The Last Supper, the ‘Trial,’ the Cross
Written by Rev'd John Poole | Apr 2nd, 2021
Walking with Jesus through the Gospel of Mark. (Read or Watch the Video above)
Week 7: The Last Supper, the ‘Trial,’ the Cross
For the account of the last week of Jesus’ earthly life we read from the beginning of Mark chapter 11 and continue to the end of chapter 15. We commemorated his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and also recalled his act of expelling the traders from the temple the following day. As the week drew on Jesus spent much time in the temple area teaching the crowds who gathered round him and engaging in various disputes with the religious authorities. All this time the plot against him was thickening and one of his disciples arranged to hand him over to the temple authorities with a view to him being tried and executed. We pick up the story on the Thursday evening, from chapter 14: 18.
Jesus, with all twelve disciples, including Judas Iscariot, come to an upstairs room where their Passover supper has been prepared. Jesus reveals that one of them will betray him. More than half of Mark’s account of Thursday night focuses on the failures of the disciples, indeed this is a common theme of the whole Gospel. There are various reasons why Mark should give this matter such attention. There is the obvious one that they frequently may have failed to understand him, and what following him meant for them. However, we must also consider the community to which Mark first wrote. Did lack of faith and understanding among some of them influence the way he wrote about the disciples?
During the Last Supper, the Passover meal, Jesus shares a loaf of bread and a cup of wine with the disciples, and he utters words which would make this event the source and core of the principal act of Christian worship, the Eucharist. There are several deep and interconnected meanings to be drawn from this shared meal. To put them very briefly, the Last Supper and consequently the Christian Eucharist is the celebration of a new Passover from bondage to liberation, and participation in the way that leads through death to new life; it demonstrates God’s justice against human injustice, in particular expressing God’s will that all people have sufficient food for life; it is the continuing communal encounter with the risen Christ; it is the focus, inspiration and guide of our way of life as Christians; it represents our values and what we are as people of God; it is our regular expression and pledge to live by the great two-fold commandment – to love God completely and our neighbour as ourselves.
After the meal, Jesus and his disciples walk outside the city wall to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives, where Jesus, troubled and knowing that the end was coming, prays earnestly and asks his disciples to stay awake and wait and watch with him – again, something they fail to do! Then after being identified by Judas, who approaches with an armed gang sent by the religious authorities, Jesus is arrested. The disciples flee. Peter alone follows to see what will happen, but as predicted by Jesus, when questioned by others he denies three times that he ever knew him.
The sham trial before the high priest and his council takes place. Jesus is found guilty of blasphemy and is condemned as deserving death. He is to be handed over to the governor, Pontius Pilate early the following morning. The collaboration between religious and imperial authority will ensure his death. It is important to stress that the temple authorities are not be identified with the Jewish people. The crowd of pilgrims, Jesus’ listeners during the week did not turn against him as is often thought. They are his supporters, otherwise the authorities would not have needed a Judas to hand him over.
Dawn breaks on Friday. The temple authorities take Jesus to Pilate. He appears before the Roman governor in the courtyard of the palace of the late king Herod the Great where Roman governors stayed when they were in Jerusalem. Pilate looks at Jesus and asks, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ We should read his question to be one of scorn and mockery. Jesus makes a non-statement, ‘You say so.’ Words of courage and contempt in the face of tyrannical power. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus does not speak again until the moment of his death.
We read that at festival time Pilate used to release a prisoner as requested by the people, an act of amnesty. Historically, this is problematic. If this ever did happen, it would not have been because of the people’s request. Imperial power was not exercised in such a way. You didn’t ask the people what they wanted. However, when we think of the make-up of this crowd, it is just possible to imagine that Pilate acted as if he were doing them a favour, but no doubt more for his own amusement. This crowd would not have been made up of people who had listened to Jesus with delight earlier in the week. The Roman authorities would not have let just anyone into the precincts of the governor’s residence. Those who shouted, ‘Crucify him!’ were almost certainly a smaller selected mob who were doing well out of the regime, or who had been significantly bribed or otherwise enlisted to say the ‘right things’ at such a public gathering.
