The Last Supper

179:5.1As they brought Je­sus the third cup of wine, the “cup of bless­ing,” he arose from the couch and, tak­ing the cup in his hands, blessed it, say­ing: “Take this cup, all of you, and drink of it. This shall be the cup of my re­mem­brance. This is the cup of the bless­ing of a new dis­pen­sa­tion of grace and truth. This shall be to you the em­blem of the be­stowal and min­istry of the di­vine Spirit of Truth. And I will not again drink this cup with you un­til I drink in new form with you in the Fa­ther’s eter­nal king­dom.”

179:5.2The apos­tles all sensed that some­thing out of the or­di­nary was tran­spir­ing as they drank of this cup of bless­ing in pro­found rev­er­ence and per­fect si­lence. The old Pass­over com­mem­o­rated the emer­gence of their fa­thers from a state of racial slav­ery into in­di­vid­ual free­dom; now the Mas­ter was in­sti­tut­ing a new re­mem­brance sup­per as a sym­bol of the new dis­pen­sa­tion wherein the en­slaved in­di­vid­ual emerges from the bond­age of cer­e­mo­ni­al­ism and self­ish­ness into the spir­i­tual joy of the broth­er­hood and fel­low­ship of the lib­er­ated faith sons of the liv­ing God.

179:5.3When they had fin­ished drink­ing this new cup of re­mem­brance, the Mas­ter took up the bread and, af­ter giv­ing thanks, broke it in pieces and, di­rect­ing them to pass it around, said: “Take this bread of re­mem­brance and eat it. I have told you that I am the bread of life. And this bread of life is the united life of the Fa­ther and the Son in one gift. The word of the Fa­ther, as re­vealed in the Son, is in­deed the bread of life.” When they had par­taken of the bread of re­mem­brance, the sym­bol of the liv­ing word of truth in­car­nated in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, they all sat down.

179:5.4In in­sti­tut­ing this re­mem­brance sup­per, the Mas­ter, as was al­ways his habit, re­sorted to para­bles and sym­bols. He em­ployed sym­bols be­cause he wanted to teach cer­tain great spir­i­tual truths in such a man­ner as to make it dif­fi­cult for his suc­ces­sors to at­tach pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and def­i­nite mean­ings to his words. In this way he sought to pre­vent suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions from crys­tal­liz­ing his teach­ing and bind­ing down his spir­i­tual mean­ings by the dead chains of tra­di­tion and dogma. In the es­tab­lish­ment of the only cer­e­mony or sacra­ment as­so­ci­ated with his whole life mis­sion, Je­sus took great pains to sug­gest his mean­ings rather than to com­mit him­self to pre­cise def­i­ni­tions. He did not wish to de­stroy the in­di­vid­ual’s con­cept of di­vine com­mu­nion by es­tab­lish­ing a pre­cise form; nei­ther did he de­sire to limit the be­liever’s spir­i­tual imag­i­na­tion by for­mally cramp­ing it. He rather sought to set man’s re­born soul free upon the joy­ous wings of a new and liv­ing spir­i­tual lib­erty.

179:5.5Not­with­stand­ing the Mas­ter’s ef­fort thus to es­tab­lish this new sacra­ment of the re­mem­brance, those who fol­lowed af­ter him in the in­ter­ven­ing cen­turies saw to it that his ex­press de­sire was ef­fec­tively thwarted in that his sim­ple spir­i­tual sym­bol­ism of that last night in the flesh has been re­duced to pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and sub­jected to the al­most math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion of a set for­mula. Of all Je­sus’ teach­ings none have be­come more tra­di­tion-stan­dard­ized.

179:5.6This sup­per of re­mem­brance, when it is par­taken of by those who are Son-be­liev­ing and God-know­ing, does not need to have as­so­ci­ated with its sym­bol­ism any of man’s puerile mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions re­gard­ing the mean­ing of the di­vine pres­ence, for upon all such oc­ca­sions the Mas­ter is re­ally pres­ent. The re­mem­brance sup­per is the be­liever’s sym­bolic ren­dezvous with Mi­chael. When you be­come thus spirit-con­scious, the Son is ac­tu­ally pres­ent, and his spirit frat­er­nizes with the in­dwelling frag­ment of his Fa­ther.

179:5.7Af­ter they had en­gaged in med­i­ta­tion for a few mo­ments, Je­sus con­tin­ued speak­ing: “When you do these things, re­call the life I have lived on earth among you and re­joice that I am to con­tinue to live on earth with you and to serve through you. As in­di­vid­u­als, con­tend not among your­selves as to who shall be great­est. Be you all as breth­ren. And when the king­dom grows to em­brace large groups of be­liev­ers, like­wise should you re­frain from con­tend­ing for great­ness or seek­ing prefer­ment be­tween such groups.”

179:5.8And this mighty oc­ca­sion took place in the up­per cham­ber of a friend. There was noth­ing of sa­cred form or of cer­e­mo­nial con­se­cra­tion about ei­ther the sup­per or the build­ing. The re­mem­brance sup­per was es­tab­lished with­out ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal sanc­tion.

179:5.9When Je­sus had thus es­tab­lished the sup­per of the re­mem­brance, he said to the eleven: “And as of­ten as you do this, do it in re­mem­brance of me. And when you do re­mem­ber me, first look back upon my life in the flesh, re­call that I was once with you, and then, by faith, dis­cern that you shall all some­time sup with me in the Fa­ther’s eter­nal king­dom. This is the new Pass­over which I leave with you, even the mem­ory of my be­stowal life, the word of eter­nal truth; and of my love for you, the out­pour­ing of my Spirit of Truth upon all flesh.”

179:5.10And they ended this cel­e­bra­tion of the old but blood­less Pass­over in con­nec­tion with the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the new sup­per of the re­mem­brance, by singing, all to­gether, the one hun­dred and eigh­teenth Psalm.