It is normal and laudable to think ahead to the legacy one might leave for posterity, hopefully a legacy to the good for others. In the case of Jesus, his sights for an enduring legacy must have been very high, high enough to cause much anxiety on account of the heavy resistance he had encountered, not least from his closest disciples. It seems highly likely that he had become conscious of being a messianic figure by the close of his life, made all the more problematic in that the Davidic model didn’t seem to fit the life he had felt led to lead. Given that he had reason to believe that there was no escaping the death close on the horizon, much as he would have wanted to, the model of the Suffering Messiah of Isaiah 52-53 seemed more like what was in store for him. But how could dying at the hands of the religious and political authorities lead to anything after his death? The need to firm up his legacy as best he could reached its climax at what has gone down in history as The Last Supper. On Maundy Thursday, we commemorate the two last things recorded of Jesus before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The first event is Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. The resistance he encountered from his closest disciple, Peter, could not have been encouraging. Jesus reacted to this resistance with a firm reproof that seems to have done its job, as Peter seems finally to have gotten on board with the notion of being a leader by being a servant. Jesus’ act is easy for anyone to understand provided one’s heart is not so clouded as to find such a humble act of service incomprehensible. The problem is, it is easy to let our hearts cloud over in such matters and it is very difficult to clear up our hearts when they have been so clouded. However, Jesus’ act of washing the disciples’ feet is about a clear a beacon as he could have given to his followers and to us.

Jesus’ second and last act is to host the supper, possibly a Passover meal, but not necessarily. In serving the bread, he says cryptically that it is his body for them, and when serving the wine, he says. just as cryptically, that it is his blood of the new covenant. (1 Cor. 11: 24-25). He then instructed his disciples to eat the bread and drink the wine in his memory. We have been doing this ever since with the conviction that in some mysterious way, Christ continues to give of his substance through the bread and wine. What was Jesus thinking at the time of making these gestures? He didn’t have a theological manual on sacramental theology to help him out and presumably didn’t need such a prop. A deep dependency on his heavenly Abba would have been enough. When I think of the stiff resistance Jesus was experiencing at the time, even from his disciples, I begin to suspect that the bread and wine was something of an escape hatch, an end run around the resistance. In many mysterious ways, eating the bread and drinking the wine not only teaches us more and more over the years what Jesus is all about, but these acts keep Jesus alive within us. It is of profound significance that the two disciples who walked the road to Emmaus recognized the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread.

When Jesus died on the cross, Joseph of Arimathea buried him and put a stone at the opening of tomb. This stone was just to protect the body. For Caiaphas, that was not enough as he did not want to take any chances that the dead man would get away. So he had the stone sealed just to make sure. Three days later, we’ll see how that worked out.