by Paul Johnson
Two events finally decided the priests to act, and made their action possible. Shortly before the Passover feast in the spring, Jesus raised from the dead his friend Lazarus, brother of Martha and Mary and a man well known and much loved among the community both in Bethany, where his home lay, and in Jerusalem. The texts suggest a certain reluctance on Jesus’s part, though they do not actually say he deliberately delayed. As it turned out, Lazarus had been dead four days before Jesus arrived at his sealed tomb and shouted to him to come out. There could be no question that Lazarus’s resurrection was a miraculous event. There were many witnesses both to his death and to his reappearance. There could have been no trickery and no other explanation than that a miraculous event had taken place. It was the talk of Jerusalem, and the priests were alarmed. Indeed, they finally made up their minds to take action against the man who could (in their view) summon Satan to his aid. They also planned to kill Lazarus before he could publicize what had happened to him.
The second event was Jesus’s own decision that the time to make his sacrifice, for which he had been put on earth, had come, and to make a public entry into Jerusalem. There is a hint of this, earlier, in Luke: “And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9 : 51). It was always especially dangerous for him to set foot in the city, and particularly so after the Lazarus affair. In St. John’s account, which is the most specific about the chronology, he began Passion Week on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, by having supper at Lazarus’s house with Martha, Mary, and other friends. Mary took “a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.” This deliberate reenactment of the charitable act of the sinful woman at the house of Simon the Pharisee aroused the anger of Judas Iscariot, the keeper of the funds used by the disciples. But when he said (being a thief, as John writes), “Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?” Jesus said, “Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always” (Jn 12 : 3-8).
This hint of his approaching death was ignored, and the next day he and his party set off publicly to enter the big city. Everyone knew. The crowds were immense. Jesus sat on “a young ass,” and the people “[t]ook branches of palm trees and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord!” (Jn 12:13-14). Jesus, knowing his time had come, made no attempt to stop this acclamation, which would later be celebrated in Christian churches as Palm Sunday. Jesus let the excitement die down, and instead of working miracles, as the priests had expected, he spent the next three days, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, largely in prayer on the Mount of Olives outside the city. Meanwhile, Judas Iscariot, tempted by Satan, went to the priests and asked, “What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him” (Mt 26 : 15-16). The best occasion, he decided, was on the Thursday, after supper, when Jesus went to the mount to pray. It would be dark, with no one about, and he would (he said) indicate which was Jesus by kissing him in greeting. The priests, who feared a Jesus mob in the daytime, agreed, and said they would be there with their Temple guards.
The Passover, or feast of unleavened bread in the Jewish calendar, was spread over several days. Thursday was a feast day, followed by a fast (Friday), then the Passover (Saturday). The disciples asked Jesus on Tuesday where he wished to have the feast. He told two of his disciples: “Go ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water: follow him. 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? And he will shew you a large upper room furnished and prepared: there make ready for us” (Mk 14:13-15). They obeyed. It was as he said, and on the Thursday evening the Twelve sat down together.
Judas Iscariot was among them, for he needed to identify Jesus to the Temple guards when they came to make the arrest, as arranged, later in the evening. John, who identifies himself in his narrative—“Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved” (13 : 23)—quotes Jesus as saying he was “troubled in spirit” and that “one of you shall betray me.” Then “the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake.” Peter beckoned to John that he should ask who it should be of whom he spake. He then lying on Jesus’ breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it? Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly. Now no man at the table knew for what intent he spake this to him. . . . He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night.
(13:24-30)
We find it curious that Jesus’s warnings against betrayal did not alarm the eleven apostles more: for their lives, too, were at risk. Nor did they take much notice of Jesus’s repeated indications that his supreme sacrifice was at hand. It might have been different if women had been present at the Last Supper. They were more sensitive to these hints: to signs and dreams, to sighs and evidence of worry on Jesus’s part. But his mother, Mary, and Mary Magdalene, and Martha and Mary of Bethany, and Joanna and Susanna (whose means probably paid the bill for the feast) were not invited. This was an all-male occasion, as often with Passover meals. Jesus wished it so. According to Luke, he began the meal by saying: “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” (22 : 15). He also, according to John, wished to perform a last ceremony of humility by washing his apostles’ feet (13:4-12). He “laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.” Peter protested.
JESUS: If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
PETER: Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
JESUS: He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all [meaning Judas].
