Was the Last Supper a Passover seder or not? John and the Synoptics seem to disagree. But this week what we are really going to ask is: “Is that even the right question or are we missing the bigger theological picture of what the author of Mark (as well as Matthew, Luke, and John) was trying to communicate to us?” Lots to discuss this week about ancient Hospitality laws and social etiquette as well.
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12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” 13 And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, 14 and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 15 And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.” 16 And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. 17 And when it was evening, he came with the twelve. 18 And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” 19 They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, “Is it I?” 20 He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with 21 For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”
I have been so guilty of this in the past—the “Passover Controversy” that is so popular in some circles. And I will admit to having made some wrong judgment calls, I believe, in trying to make this into something that appeals to a modern audience where we want everything to line up but this week we are going to talk about something very important—why do the Synoptics all paint this picture of the meal seemingly happening on the night of the 15th and why does John clearly say it took place on the 14th? I’ve heard it all—Essene calendars, the Feast of the Firstborn, and moving it up a day because of the Passover crowds and sacrificing the Lamb as a shelamim offering as hinted might be possible in the Tosefta. Unfortunately, I even included one of those, and not the early Passover, which is actually very possible, in a book. I am wincing as I say that! Oh, if I were only perfect in my judgment. But there is this very real thing with Messianics and Hebrew Roots peeps where we went through this phase of wanting everything to be as “Jewish” as possible while missing the most Jewish things of all—namely, inspired authors crafting an account which tells a story and sometimes rearranges and rewrites historical elements in order to make that happen. What does that mean? Stay tuned.
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have six years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.
All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.
Jewish writers are virtuosos of telling a story, and that hasn’t changed in modern times. They have no qualms about playing with and manipulating Scripture in order to tell a story and make a point. Anyone who has read the midrashic works of the Rabbis, like 15th century Sefer ha Yashar (which has sadly been passed off as the ancient book of Jasher), or even earlier sectarian works like Jubilees which predated the Messiah, has seen how the Biblical record gets pretty mangled and yet, they weren’t trying to rewrite Scripture or to replace it. They were telling alternate stories in order to teach lessons or, in the case of Jubilees, promote their sectarian calendar as legit in order to replace the one being used in Jerusalem. Too bad their math was abysmal. And the four Gospels are all telling the story that the early church was telling—that the betrayal, trial, death, burial, and resurrection were a final and conclusive retelling of the Passover and Exodus. Really, it was the Passover fulfilled and so the Gospel accounts all tell that story accordingly. The Synoptics generally agree with one another but John tells the story emphasizing entirely different things and so it tells differently. And this is a classically Jewish thing to do—to not worry about the details. Instead of being impeccably accurate, like a modern history or science text, the Jewish writers were more concerned with conveying truth. Truth and accuracy are not always the same thing. Now, in chemistry, they are. There is no metaphysical dimension to adding A to B at a certain temperature and pressure and always coming out with C. That’s why I love chemistry. That’s why I love studying context. But that’s also why I need theology—because theology isn’t as easy to pin down and quantify. Context is like science and theology is more like art. The Gospel of John is very, very artistic. It’s like Monet or Manet or Michelangelo gave birth to a Gospel and it is breathtakingly beautiful. The Synoptics, on the other hand, are still artistic because all Jewish literature is very artistic, but it is more like Bob Ross guiding us along by the hand so that we will understand the process. That is–if Bob Ross lived 2000 years ago and spoke an entirely different language and had as a context a life completely foreign to us.
