Peter Rollins’ Parable of The Last Supper

Peter Rollins shares his parable The Last Supper with commentary as we prepare for Holy Week services.

It
is evening, and you are gathered together with the other disciples in a
small room for Passover. All the time you are watching Jesus, while he
sits quietly in the shadows listening to the idle chatter, watching
over those who sit around him, and, from time to time, telling stories
about the kingdom of God.

As night descends, a meal of bread and wine is brought into the room.
It is only at this moment that Jesus sits forward so that the shadows
no longer cover his face. He quietly brings the conversation to an end
by capturing each one with his intense gaze. Then he begins to speak:

"My friends, take this bread, for it is my very body, broken for you."
Every eye is fixed on the bread that is laid on the table. While these
words seem obscure and unintelligible, everyone picks up on their
gravity.

Then Jesus carefully pours wine into the cup of each disciple until it overflows onto the table.

"Take this wine and drink of it, for it is my very blood, shed for you."

With these words an ominous shadow seems to descend upon the room – a
chilling darkness that makes everyone shudder uneasily. Jesus continues:

"As you do this, remember me."

Most of the gathered disciples begin to slowly eat the bread and drink
the wine, lost in their thoughts. You, however, cannot bring yourself
to lift your hand at all, for his words have cut into your soul like a
knife.

Jesus does not fail to notice your hesitation and approaches, lifting
up your head with his hand so that your eyes are level with his. Your
eyes meet for only a moment, but before you are able to turn away, you
are caught up in a terrifying revelation. At that instant you
experience the loneliness, the pain, and sorrow that Jesus is carrying.
You see nails being driven through skin and bone; you hear the crowds
jeering and the cries of pain as iron cuts against flesh. At that
moment you see the sweat that flows from Jesus like blood, and
experience the suffocation, madness, and pain that will soon envelop
him. More than all of this, however, you feel a trace of the separation
he will soon feel in his own being.

In that little room, which occupies no significant space in the
universe, you have caught a glimpse of a divine vision that should
never have been disclosed. Yet it is indelibly etched into the eyes of
Christ for anyone brave enough to look.

You turn to leave – to run from that place. You long for death to wrap
around you. But Jesus grips you with his gaze and smiles
compassionately. Then he holds you tight in his arms like no one has
held you before. He understands that the weight you now carry is so
great that it would have been better had you never been born. After a
few moments, he releases his embrace and lifts the wine that sits
before you, whispering,

"Take this wine, my dear friend, and drink it up, for it is my very blood, and it is shed for you."

All this makes you feel painfully uncomfortable, and so you shift in
your chair and fumble in your pocket, all the time distracted by the
silver that weights heavy in your pouch.

Commentary from Peter Rollins:

This reflection was on outworking of my first interaction with the
enigmatic figure of Judas. Here I wanted to play with our tendency to
identify with the favorable characters in the Bible. For instance, when
reading about the self-righteous Pharisee and the humble tax collector,
we find it all too easy to condemn the first and praise the second
without asking whether our own actions are closer to the one we have
rejected than the one we praise.

Judas is here a symbol of all our failures, and Christ’s action to
demonstrate his unconditional acceptance. Judas helps to remind us of
Christ’s message that he came for the sick rather than the healthy, and
that he loves and accepts us as we are.

Paraclete Press was gracious enough to let me and other bloggers publish a parable from Peter Rollins’s new book The Orthodox Heretic, and is offering readers of this blog a 40% discount off the retail price by following this link.