The Last Supper

By Alex Florez

A few years ago, my son and I watched our favorite team lose the Super Bowl. We stared in disbelief as our team walked off utterly dejected. After a long season of overblown hype and heaven-high expectations, we had to face the fact that our heroes had been defeated.

In the weeks that followed, we watched the highlights of the game several more times, and believe it or not, something in me truly believed the outcome of the game might actually be different if I watched it just one more time.

Reading the Gospel accounts of Holy Week, I wonder if those closest to Jesus had a similar experience. I suspect the disciples may have hoped—in spite of Jesus’s clear indications—that things would not get as far as their Master having to suffer and die.

Just picture the scene: “As they were eating, he took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘Take it; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’” (Mark 14:22–24).

I imagine Him elaborating in that moment: “Things are about to get really, really hard. I am going to suffer, bleed, and die. But friends, you must remember these things as long as you live. This is the only way, and it is imperative that you celebrate forever what I am about to do for you.”

But knowing something is going to happen doesn’t mean you can’t hope for a different outcome. Up until the moment they sealed the tomb with Jesus inside, the disciples must have prayed in earnest that the day might yet end without their friend bruised, bloody, and deceased.

This illustrates something that the Bible teaches over and over again: God knows better than we do. In His unsearchable wisdom, God knew nothing but His own blood would restore the severed relationship between Himself and His people. He knew that in order to establish a new covenant, He would have to settle the terms of the original account once and for all with His own Son’s death. There was simply no other option than for the innocent Lamb of God to suffer and die so that we might live.

On that immeasurably momentous Thursday evening, Jesus taught His disciples how to actively remember His broken body and spilled blood. They may not have wanted to believe it yet, but this is how it would have to be in order for God’s salvation story to conclude with Jesus wearing a crown of undisputed victory. We may yet find ourselves beholden to the debt of sin and sentence of eternal spiritual death if the events of that evening had not been consummated with the blood of the slain Savior.

Because it is God writing the story instead of us, His blood has set us free.