So, we’re not going to get into all the theories or talk much about how Mark’s account compares with Matthew, Luke, or especially John. Mark’s account was the first account of the Passover Passion to be penned and so it has to be respected enough to be treated as unique—because at the time it was. And remember, Mark wrote His entire Gospel in such a way as to promote Yeshua/Jesus as the Yahweh Warrior of Isaiah and the Suffering Servant who would serve both functions of conquering sin and death while also being the perfect representative of Israel. That’s why I chose to re-air the Isaiah and the Messiah series while I was on Sabbatical. This is where it really comes down to the nitty-gritty. And we won’t be going through these fast. Chapter fourteen is going to take a minimum of seven weeks, including last week. It is a very long chapter, seventy-two verses long, and requires a lot of context. To put that into perspective, chapter thirteen is like thirty-five verses long and chapter fifteen is forty-two verses long. This is important. I don’t want to rush through it. The material is much more complex. Understanding what Mark was trying to convey to the Roman believers is crucial. And remember why I say Roman believers—the Gospel is unique in being filled with Latin concepts of time and Latin loanwords. This wasn’t written for a Jewish audience like Matthew and John.
12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?”
Although Nisan 14 is not “Biblically” the first day of Unleavened Bread, which would be Nisan 15, by the first century this had become an idiomatic way to talk about the Passover. They combined the eight days into one large festival, more like Sukkot. And calling it this, protos, which can mean first or former—works either way. The Greek word for the Feast of Unleavened Bread is azymos (a-zoo-mose) and I really wish that English had a one-word description because calling the whole feast “Matzah” would be kinda confusing. According to Mark, this really can’t be argued to be the thirteenth—that isn’t the story he is telling. Not only is this protos hemera azymos, the “first day of Unleavened Bread”, locking it specifically timewise, but it is also further designated as the day that the lambs were slaughtered. This is for a Rome-based audience who had probably never visited the Temple and who had never likely formally kept the Passover, and were largely of Gentile birth. Mark isn’t going to be getting tricky about timelines here, nor will he worry about them much. Mark wants us to see the disciples getting a Passover reimagining, not meaning imaginary but instead a revelation of the finality of God’s redemptive plan for not only the Jews but also the world—although the disciples aren’t going to completely understand that anytime soon and the author also wants us to see Yeshua as the new Passover lamb. If we get hung up on days and everything needing to be precise then we are being utterly un-Jewish and treating the text unfairly because that is not how God communicated to Israel. He entered into their context. That’s how He communicates with everyone. Where they/we are at. You want proof that details are secondary to truth and a wacky timeline? Pay attention to Jeremiah. UGH. It’s like a Doctor Who episode, zipping back and forth in time only without the aliens. As for this, don’t get bogged down in post-enlightenment mindsets about details—hear the story the author of Mark is telling about how Yeshua embodied the ultimate Lamb of God.
The word for Passover lamb, Pascha, is also the word for the meal and what in English and the other Germanic languages is called Easter is called some variation of Pascha throughout the rest of the world. Kinda like how ULB in Greek is just called the Greek word for matza, well, almost the whole world calls Easter something that sounds remarkably like the Greek word for Passover. Forget all the Ishtar nonsense—by the time the word Easter became a thing, no one knew who she was anymore and no one had worshipped her for many hundreds of years. When Babylon finally ceased to be a city after centuries of being conquered by empire after empire, she had been long since gone. Most likely, Easter comes from the Germanic name of the month it tends to fall in.
Let’s look at the question–“Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover.” The implication here is that they are preparing for Yeshua to eat the Pesach (hebrew), Pascha (Greek), Passover lamb. I want you to notice something important here that blew my mind when I read it in one of my commentaries. Who asked the question? His disciples. It does not say the Twelve. Yeshua had a great many disciples and as we will see, from the things He will say—there were more than thirteen people at the Last Supper.
13 And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, Again, he sent two of His disciples, not specifically two of the Twelve. And this incident should remind us of what happened at the beginning of chapter eleven–11 Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.’”—again, not necessarily any of the Twelve but could have been other disciples. And I know I am getting a bit ahead of myself but I wanted for you to have this in mind when we get to verse fourteen. And so, He says to unnamed disciples to go into the city and they were going to find something uncommon: a man carrying a jar of water. And he would meet them—so evidently he would be on the lookout for Galileans, Yeshua’s followers. What we don’t know is where this would have occurred—could have been Fountain Gate near the Gihon Spring or the potsherd gate near the Pool of Siloam or the Water or Casemate Gate near the Kings Garden. Doesn’t really matter.
