Mark 14:17-26 — Jesus' Table

FRANK EDWARDS: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies." David pictures his enemies across the room, watching him eat. At the Last Supper the enemy was not across the room. He was lying at the same table, dipping his hand into the same bowl as Jesus. Today is about what Jesus did with that, and what it means for anyone who has ever been handed a place at his table. LINDA BROWN: Welcome to Dig Deeper. I'm Linda Brown, here with Frank Edwards, and this is step eleven of our sixteen steps through Psalm 23. Last time Herod set a banquet for himself, and a prophet died "because of his oaths and his guests." Today, a very different host. Mark chapter fourteen, verses seventeen to twenty-six. When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. And while they were reclining and eating, Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, one of you who is eating with Me will betray Me." They began to be grieved and to ask Him one after another, "Surely not I?" He answered, "It is one of the Twelve—the one who is dipping his hand into the bowl with Me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed! It would be better for him if he had not been born." While they were eating, Jesus took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, "Take it; this is My body." Then He took the cup, gave thanks, and 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. Truly I tell you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God." And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. FRANK EDWARDS: On step nine we heard that "in the presence of" is neged in Hebrew: in front of, facing, in full view. Mark makes sure we know how close the enemies were that night. Two days before, "the chief priests and scribes were looking for a covert way to arrest Jesus and kill Him." Then, "Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them." By the time Jesus reclines at this table, the arrangement is made. Enemies outside, waiting, and one of them inside. LINDA BROWN: Set the scene. This was a Passover meal, wasn't it? FRANK EDWARDS: Mark dates it to the day "when the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed." And the Passover was the oldest table in Israel set in the presence of enemies. The first one was eaten in Egypt, under Pharaoh. God told them in Exodus 12, "You must be fully dressed for travel, with your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand." And what kept them safe that night was the blood of a lamb: "when I see the blood, I will pass over you." Every Passover after that remembered a meal eaten with the enemy at the door and the household kept safe. LINDA BROWN: Mark says they were reclining. That is not how most of us picture a supper table. Is it the word he used for Herod's guests too? FRANK EDWARDS: The same word. Herod's guests reclined at his birthday banquet, and Jesus and the Twelve recline at this one. Lying on cushions around a low table was how a festive meal was eaten. Two tables, both full of reclining guests. At Herod's, the host handed a man over to please the people around him. At this one, the Host is about to hand himself over for the people around him. LINDA BROWN: Then he says it. "One of you who is eating with Me will betray Me." That sounds like a psalm. FRANK EDWARDS: Psalm 41, a psalm of David: "Even my close friend whom I trusted, the one who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me." John 13 records Jesus applying that very line to Judas. Eating together made a bond. To be betrayed by someone who had eaten your bread was a special kind of wound. And Jesus makes it closer still: "the one who is dipping his hand into the bowl with Me." Not across the room, where the psalm puts the enemies. In the same dish. LINDA BROWN: Psalm 55 says almost the same thing. "For it is not an enemy who insults me; that I could endure." And then, "But it is you, a man like myself, my companion and close friend." FRANK EDWARDS: David knew it from his own life. When his son Absalom rebelled, Second Samuel 15 says David "continued up the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went up," and then someone told him, "Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom." Ahithophel was his trusted counselor. And where does today's reading end? "They went out to the Mount of Olives." A son of David, betrayed by a man who ate with him, walking up the same hill. LINDA BROWN: The disciples do something unexpected. Nobody points at anyone. Each one asks, "Surely not I?" FRANK EDWARDS: The Greek shapes the question to expect the answer no: it isn't me, is it? Matthew 26 adds that Judas asked it too: "Surely not I, Rabbi?" In Mark, Jesus never names him aloud. The warning stands over all twelve. And that raises a real question for the psalm. Who are the enemies at this table? Judas, certainly. But every man there would fail him before morning. LINDA BROWN: Then the hard sentence. "The Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!" If it was written, how is Judas to blame? FRANK EDWARDS: Mark holds both without apology. Jesus is not caught off guard. He walks the road the Scriptures had already laid out. And Judas's choice is still his own, and the "woe" is a lament as much as a warning. Psalm 23 pictures a host who is never thrown by the enemies in the room. Here is that Host. He knows exactly who is at his table, and he goes on serving the meal. LINDA BROWN: "Jesus took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to the disciples." Those are the same four verbs from the green grass on step five. FRANK EDWARDS: