Holy Thursday - The Last Meal

Mark 14:12-26






The Last Supper
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

They are assembled, astonished and disturbed 
round him, who like a sage resolved his fate, 
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged, 
leaving and passing by them like a stranger. 
The loneliness of old comes over him 
which helped mature him for his deepest acts; 
now will he once again walk through the olive grove, 
and those who love him still will flee before his sight. 

To this last supper he has summoned them, 
and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees) 
their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves 
upon his word: they fly across to him; 
they flutter, frightened, round the supper table 
searching for an escape. But he is present 
everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.


There isn’t much for me to add to Rilke’s poem. The disquiet, the loneliness, the confusion, it's all there. It is most common to remember this story for the communion ritual it spawned, the bread and wine that is life, hope, and comfort for so many. But I read this story and I am anxious. It is the last meal between friends who have spent every moment together for years. The end of something, the totalizing way all things have to end. Thankful for that, and I hate it so much. Those disorienting moments where you know this is it. They eat and talk and debate all around Jesus, all the while he knows what is about to happen, what he must do. Being isolated in the mind after a break up, an illness, a death, or reasons unknown. The prophesied betrayal takes the meal to a wholly different place. They get defensive, but each one has a moment of self-doubt. Am I capable of something like that? Do I know just how amazingly possible it is to both be God and the devil? I've seen it in others.