But the whole thing about a man carrying a water jar is odd for two reasons. One, men carried water skins, not jars. Fetching water in a jar was the work for women or servants. So, this guy would stick out like a sore thumb and especially if he was just standing there doing nothing on such a busy day. So, what do we get from this, context-wise? This was a pre-arranged meeting. Likely the man was either a servant who was a disciple living within the city or the servant of a disciple. On such a busy day, it would be odd for anyone to spend time just standing there with a jar and not actively filling it—and because he was going to meet them, and not the other way around, suggests that because Yeshua knew He was, for all intents and purposes, being carefully watched—well, I think it is likely that this was planned out sometime during the week so that He and the Twelve wouldn’t call attention to themselves until it was actually time to enter Jerusalem to eat the Pesach, the Passover, that night. After the Parable of the Tenants and the Vineyard and after Judas had likely reported all he knew to the Chief Priests, it was a time to be careful and to make sure that He was not arrested until after He could instruct them on His becoming the Passover by taking them through the meal and identifying it with Himself. So, Yeshua gives them no address—maybe He didn’t want Judas to know where they were headed until they arrived. After all, Judas was looking for an easy opportunity to hand Him over.
14 and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’
So, we do know that this man who met them was not the actual master of the house because they would not meet with the master until they arrived, so likely a servant—another possibility is a son sent on this mission. Again, doesn’t matter to the overall story, just noticing things. The master of the house will evidently understand who they are talking about and will show them the guest room, an upper room. And part of the question is to ask where He can eat with His disciples. Doesn’t say just the Twelve. But what is interesting is this—and Yeshua has done this before and we have spoken of it—wherever He goes, He acts the role of the host, despite being in someone else’s home. He breaks the bread. He pours the wine. He speaks the blessings over both. That is the job of the master of the house, not the visitor. Despite coming to serve humanity, when at a meal, He takes the role of host. And why should we notice this? Because of the Messianic banquet imagery that would have been very meaningful to Jewish hearers. And here, He asks an odd question—He doesn’t say, “Where is your guest room.” That would be what we would ask. We might ask, “Where is the room where I will be eating?” but “Where is my guest room.” Again, this is host language.
15 And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.”
This isn’t simply an upper room but a large one, remember that Greek word megas so this man is likely quite wealthy. And evidently, he is expecting them. Otherwise, this is a prediction but that doesn’t make as much sense, given the circumstances. So, as much as folks like to paint this as something supernatural, I really see it as more like something that was planned ahead of time because Yeshua knew the importance of hiding the final location from the Twelve and specifically Judas. And another reason I say this is because He finds His way there and if it was just a matter of being a prophetic prediction, He could have given them an address and just had them show up there. And by address, I mean like, go to the house of whoever the whatever or the son of whoever. That’s how. It wasn’t like street numbers. You know, like God telling Ananias that he would find Paul in the house of Judas on the street called Straight in Acts 9 or in Acts 10 where God told Cornelius to search for the house of Simon the Tanner by the sea.