According to the three synoptics (Mt 26:26-30; Mk 14: 22-26; Lk 22:14-20), Jesus used the supper to institute a symbolic ceremony linking the eating of bread and drinking of wine with the coming sacrifice of his body and the shedding of his blood. The words are important and they are almost identical in the three accounts, and parts are repeated in the Acts of the Apostles (2:42-46, 20:7) and Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians (1:10:16, 11:24-25). Jesus said that the supper was the last meal he would eat before his sacrifice, and the last wine he would drink, “until the kingdom of God shall come” (Lk 22:18). Then Luke describes what followed: “And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul stresses Jesus’s command, given by Luke: “This do in remembrance of me.”
It is curious that John, who was present, does not record these words by which Jesus instituted the sacrament of Holy Communion, which was placed at the center of the ceremony performed whenever Christians gathered together within two decades of Jesus’s death, and has remained such ever since. But John had already recorded Jesus using similar words, calling himself “the bread of life” at the feeding of the five thousand: “I am the living bread . . . the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (6 : 51). Moreover, John gives instead a long eschatological address, dealing with death, judgment, hell, and heaven, which Jesus intended as his last serious message to his disciples, and which included some of his most memorable sayings: “Abide in me,
and I in you.” “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” “In my father’s house are many mansions. . . . I go to prepare a place for you.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me: and, Because I go to the Father?” (15:4, 5; 14:1, 2, 6, 27; 15:13; 16:17).
The Last Supper concluded with Jesus leading the eleven apostles in singing a hymn. Not enough attention has been paid to the hymns given in the Gospels. The Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, the Benedictus of Zacharias, the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon, and Gloria in Excelsis sung by the angels (all recorded in Luke) had been complemented by the hosanna hymn, or cry of praise, on Palm Sunday. And it may be that the opening verses of John are a hymn to the Logos originally arranged in three verses. It is a pity we do not have the text of the Last Supper hymn, but it was no doubt one of thanks for the institution of the Holy Communion, for the Acts of the Apostles records the early Christians reflecting the Last Supper tradition, taking communion “with gladness and singleness of heart” and “[p]raising God”—in a way that sounds like hymn singing (2:46-47). And it is fitting that the last hymn recorded in the Gospels shall be a joyful thanksgiving before the horrors to come.
Although the chamber now shown in Jerusalem as the upper room where the Last Supper took place may not be the actual building, the spot is plausible. By contrast, the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane are most certainly the places recorded in the Gospels. According to Luke, he warned them yet again of the trouble coming, and when Peter said, “Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death,” Jesus replied sorrowfully, “I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.” He also warned them that they would need money in the future, and they should sell their goods to buy swords. They replied, “Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.” Then they went into the garden, probably a private one belonging to a wealthy follower, which they were permitted to use. Jesus told them to pray, “And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed” (22:31-41).
This long prayer is traditionally called the Agony in the Garden, for in it Jesus both asked for “the cup” to be taken away and submitted to his Father’s will—“not my will, but thine, be done.” Luke says that “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” An angel appeared, “strengthening him,” but how he knew this is not clear, for when Jesus had finished his prayer, “and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow” (22:42-45). Jesus’s prayer lasted a long time (Matthew’s account says he came back three times to find his apostles asleep). It illustrates the intensity of his communion in prayer with the Father, the enormity of his fear, his horror and revulsion at the prospect of the Crucifixion, and at the same time the courage and resolution with which he put aside his terror and prepared himself for death. Jesus’s subsequent calmness during the insults and sufferings he endured is due to the thoroughness with which he prepared himself by prayer—one of the great lessons of his Passion.
Matthew records Jesus coming to his disciples three times (26:40-49). On the third occasion, he said resignedly, “Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand.” Then the Temple soldiers and the high priest’s bodyguards arrived—“a great multitude”—“with swords and staves.” Judas, with them, said, “Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.” He kissed Jesus, saying, “Hail, master.” According to Luke, Jesus replied, “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?” (22:48). The apostles then became aware of what was happening, and said to Jesus, “Lord, shall we smite with the sword?” (22:49). Luke adds: “And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.” Jesus denied them this right to resist: “Suffer ye thus far.” He touched the man’s ear “and healed him.” Then he turned to the priests “and captains of the temple,” and said: “Be ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and staves? When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me: but this is your hour, and the power of darkness” (22:50-53).
