The Last Supper

On the first day of Unleavened Bread, Mark says, when the Passover lamb was sacrificed, Jesus sent two disciples into Jerusalem to prepare the meal in a large upper room (Mark 14:12–16). Luke names them as Peter and John the Apostle (Luke 22:8). When evening came he arrived with the twelve (Mark 14:17).

While they were eating he said that one of them would betray him (Mark 14:18–21). Judas Iscariot had already agreed with the chief priests to hand him over (Mark 14:10–11). In John, Jesus gave a piece of bread to Judas, who went out at once: “It was night” (John 13:21–30).

Mark continues: “Jesus took bread, and when he had blessed, he broke it, and gave to them, and said, ‘Take, eat. This is my body.’” He took a cup, gave thanks, and they all drank from it. He called it his blood of the covenant, poured out for many, and said that he would not drink wine again until he drank it new in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:22–25). Matthew adds “for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). (The World English Bible, from which this entry quotes, reads “new covenant” in Mark and Matthew; the NRSVUE, which the links open, reads “covenant” and notes that other ancient authorities add “new”.) Luke adds the command “Do this in memory of me” and words the saying over the cup as “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19–20). The words recall the blood of the covenant at Sinai and Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant (Exodus 24:8; Jeremiah 31:31).

Paul’s account is usually dated earlier than those of the Gospels. Writing to Corinth in the 50s, he gives the words over the bread and the cup as something he had “received” and had already handed on to that church (1 Corinthians 11:23–25).

John, who sets the meal “before the feast of the Passover”, reports no words over bread and cup (John 13:1–2). In his Gospel Jesus rose from the supper, washed the disciples’ feet and told them to do the same for one another (John 13:3–15). He gave them a “new commandment”, to love one another as he had loved them (John 13:34–35), and foretold that Peter would deny him three times before the cock crowed (John 13:38). A long farewell follows, on his going to the Father and the coming of the Spirit, and a prayer for the disciples and for those who would believe through them, “that they may all be one” (John 14:1–3, 16–17; 16:7; 17:20–21).

Paul already speaks of the meal as one the church repeats, to “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Christians differ on what the words over the bread and cup mean. The Council of Trent teaches for the Catholic Church that the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ (Council of Trent Session 13, chapter 4), and the Orthodox Confession of Dositheus of 1672 uses the same language (Confession of Dositheus decree 17 (pp. 143–149)). The Lutheran Augsburg Confession says that the body and blood are “truly present” and distributed (Augsburg Confession article 10). The Reformed Heidelberg Catechism says that the bread “does not become the body of Christ itself”, though it is called so “agreeably to the nature and usage of sacraments”, and that believers are nonetheless “as really partakers of his true body and blood, through the working of the Holy Ghost”, as they receive the signs with the mouth (Heidelberg Catechism questions 78 and 79). The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England reject a change of substance and say that the body of Christ is received by faith, in a “heavenly and spiritual manner” (Thirty-Nine Articles article 28).