16 And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.
No mention of astonishment here that everything was as Yeshua had said it was, so it seems to be their understanding/assumption that arrangements had been made previously. So often, when Yeshua does something amazing, there is a narration about how they marveled at it. None of that here. Pulling John into the mix really quick, we know that Yeshua would stay at the home of the “beloved disciple” when in Jerusalem and this might be his house although we don’t know that this disciple was a Jerusalemite. And they prepared the Passover—what exactly did this mean? If they were keeping the Passover a day early, which I believe they might have been in order to make sure that Yeshua died as the lambs were being slaughtered, it means that they had to buy what was needed for the feast and they had to have at least two lambs purchased and slaughtered at the Temple as shelamim offerings. On the 14th, that happened starting at 3pm but I believe they would sacrifice the shelamim offerings anytime during the day—after the morning Tamid, of course, but I would imagine that if this was designated for the Passover, to fulfill the commandment to slaughter it between the evenings, that they would have it done after the afternoon Tamid, and hence, after around 3pm. I say “around” because it wasn’t like they had that sort of reckoning. The lamb would be brought back to where they were eating and would be roasted whole on an upright spit. No bones could be broken. It was not a normal offering where it was more formally butchered. And I say two lambs because for a Passover gathering, there was a requirement to have one lamb per every ten people so that everyone could get some. So a representative per lamb would go to the Temple. Not everyone. Too many people. They also needed wine, bitter herbs, and matzah. These are your Passover staples that we know from other contemporary writings were part of the celebration at that time. Other things we aren’t entirely sure about and some didn’t come into play until after the destruction of the Temple.
17 And when it was evening, he came with the twelve.
Okay. Here is a big reason why I believe there were other disciples there and the ones doing the preparation weren’t among the Twelve. The disciples who prepared the meal had a lot of work to do. And could have been any gender, for that matter. Although we would expect at least one man because women didn’t go off wandering about alone and enter into a home of a man they were not related to. But, preparations were made and obviously had to be monitored. No one is leaving the all-important lamb unattended. Evening would have come around 6pm at that time of the year. And this was a festive occasion. Generally, it was the only time all year when most Jews would be eating meat—but Yeshua breaks the festive atmosphere with a dire prediction.
18 And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.”
“Reclining at table” is what was done at a leisurely and formal meal. It was something that was associated with wealth and having the leisure to take your time dining—hardly what would be associated with the normal meal of a working-class family. But, on the Passover memorials—unlike the original Passover when they were commanded to eat standing, staves in hand and prepared to leave—they behaved as free men instead of the slaves they had once been. On the subsequent festivals, each family ate like kings to symbolize their freedom. And as they are reclining, with Yeshua as their host offering His hospitality, He says the unthinkable. He says that one of His very own disciples will betray him, and drives the point home by mentioning that it is someone eating with Him. And this is unthinkable for two cultural reasons. First, in an honor/shame culture, one did not ever betray one’s teacher. In fact, it didn’t matter if you were a Jew or a pagan, you didn’t do it. There’s this story I love to tell that I read a long time ago in a great book called After Paul Left Corinth by Bruce Winter which was talking about the problems with competitiveness between philosophical schools and their disciples, also called zealots. Evidently, Philostratus relates a tale where a follower of one philosopher was harassing another philosopher and nitpicking every little error (which students did to show their loyalty to their own teacher) and the students of the philosopher who was being harassed beat the boy so hard that they accidentally killed him (pg 39)! And Paul and Apollos found themselves mired in this sort of nonsense in Corinth with people forming factions based on whose teachings they wanted to align themselves with. But in the case of Yeshua here, they all only had one teacher and the culture really demanded that they not only be loyal but also protective and even loyal to the death. The Pharisaic houses of Hillel and Shammai also operated in this way, with this sort of fierce competitiveness. A student betraying his philosophical teacher was worse than betraying a father because a father only gives you life whereas your teacher, in the case of Judaism, was giving you the Torah and in the case of Greco-Roman values, your teacher was giving you wisdom.
Second problem, in the ancient world and in many cultures today, eating with someone was and is not simply about food. Breaking bread with someone is a sacred and solemn pact of mutual goodwill and help. You cannot betray anyone who offers you hospitality and especially if there is salt involved. It’s no big deal to us westerners who really have very little commanding our loyalty as far as ritual goes, and maybe we have nothing—I can’t think of anything offhand that is particularly sacred to us. But to them, it was an act that incorporated an aspect of the divine and there were not only honor issues involved but also the idea that one would be held accountable by their deity for betraying the act of hospitality. This is another reason why it was so important that Yeshua was acting the role of host. And He was accusing someone at the table of a horrific and unthinkable crime against God and all that was sacred in ancient Near Eastern culture. I can’t overemphasize the impact of these words on his dinner companions. And even worse, it was the Passover.
