sections--the secret preparation for the
Passover (verses 12-17), the sad announcement of the betrayer (verses
18-21), and the institution of the Lord's Supper (verses 22-26). It
may be interesting to notice that in the two former of these Mark's
account approximates to Luke's, while in the third he is nearer
Matthew's. A comparison of the three accounts, noting the slight, but
often significant, variations, should be made. Nothing in the Gospels
is trivial. 'The dust of that land is gold.'
I. The secret preparation for the Passover. The three Evangelists all
give the disciples' question, but only Luke tells us that it was in
answer to our Lord's command to Peter and John to go and prepare the
Passover. They very naturally said 'Where?' as they were all strangers
in Jerusalem. Matthew may not have known of our Lord's initiative; but
if Mark were, as he is, with apparent correctness, said to have been,
Peter's mouthpiece in his Gospel, the reticence as to the prominence
of that Apostle is natural, and explains the omission of all but the
bare fact of the despatch of the two. The curiously roundabout way in
which they are directed to the 'upper room' is only explicable on the
supposition that it was intended to keep them in the dark till the
last moment, so that no hint might leak from them to Judas. Whether
the token of the man with the waterpot was a preconcerted signal or an
instance of our Lord's supernatural knowledge and sovereign sway, his
employment as a silent and probably unconscious guide testifies to
Christ's wish for that last hour to be undisturbed. A man carrying a
water-pot, which was woman's special task, would be a conspicuous
figure even in the festival crowds. The message to the householder
implies that he recognised 'the Master' as his Master, and was ready
to give up at His requisition even the chamber which he had prepared
for his own family celebration of the feast.
Thus instructed, the two trusted Apostles left Bethany, early in the
day, without a clue of their destination reaching Judas's hungry
watchfulness. Evidently they did not return, and in the evening Jesus
led the others straight to the place. Mark says that He came 'with the
twelve'; but he does not mean thereby to specify the number, but to
define the class, of His attendants.
Each figure in this preparatory scene yields important lessons. Our
Lord's earnest desire to secure that still hour before pushing out
into the storm speaks pathetically of His felt need of companionship
and strengthening, as well as of His self-forgetting purpose to help
His handful of bewildered followers and His human longing to live in
faithful memories. His careful arrangements bring vividly into sight
the limitations of His manhood, in that He, 'by whom all things
consist,' had to contrive and plan in order to baffle for a moment His
pursuers. And, side by side with the lowliness, as ever, is the
majesty; for while He stoops to arrange, He sees with superhuman
certitude what will happen, moves unconscious feet with secret and
sovereign sway, and in royal tones claims possession of His servant's
possessions.
The two messengers, sent out with instructions which would only guide
them half-way to their destination, and obliged, if they were to move
at all, to trust absolutely to His knowledge, present specimens of the
obedience still required. He sends us out still on a road full of
sharp turnings round which we cannot see. We get light enough for the
first stage; and when it is traversed, the second will be plainer.
The man with the water-pot reminds us how little we may be aware of
the Hand which guides us, or of our uses in His plans. 'I girded thee,
though thou hast not known Me,'--how little the poor water-bearer knew
who were following, or dreamed that he and his load would be
remembered for ever!
The householder responded at once, and gladly, to the authoritative
message, which does not ask a favour, but demands a right. Probably he
had intended to celebrate the Passover with his own family, in the
large chamber on the roof, with the cool evening air about it, and the
moonlight sleeping around. But he gladly gives it up. Are we as ready
to surrender our cherished possessions for His use?
II. The sad announcement of the traitor (verses 18-21). As the Revised
Version indicates more clearly than the Authorised, the purport of the
announcement was not merely that the betrayer was an Apostle, but that
he was to be known by his dipping his hand into the common dish at the
same moment as our Lord. The prophetic psalm would have been
abundantly fulfilled though Judas's fingers had never touched
Christ's; but the minute accomplishment should teach us that Jewish
prophecy was the voice of divine foreknowledge, and embraced small
details as well as large tendencies. Many hands dipped with Christ's,
and so the sign was not unmistakably indicative, and hence was
privately supplemented, as John tells us, by the giving of 'the sop.'
The uncertainty as to the indication given by the token is reflected
by the reiterated questions of the Apostles, which, in the Greek, are
cast in a form that anticipates a negative answer: 'Surely not I?'
Mark omits the audacious hypocrisy of Judas's question in the same
form, and Christ's curt, sad answer which Matthew gives. His brief and
vivid sketch is meant to fix attention on the unanimous shuddering
horror of these faithful hearts at the thought that they could be thus
guilty--a horror which was not the child of presumptuous
self-confidence, but of hearty, honest love. They thought it
impossible, as they felt the throbbing of their own hearts--and
yet--and yet--might it not be? As they probed their hearts deeper,
they became dimly aware of dark gulfs of possible unfaithfulness half
visible there, and so betook themselves to their Master, and
strengthened their loyalty by the question, which breathed at once
detestation of the treason and humble distrust of themselves. It is
well to feel and speak the strong recoil from sin of a heart loyal to
Jesus. It is better to recognise the sleeping snakes, the
possibilities of evil in ourselves, and to take to Christ our
ignorance and self-distrust. It is wiser to cry 'Is it I?' than to
boast, 'Although all shall be offended, yet will not I.' 'Hold Thou me
up, and I shall be safe.'