Took, blessed, broke, gave. The same shape as the wilderness meal, and this time he says what the bread is: "Take it; this is My body." Luke 22 adds a detail that makes the psalm almost visible. Right after the cup, Jesus says, "Look! The hand of My betrayer is with Mine on the table." The enemy's hand was within reach of the bread, and the bread was given anyway. LINDA BROWN: Proverbs 25 says, "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink." Paul repeats it in Romans 12. FRANK EDWARDS: At this table Jesus did it in the most literal way. There is a story in Second Kings 6 with the same shape. Elisha's king had a band of enemy raiders at his mercy, and Elisha said, "Set food and water before them." The king "prepared a great feast for them," and the raiders "did not come into the land of Israel again." A table set for enemies ended the raids. And a few hours after this supper, when Judas arrives in the garden with the arresting party, Matthew 26 records Jesus' first word to him: "Friend." LINDA BROWN: Then the cup. "This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many." That echoes Moses, doesn't it? FRANK EDWARDS: Exodus 24. At Mount Sinai, Moses took the blood of the sacrifices, "splattered it on the people, and said, 'This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you.'" And the very next scene in Exodus 24 is a meal. The leaders of Israel go up the mountain, and it says, "God did not lay His hand on the nobles of Israel; they saw Him, and they ate and drank." A table in the presence of a holy God, and they were safe at it, under covenant blood. LINDA BROWN: That turns the psalm around. Those leaders ate and drank in front of God himself, and they lived. So the deepest danger at a table is not the enemies watching from across the room. FRANK EDWARDS: Sinners eating in the presence of a holy God is the deeper danger, and the blood is what made that table safe. Jeremiah 31 promised a new covenant, and named its heart: "For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more." "Poured out for many" reaches to Isaiah 53, where the Servant "poured out His life unto death" and "bore the sin of many." Jesus gathers Moses, Jeremiah and Isaiah into one sentence over a cup. LINDA BROWN: You asked earlier who the enemies at this table were. Paul has a hard answer in Romans 5: "when we were enemies of God, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son." FRANK EDWARDS: That is the answer, and it includes everyone. Jesus told the Twelve on the way out, "You will all fall away," and in the garden "everyone deserted Him and fled." Every guest at that table was handed the bread and the cup by a Host who knew they would run. So Psalm 23:5 reads differently after this night. The guest at the LORD's table is safe from his enemies. And the guest was once counted among them, brought to the table by the body and blood given here. LINDA BROWN: Colossians 1 puts it the same way. "Once you were alienated from God and were hostile in your minds." And then, "But now He has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death." FRANK EDWARDS: By his body, the word he used over the bread. John's account of this same night records Jesus telling them, "I have called you friends." Enemies made into friends, at one table, by the Host's own body and blood. That is how a table can be safe in the presence of enemies. The Host deals with the enemies outside, and he changes the enemies inside. LINDA BROWN: At the end of the meal he looks ahead. "I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God." FRANK EDWARDS: A table set in the presence of enemies now, and another table coming where the enemies are gone. Psalm 110, which Jesus echoes about himself at his trial, says, "Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet." Paul writes in First Corinthians 15, "The last enemy to be destroyed is death." Until then, he says, "as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." LINDA BROWN: Then they sang, and walked out into the night toward the garden. Do we know what they sang? FRANK EDWARDS: Mark does not say. Later Jewish writings describe Passover closing with Psalms 113 to 118, so many readers think of those. If so, the last psalm on their lips was Psalm 118: "The LORD is on my side; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? The LORD is on my side; He is my helper. Therefore I will look in triumph on those who hate me." We cannot be certain. But it fits the hour. Jesus rose from the table and walked out to meet his enemies. LINDA BROWN: John begins his account of this night with one sentence. "Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the very end." FRANK EDWARDS: Loved to the very end, with Judas reclining beside him and the rest about to scatter. David sang of a table set in the presence of his enemies. On this night the Son of David set that table himself, with the enemy at his elbow, and gave his body and blood to everyone around it. Whoever comes to him now eats in peace, because the Host has already faced every enemy for his guests. Hear his words over the cup again, and then the psalm. "This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many." You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. [long pause] LINDA BROWN: For a way to take this into an ordinary week, the Apply This Today section in the app picks it up. Next time, Mark fourteen goes on into the dark: the Shepherd struck and the sheep scattered, Gethsemane, and the arrest. FRANK EDWARDS: Dig Deeper is a free app, and you can find it at dig deeper dot A I. LINDA BROWN: Thanks for listening, and for coming to the upper room today.