MARK BLOG 7 The Last Supper: A New Table for an Enduring Kingdom
A Meal That Changed Everything
It was the final meal before everything unraveled. The disciples knew something was building. From the moment he entered the city, to the way he had cursed the temple, to the charged exchanges with the leaders—tension hung in the air like the final moments before a dam bursts—a crescendo of pressure before the flood. In the moment, we were at times distracted by this noise outside and this tension building around us. But after the events that followed, we returned to that night again and again—not just in memory, but in practice.
That meal—the one we call the Last Supper—was a Passover. The Passover was a sacred festival—our yearly remembrance of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. It was a night marked by lamb and unleavened bread, by storytelling and thanksgiving. A meal that reconnected us to who we were. I wrote it this way in my Gospel: “On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb…” (Mark 14:12). The timing matters, but even more so does the weight of what happened there. Because this wasn’t just a farewell meal. It was a lesson—one that would help make sense of the events about to unfold.
Bread, Cup, and Covenant
I chose to tell it briefly, just a few verses. Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. “This is my body,” he said. Then the cup: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” (Mark 14:22–24)
That word—covenant—it’s ancient. It’s loaded. It draws the mind back to Moses, to Sinai, to the blood of bulls and the fellowship of God. Luke’s account even calls it a new covenant. I didn’t remember the story being told to me that way—but I understand why he emphasized it. He was drawing a line back to the prophets who spoke of a new covenant written on hearts, not stone. But my emphasis was rooted more in Exodus 24:8, where Moses sprinkled the blood of the covenant on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you.” My emphasis was not on a new covenant but a new way of satisfying an old covenant. No longer was the blood of bulls and goats needed. Jesus’ blood would be the greater and completed sacrifice—not one that needs to be repeated.
That’s what Jesus echoed. But instead of sealing it with the blood of bulls and goats, he offered his own. And the writer of Hebrews would later reflect on this too, reminding us that “the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). The covenant Jesus was setting before them wasn’t a restatement of the old system. The essence of the covenant was the same, but the structure around it had changed. (1) Because now, the blood was his—and it was enough.
Paul’s Account: Remembrance and Practice
When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he passed on what he had received—an account of that same night. His version is strikingly close to mine in its structure. But there are differences too. Paul, writing before any of us Gospel writers, includes a command: “Do this in remembrance of me.” I didn’t include that. It’s not because I hadn’t heard it. Perhaps it was because, by the time I was writing, doing this in remembrance had already become second nature. We were already celebrating the meal regularly—gathering in homes, breaking bread, sharing the cup. It wasn’t a ritual yet. Not in the formal sense. But it was sacred.(2) (3) (4)
Matthew and Luke: Different Angles of the Same Light
And then there’s Matthew and Luke. They expand the scene in ways I didn’t. Luke adds emotion—“I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” Matthew records Jesus saying the blood is “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” I didn’t write the part about the forgiveness of sins. It’s not necessarily because I didn’t believe it. It just wasn’t the point that was highlighted as it was passed down to me.
Some readers today might ask: why the differences? Why don’t we all say it the same way?
Shaping the Story for Different Communities
I understand the question. But I also know how memory works. And how story works. Each of us shaped what we heard into a form that spoke to the needs of our communities. I—well, I was writing at a time when the temple was fading from view. By the time my Gospel took shape, the smoke of its destruction still lingered in memory, if not in sight. Jerusalem was no longer the center. The system had collapsed. And so I framed that night not just as a farewell, but as the dawn of something enduring—a new covenant not carved in stone, but remembered in bread and wine, carried with us wherever we went.
Evolution or Emphasis?
I’ve heard others suggest that these variations reflect theological evolution—that we early Christians remembered the meal differently as our understanding of Jesus grew. (5) Maybe. But I think it also reflects how layered the moment truly was. This wasn’t a script to be recited. It was an event with echoes—personal, communal, prophetic. Each telling catches a different angle of the light.
I think we felt flexibility was not only allowed but encouraged so that we could grasp the many angles of the event. (6) It might make a historical recounting more difficult for future generations but that wasn’t our intent. I wasn’t inventing; I was shaping. Preserving the heart of what happened as it was passed down to me, but arranging it to reveal what mattered most in the moment of crisis. For us in the church around AD 70, it was Jesus and that was who I was trying to convey.
How We Celebrated the Meal
We didn’t call it “the Lord’s Supper” at first. Or “communion.” But we gathered. We broke bread. We remembered. We sang psalms and hymns. We read from sacred writings—scrolls of the Law, the Prophets, and the emerging letters passed among the churches. We prayed together. Some communities gathered daily, others weekly. In private homes, in secret, in exile. We didn’t need a temple or a priest any longer.
Covenant and Kingdom
A covenant had been presented. And covenants were not casual things in our world. They were sacred bonds, often sealed in blood. But this one was different. This one was offered for many. Not just for Israel. Not just for the inner circle. For many. For all who would come.
And we saw in this covenant a shadow of the kingdom to come.
Because Jesus didn’t just speak of the covenant of body and blood. He also said, “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” This felt apocalyptic. It seemed to speak of a kingdom present but not fully realized, steadily expanding—like yeast through dough, like light at the edge of dawn.
In the shadow of uncertainty. In the face of fear. In the breaking of bread, they found him, the Son Of Man.
And to this day, so do we.
—Mark
Endnotes
- I am sympathetic to a mono-covenantal framework—which deeply impacts how I read covenant conversations. This view contrasts with bi-covenantalism, which tends to sharply separate the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Covenants, and with dispensationalism, which divides history into distinct eras of God’s dealings with humanity. Among bi-covenantal perspectives, there are important differences: in the Presbyterian tradition, the ‘Covenant of Works’ and the ‘Covenant of Grace’ are emphasized, with the former applying to Adam and the latter unfolding through Christ. In more non-dispensational, Baptistic circles, the contrast is often framed around a more pronounced discontinuity between Mosaic law and the gospel, typically minimizing a pre-Christ Covenant of Grace. These frameworks shape how one sees continuity in Scripture—and they differ significantly from the mono-covenantal view, which sees one unfolding promise throughout redemptive history. In short, many things throughout the history of God’s people that seem new are actually renewals. Systems and practices definitely changed over time and were, in that sense, new—but the essence of the covenant they represented was eternal, established before the foundation of the world (see Hebrews 13:20; 1 Peter 1:20; 2 Timothy 1:9).
- Larry W. Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship (Eerdmans, 2000), especially chapter 3, where he describes how early Christian meals were sacred but not yet standardized rituals.
- Everett Ferguson, Early Christians Speak: Faith and Life in the First Three Centuries (ACU Press, 1999), which surveys how early practices surrounding the Lord’s Supper developed from informal to structured forms of worship.
- Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapters 65–67, where he describes how Christians gathered for teaching, prayer, and the Eucharist—offering one of the earliest snapshots of how the meal became more formalized over time.
- Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them) (HarperOne, 2009), especially chapters 4–5, where he discusses how different Gospel traditions emerged based on theological priorities in early Christian communities.
- Michael R. Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography (Oxford University Press, 2017). Licona argues that Gospel writers followed literary conventions of Greco-Roman biography, which allowed for creative flexibility in emphasis and detail without compromising truth.