Our Lord answers the questions by a still more emphatic repetition of
the distinctive mark, and then, in verse 21, speaks deep words of
mingled pathos, dignity, and submission. The voluntariness of His
death, and its uniqueness as His own act of return to His eternal
home, are contained in that majestic 'goeth,' which asserts the
impotence of the betrayer and his employers, without the Lord's own
consent. On the other hand, the necessity to which He willingly bowed
is set forth in that 'as it is written of Him.' And what sadness and
lofty consciousness of His own sacred personality and judicial
authority are blended in the awful sentence on the traitor! What was
He that treachery to Him should be a crime so transcendent? What right
had He thus calmly to pronounce condemnation? Did He see into the
future? Is it the voice of a Divine Judge, or of a man judging in his
own cause, which speaks this passionless sentence? Surely none of His
sayings are more fully charged with His claims to pre-existence,
divinity, and judicial authority, than this which He spoke at the very
moment when the traitor's plot was on the verge of success.
III. The institution of the Lord's Supper (verses 22-26). Mark's
account is the briefest of the three, and his version of Christ's
words the most compressed. It omits the affecting 'Do this for
remembering Me,' which is pre-supposed by the very act of instituting
the ordinance, since it is nothing if not memorial; and it makes
prominent two things--the significance of the elements, and the
command to partake of them. To these must be added Christ's attitude
in 'blessing' the bread and cup, and His distribution of them among
the disciples. The Passover was to Israel the commemoration of their
redemption from captivity and their birth as a nation. Jesus puts
aside this divinely appointed and venerable festival to set in its
stead the remembrance of Himself. That night, 'to be much remembered
of the children of Israel,' is to be forgotten, and come no more into
the number of the months; and its empty place is to be filled by the
memory of the hours then passing. Surely His act was either arrogance
or the calm consciousness of the unique significance and power of His
death. Think of any mere teacher or prophet doing the like! The world
would meet the preposterous claim implied with deserved and
inextinguishable laughter. Why does it not do so with Christ's act?
Christ's view of His death is written unmistakably on the Lord's
Supper. It is not merely that He wishes _it_ rather than His life, His
miracles, or words, to be kept in thankful remembrance, but that He
desires one aspect of it to be held high and clear above all others.
He is the true 'Passover Lamb,' whose shed and sprinkled blood
establishes new bonds of amity and new relations, with tender and
wonderful reciprocal obligations, between God and the 'many' who truly
partake of that sacrifice. The key-words of Judaism--'sacrifice,'
'covenant,' 'sprinkling with blood'--are taken over into Christianity,
and the ideas they represent are set in its centre, to be cherished as
its life. The Lord's Supper is the conclusive answer to the allegation
that Christ did not teach the sacrificial character and atoning power
of His death. What, then, did He teach when He said, 'This is My blood
of the covenant, which is shed for many'?
The Passover was a family festival, and that characteristic passes
over to the Lord's Supper. Christ is not only the food on which we
feed, but the Head of the family and distributor of the banquet. He is
the feast and the Governor of the feast, and all who sit at that table
are 'brethren.' One life is in them all, and they are one as partakers
of One.
The Lord's Supper is a visible symbol of the Christian life, which
should not only be all lived in remembrance of Him, but consists in
partaking by faith of His life, and incorporating it in ours, until we
come to the measure of perfect men, which, in one aspect, we reach
when we can say, 'I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'
There is a prophetic element, as well as a commemorative and symbolic,
in the Lord's Supper, which is prominent in Christ's closing words. He
does not partake of the symbols which He gives; but there comes a
time, in that perfected form of the kingdom, when perfect love shall
make all the citizens perfectly conformed to the perfect will of God.
Then, whatsoever associations of joy, of invigoration, of festal
fellowship, clustered round the wine-cup here, shall be heightened,
purified, and perpetuated in the calm raptures of the heavenly feast,
in which He will be Partaker, as well as Giver and Food. 'Thou shalt
make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures.' The King's lips will
touch the golden cup filled with un-foaming wine, ere He commends it
to His guests. And from that feast they will 'go no more out,' neither
shall the triumphant music of its great 'hymn' be followed by any
Olivet or Gethsemane, or any denial, or any Calvary; but there shall
be 'no more sorrow, nor sin, nor death'; for 'the former things are
passed away,' and He has made 'all things new.'
'IS IT I?'
'Is it I?'--Mark xiv. 19
The scene shows that Judas had not as yet drawn any suspicion on
himself.
Here the Apostles seem to be higher than their ordinary stature; for
they do not take to questioning one another, or even to protest, 'No!'
but to questioning Christ.