The Last Supper

I’m not sure when we started calling it the Last Supper, but it seems a mistake. It was not the last supper. If anything, it was only the beginning, a foretaste of many to come. 

I recall a Choctaw family in Broken Bow, Oklahoma who fed us cornbread and drunken beans after a long day of building. The cook’s shoes had holes in the top, yet his joy was palpable. 

I remember a meal- tuna casserole and sweet tea – in the basement of a church building on Highway 13 after we buried Russ, age 19, after he slid off the road on the way home from college for the summer. His grandmother prayed for the meal, thanking God for the food through her tears. 

Then there was that Peruvian restaurant in the Mission in San Francisco, when we devoured fish and pork and wine and laughed like the kingdom had come. 

He broke the bread and poured the wine and said “remember me,” but it was not the last supper.

Each time we eat, we remember the mandate – “This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.” 

It was the first of many. 

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