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| Vincent van Gogh - "Olive Orchard" in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
This Van Gogh painting is called "Olive Orchard." It reminds me of seeing the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem two years ago... very similar.
I was moved to be able to kneel and pray among those trees where Jesus knelt two thousand years ago, on the night before he died and probably many times before that.
The Gospel of John provides quite a long summary of Jesus's talk with his disciples at the Last Supper. He seems to be worried about his followers, giving them a crash course in how to carry on. He tells God, "I protected them in your name... I guarded them."
Several times he asks the Holy One to protect them, also saying "protect them from evil." Was he worried about the evil they might commit or about the Roman soldiers soon to execute him?
That very evening the disciples had been arguing over which one of them was the greatest (see Luke 22:24-27 and also Matthew and Mark).
I wonder if Jesus foresaw what a mess the church would become at times--the greedy popes, the Crusades, the right-wing Christians supporting Trump. If so, he also foresaw the saints and many sincere but humble followers.
He kept asking his disciples to "abide in me" like branches of a vine connected to the trunk and roots. He prayed "that they may all be one." Well, we know how that worked out. Christians are splintered into many sects.
On the other hand, I guess the first group stayed connected to Jesus and the Creator long enough to "bear much fruit," as he was hoping.
"Little children, I am with you only a little longer," Jesus said. "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you..." (John 13:33-34).
Because of these words, the day of the Last Supper came to be called Maundy Thursday in English cultures.
For many centuries, priests read the Bible in Latin. "New commandment" is mandatum novum in Latin. In English, Mandatum Thursday became shortened to Maundy Thursday.
Of course, Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic (a language related to Hebrew), not Latin or Greek. The Hebrew for new command is פקודה חדשה (pekoodah hadashah).
In fact, this command wasn't really new; see for example Leviticus 19:18. Maybe Jesus is stressing it at this point because he won't be around to stop their quarreling.
On Good Friday 2021, instead of focusing exclusively on the crucifixion, let's spend some time reading Jesus's last words as recorded in the Gospel According to John, chapters 13 through 17.
This year many of us in the US are spending Holy Week focused on another man killed by his government, George Floyd. He died on May 25, 2020, because of all our sins--our racism, our historicially flawed police systems, and our inattention to funding things like drug rehab programs, Covid relief, and better-trained first responders.
Just as we are getting to know George Floyd in his last day, through the trial of the man who killed him, let's focus on what Jesus was saying in his last 24 hours.
Note: There are shorter summaries of that dinner discourse in Matthew 26:20-35, Mark 14:17-26 and Luke 22: 14-38.