Then they took him to the high priest’s house. In Matthew’s account, “all the disciples forsook him, and fled” (26:56). After all their boasting, this was contemptible. One wonders what would have happened if the women had been with them. We cannot see the Virgin Mary abandoning her son, or Mary Magdalene, or the energetic Martha. There would have been a scene of fierce resistance, and blood would have flowed. In justice to the men, Jesus did not call on them to fight, just the contrary. They did not understand his resolve to be meek in suffering, though he had explained it often enough. They were confused. They lacked leadership. Peter did not give it to them. He fled, too. But later he crept back and sat in the outer court of the high priest’s palace while Jesus was held within. Three times he was asked, twice by serving maids, once by the mob: “Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee”—a reference to his Galilean accent. He denied it each time (“I know not what thou sayest. . . . I do not know the man”), the third time with curses and swearing. Then the cock crowed, and Peter remembered Jesus’s prediction of his betrayal: “And he went out, and wept bitterly” (26:69-75). And what of the real betrayer, the wretched Judas? Matthew says that when he recognized the enormity of what he had done, he “repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.” Judas and his crime, as well as his dismal fate, gave rise to many stories in the early church. All we know is that “the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called The field of blood, unto this day” (27:3-8). It was situated on the southern slope of the Valley of Hinnom, near the Kidron Valley, and is known by the Aramaic word Akeldama. Its supposed location, like those of many other places mentioned in the Gospels, is shown to visitors, and those who come to pray for Judas’s soul—lost or not, we cannot say—can believe it is the exact spot, if they wish.
Then came the long procedure of Jesus’s trials and condemnation, which lasted through the rest of Thursday night, till the cock crowed at dawn, and for most of Friday morning. There were in effect three trials: before the high priest, before Herod Antipas, and before Pilate. All four evangelists contribute something in substance and in detail. What the narratives amount to, in effect and perhaps in intention, is a bitterly ironic condemnation of human justice. Lying and perjury, prejudice and false witness, an eagerness to take innocent life but a determination to avoid any responsibility by passing the decision to others, cowardice on all sides, and not without a vile touch of frivolity—these were the salient characteristics of the trials of Jesus.
The high priest Caiaphas was only too anxious to hustle Jesus off to death, but he was too cowardly to pronounce sentence himself. So he passed the responsibility to Pilate. Pilate was another cowardly and indecisive man. Hearing Jesus was a Galilean, he instantly sent the prisoner off to Herod Antipas: as he said, Herod was the ruler of Galilee and thus had jurisdiction. But Herod, finding Jesus unwilling to plead—he would not recognize the court of the man who had, in his frivolous depravity, decapitated his cousin John the Baptist at the whim of a fan dancer—sent him straight back to Pilate. And Pilate, finally, handed over the responsibility to a mob outside his windows: not a genuine mob of the Jerus
alem rabble, either, but a rehearsed and orchestrated one trained in slogan shouting by the priests, their masters. Pilate condemned Jesus not because he was guilty—he, and more important, his wife, believed him innocent—but because he was afraid the Jewish religious leaders would report him to Rome, where his position was shaky. And while these travesties of justice were being enacted, a cluster of servants and soldiers always waited outside for Jesus to be left with them a while, so they could enact a brutal counterpoint to the irresponsible wickedness of their betters by spitting in his face, dressing him up in dirty finery, crowning him with thorns, and sneering at him with obscene slogans. It’s hard to say who behaved more badly: those in high places or the underlings who sucked up to them from below. Jesus, as always, was charitable: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Matthew tells us that Jesus was taken to Caiaphas’s house, “where the scribes and the elders were assembled” (26:57ff.). John says that Jesus was first brought to the house of Annas, the high priest’s father-in-law and predecessor. There, witnesses had been assembled, and Annas asked him about his doctrine. Jesus said, “I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. Why asketh thou me? ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said.” At this, one of Annas’s officers struck Jesus with the palm of his hand and said, “Answerest thou the high priest so?” Jesus said, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?” (18:20-23). Annas decided to have him bound and sent him, escorted, on to Caiaphas, with such witness as he had been able to scrape together. What he, and Caiaphas, wanted was reputable Jews who would swear an oath that Jesus had proclaimed himself the Christ, the King of Israel, and the Son of God, so that, as Matthew says, they could put him to death (26 : 59). They found “many” to give evidence, but none of the kind they wished. Jesus made no comment, which provoked Caiaphas into saying, “Answerest thou nothing? What is it which these witness against thee?” But as Jesus contrived to “h[o]ld his peace,” Caiaphas shouted, “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God!” Jesus replied, “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (26:62-64).