However, it is highly unlikely that someone called ‘Barabbas’ actually existed. The very name meaning ‘son of the father’ suggests someone made up. He may have been written into the story as a symbolic character indicating that by the time the Gospel was being written, the Jewish people, the children of the Jesus generation, had chosen the way of a Barabbas - violence and insurrection against Roman rule, instead of the non-violent Jesus way. This had led to tragic consequences including the destruction of the temple, around the time that Mark was writing.
Pilate issues the order for Jesus to be crucified. He is flogged, mocked, dressed in a purple cloak and a painful crown of thorns, then saluted with more mockery and false homage. Then he is struck and spat upon, stripped of the robe they put on him and taken out to be crucified. No details are given about the actual crucifixion of Jesus except the time of day, 9.00 in the morning. We are also told that a man called Simon, from Cyrene (in North Africa) was enlisted to help Jesus carry the large wooden beam that would form the horizontal part of the cross. This Simon appears to need little introduction. He is the Father of Alexander and Rufus who were presumably well known to Mark’s community and first readers. This reference to a named person could also indicate that he was a reliable witness and source of the event as it happened.
Crucifixion, as we have already considered, was reserved particularly for those who challenged Roman rule. It was brutal, humiliating and very public. We are told that two others were crucified with Jesus. Although usually described as bandits in English translations, the Greek word identifies them as those who had been involved in armed resistance like the eponymous Barabbas. They join in the taunting of Jesus. Only in Luke’s version is one of them shown as repentant.
At 3.00pm Jesus breathes his last. He took six hours to die on the cross. We can scarcely imagine what a dreadful, painful experience it would have been. His last words are from the opening verse of Psalm 22: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ These are the only words spoken by Jesus that Mark reports. It should be noted that it is a Psalm that ends in hope. God hears the prayer of the psalmist and saves him.
Then Mark gives two interpretive comments about the death of Jesus. The first is the tearing of the curtain in the temple. The curtain formed a barrier between the people and the sanctuary, the holy of holies. Like the darkness at noon this event should be understood symbolically rather than as something actually remembered. It indicates God’s judgement on the temple and the corrupt system of religion it had come to represent. It affirmed that through the death of Jesus, the barrier between God and humanity had been removed, a barrier which had been so strongly emphasised in the Jewish religion of the time. When Mark wrote, the temple had probably already been destroyed, so it was fitting for him to stress that God was now fully accessible apart from the temple. God was now to be found in a temple not made by human hands. There was now a New Temple in the person of Jesus himself, which could not be destroyed. Through him the love of the God of Israel now extended to the whole world.
The second interpretive comment of Mark is the statement ascribed to the centurion in command of the soldiers who crucified Jesus: ‘Truly this man was Son of God.’ The Gospel began with the words, ‘The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ Mark’s story of Jesus draws to an end with a statement that represents countless multitudes of pagan or gentile people who would be converted by the message of the Crucified One, people who would come to confess that truly, this man is the Son of God.
This dramatic and remarkably subversive declaration is followed by a report of some women watching from a distance, followers of Jesus who looked after him in Galilee and on his journey to Jerusalem. Among them is Mary Magdalene. Some of these women will be at the tomb of Jesus on Sunday morning. We will join them in our final walk with Jesus through the Gospel of Mark and see what that new day reveals for us.
Some questions to ponder and pray about (there may well be others!)
- What were the forces that collaborated to bring about the trial and execution of Jesus, and how are these same influences still at work in the world today?
- How do you think Peter’s denial of Jesus shaped the rest of his life and ministry? How do we deny Jesus in our own lives today?
- A major portion of Mark is devoted to the discourses on discipleship. What have you learned about following on ‘the way,’ and how have you been called to follow Jesus?