The 3rd century CE Syriac Menander has this to say about betraying someone you have shared a meal with, “And he with whom you have had a meal, do not walk with him in a treacherous way.”
Third thing I want to point out is the word for betray because we will be seeing it a lot. And we have already seen it repeatedly in the Passion Predictions. The word in Greek translated as betrayed is paradidomi. The second and third passion predictions in Mark 9:31 and 10:33 use it as well to describe how He will be delivered or handed over to the Jerusalem leadership and the Gentiles. It is also used in the LXX to describe Yahweh handing His people over to the Gentiles for judgment. So, this is no small level of betrayal here—the Septuagint (LXX) that the disciples were familiar with hearing used this language for the direst of circumstances. This would be no casual betrayal but a handing over to actual judgment. We talked about that at length in last week’s episode so we won’t do that again.
19 They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, “Is it I?”
At this point, everyone, the Twelve and the others in attendance, are all questioning themselves. This has to be a mistake—this couldn’t possibly be anything that anyone would do on purpose. Someone was going to do something stupid and get Yeshua into trouble, surely. I believe that is why each of them was questioning himself/herself. We can all see ourselves pulling some bone-headed stunt and causing trouble. I mean, geez, Peter and James and John were all notorious for it. And so, they’re going, please tell me that I am not going to be responsible for judgment coming upon our teacher! And they are taking it very seriously.
20 He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.
It just got worse. It isn’t just one of the many disciples of Yeshua but actually one of the Twelve. Even as they are all reeling from the accusation, everyone outside of the Twelve must have been breathing a sigh of relief even as they were even more shocked that it could be one of the insider insiders. I mean, what would He say next—that it was one of the Three? But again, we have more here than meets the eye. No one dips with someone of higher status, but after—Yeshua here is addressing a huge social breach. Someone isn’t going to do it by accident but with contempt. No one at that Passover should have considered themselves worthy of dipping at the same time—He was their Teacher and in the ancient world that was a huge status to have. Someone at the table will not only hand Him over for judgment but they will do it because they consider Him to be on their same level.
21 For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”
Here we have another Son of Man self-designation. Remember the difference between Messiah and Son of Man in the first century. Son of Man was largely undefined as an actual title because it can be used in a lot of ways but Messiah was very heavily laden with meaning during that time. A lot of folks had a lot of ideas about the Messiah and at that point, none of them revolved around suffering. In fact, we don’t see the idea of a suffering Messiah within Rabbinic writings until Pesikta Rabbati written around 800 CE. At this point, as far as I know, all Messianic expectations of the first century included a wiping out of Israel’s enemies and especially the Romans. Yeshua could not self-designate as the Messiah without bringing all that baggage and expectations into the mix. Son of Man, on the other hand, was a clean slate He could work with. Was He the Messiah? Of course. But He had to redefine it through the Cross before He could be identified as such.
“The Son of Man goes as it is written of Him,” again—we covered that in the Isaiah and the Messiah series on Isaiah 40-56. Of course, not only there but that is the most glaringly obvious example. This was Yahweh’s plan all along—it wasn’t like Yeshua was showing up and expecting Israel to behave any differently to Him than they had to the prophets. They had exchanged the idolatry of worshipping pagan gods and had simply become hard-hearted and disobedient in other ways. It’s the sad state of unchanged human hearts. A “woe” is declared against the man who sets the events into action even though this was God’s plan. And “woe” isn’t a casual sorrow—it is judgment language for something that will not be excused because Judas, whom we will see in later weeks as the betrayer, wasn’t a pawn or a puppet. He made the decision to do this. He had contempt for his teacher and decided to profit before bailing. It wasn’t just a biblical crime but a crime that even the pagans would be horrified about. Again, the word betrayed here is paradidomi, handed over to judgment. And no one is suspecting Judas at this point—be clear on that. There is no hint of suspicion. No one can imagine anyone as being guilty. Not even Peter is making accusations, which says something.
“It would be better for that man if he had not been born.” Let’s look at this theme briefly in Scripture. The entirety of Job chapter 3 is a lament from Job about what life is like for a man who wished he had never been born. I trust we don’t need to go into those specifics because Job had it bad, really bad, horrifically bad. But we also have the account in Jeremiah 20:14-18–
Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, “A son is born to you,” making him very glad. Let that man be like the cities that the Lord overthrew without pity; let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon, because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb forever great. Why did I come out from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?
This is a lament from Jeremiah when he had been beaten, put in the stocks, and was persecuted. I mean, who was treated worse than the prophets and Job? However Job and Jeremiah were treated to make them wish they had never been born, worse is in store for Judas. Because with Job and Jeremiah, that was only a lament—Yeshua is saying that for Judas it will be a reality. And you know, betrayers always feel as though they have a good reason. Gosh, have you been listening to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast? It’s a nightmare listening to what happened and I highly recommend it. I will link to it in the transcript. This Mark Driscoll, the kind of treachery and betrayal he engaged in and encouraged others to support—and the guy has another church again, got off scot-free and he has 78K YouTube subscribers and you can still buy his books and he just left this carnage behind him and destroyed people and wrecked faith. And, you know, he was operating out of a desire for profit and fame and self-promotion and self-preservation. And I guarantee you that he had what he would call a good reason for everything he did and does. Betrayers aren’t people who see themselves as villains. They always have a justification. And that should scare us because we can do it too. And a lot of people do it and paint themselves as heroes and defenders of the faith. But in the end, you know, Yeshua talked about leaving the ninety-nine on behalf of saving the one.
Anyway, rabbit trail there. Was this a Passover meal? Well, the text claims it was in more ways than one. This meal is late at night instead of during the afternoon. Spending money on oil was not a casual thing and so you don’t see a lot of meals in ancient cultures at night but with the Passover, a night meal is commanded. The meal is in Jerusalem, when they had otherwise been staying in Bethany. They are reclining, which also is not just a normal circumstance. Next week we will continue on and see that they are drinking wine and there are elements to what they are doing that clearly reflect the Haggadah of the Passover. Passover is being redefined and reimagined around the person of Yeshua and the greater Exodus of the Cross. So, the question isn’t so much “was this a Passover meal” but instead, how is God changing the Passover to make way for a permanent and worldwide exodus? How is God changing things in order to become the One God of the entire world and not just the God of Israel? Remember that the old wineskins cannot contain the new wine and you can’t patch an old cloak with new fabric. As He promised in Isaiah 42:9, 43:19 and 48:6, Yahweh is doing a new thing that He promised would be so monumental that they would all but forget the old things. The old Passover just wasn’t big enough.
You know, just like with the three Passion predictions, we are going to see a repeat of a theme over the next few weeks. Yeshua makes a proclamation that is really, truly upsetting and which precipitates a crisis in response. Here, it is “someone is going to betray me” and then the mad scramble begins to find out who it is. Next week, Yeshua will repeat the prediction in the Garden and the crisis response will be denials and oaths. At the arrest, there will be a crisis response of violence and abandonment. In the courtyard of the High Priest, there will be an accusation followed by a crisis response of denial. So, five of these in this chapter of the Gospel, and we can add to it the three crisis responses to the three Passion predictions where the disciples really just responded inappropriately. And, of course, the wise thing to do is to see ourselves in the responses instead of marveling at their weakness because that’s us. We respond badly when shocked, challenged, frightened, or angry.
