At that time the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified." Crucified? That barbaric, slow, torturous death in which the Romans were so competent? The first to practice crucifixion were the Persians. Later, Alexander and his generals introduced it to Greece, Egypt and finally Carthage. The Romans, supposedly, learned the practice from the Carthaginians. They became consummate masters at it. To think of this particular form of execution now is, at the same time, to think of Roman imperialism.

"This cannot be!" thought Peter in anguish. "Lord, why do you say things like this? Who could do such a thing? How could you allow it to happen?" He spoke for all of us. That Jesus would die any time in the foreseeable future was reprehensible enough, but to die by crucifixion was a thought too terrible to bear.

The Jewish Passover Feast known as the "Feast of Unleavened Bread," had begun. The chief priests and elders assembled in the palace of Caiaphas, the high priest. There they made plans to arrest Jesus and then to kill him. "But not during the Feast," they said, "or there will be riots!" It seemed that for murderers, they worried a lot. They were indeed a frightened assembly. They were afraid of the crowd, they were afraid of the Romans, they were afraid of Jesus.

On the first day of the Feast, it was customary to sacrifice and eat a Passover lamb, so we asked Jesus, "Where do you want to observe Passover?"

He thought for a moment and said, "Go into the city. A man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. He will enter a house. Speak to the owner of the house these words, 'The Teacher asks: Where is a guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my friends?' He will show you a large room on the second floor of the building, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there." Matthew, Bartholomew and I went into the city and found things just as Jesus had said they would be. Would we have expected something different? All of us had long since passed the point of no return where Jesus was concerned. What he knew, we knew not; and what we knew not, we had learned to accept and move on at the strength of his word alone. We went about the business of preparing for Passover.

We had gathered about the table awaiting the service of food. Frankly, I was hungry and no small bit annoyed that the empty plates held only the promise of a meal. I could have eaten a whole lamb by myself. At what seemed to me an intolerable length of time, the evening meal was served; and just as I began to attack my food, Jesus got up from the table, food steaming before him, took off his outer clothing and wrapped a towel around his waist. Eating would have to wait, something was afoot. Unlike me, apparently Jesus had things other than food on his mind. The time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father.

God the Father had put all things under his power. That he knew. He also was keenly aware that he had come from God and that at the appointed time he would go back to God.

Still, Jesus loved those who had come to him and belonged to him. Leaving them was no small thing. In retrospect, I take great comfort in this. More than twelve men had spent several years of their lives with him. He had come to love them deeply. At this moment he desired to demonstrate the full extent of this love.

We all watched as he poured water into a basin. He kneeled before Andrew and started to wash his feet. Andrew was startled by this action and recoiled, but when Jesus looked lovingly into his eyes, he quietly submitted. Jesus continued around the table and washed the feet of each of us, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

Peter observed all this, frowning sternly, but for once, said nothing. As Jesus moved the basin close and attempted to lift Peter's left foot, the old fisherman balked, pulling his foot back. "Lord, what do you think you are doing? Do you really intend to do this?" The palpable absurdity of it appalled Peter. None of us felt comfortable, but, typically, Peter was the only one to protest openly.

"Simon," Jesus responded. "You cannot comprehend now what I am doing, but later you will understand."

That was not good enough for Peter, "No," he replied, "you shall never wash my feet!" Muffled chuckles around the table. Good old Peter. He could always be depended on to meet the extraordinary with peculiar, stubborn resistance.

"Unless I wash you, you have no part with me."

Embarrassed silence. All eyes focused sharply on Simon Peter. An exceedingly long moment passed. When at length he spoke, his voice was shaking, hoarse and forced. "Then, Lord, not just my feet, but also my hands and my head!"

Laughter, the subsequent tension broke. Jesus matter-of-factly answered, "You're already clean, Simon. You are clean because of the word I have spoken to you. The body of a person who has had a bath is clean and needs only to wash his feet which become soiled when you walk. And you are clean." He paused and glanced around the room. Speaking to all of us he continued, "though not every one of you." He had washed the feet of Judas as well, but to no avail. The heart of Judas was not clean and no amount of foot washing could change that. I thought of my own heart, and when I did, I felt hot tears in my eyes.

When he had finished washing feet, he slipped again into his robe and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked. None of us understood. "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and 'Master.' Rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord, Teacher, and Master have washed your feet, in the future you also should wash one another's feet.

"Your soiled feet are a symbol of the contamination of life as you walk through it. Support and encourage each other to be free of your weaknesses and the commerce of life by serving each other in selfless humility. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Serve one another! I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, be happy and blessed as you serve each other."

As Jesus finished tying his robes about him, finding his place at table he said, "I do not refer to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But I say this is to fulfill the scripture: 'He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me.' I tell you now before this heartbreaking desertion occurs, so that when it does happen you will know even more that I AM."

Judas sat idle at the table, eyes narrowed under furrowed brows, eating nothing, brooding over his food. Jesus too, in painful symbiosis, did not put morsel to mouth. Their dark moods affected the rest of us. We knew about Judas, yet we did not. Judas loved money. We all knew that. He was obsessed with it. That is why, I suppose, he became the treasurer among us. His tight-fisted control over our financial resources had more than once left us annoyed and irritated at him. Some of us wondered if Judas secretly kept back some of these resources for himself. But we had at that moment no notion of the immense betrayal festering in his heart. Jesus broke the silence, "Let me say it plainly," he said, "one of you is going to betray me."

Why "one of us?" Why not "Judas will betray me?" Why didn't he just say who he meant? The lack of specificity troubled us. Perhaps that was the point. As usual, Peter initiated a response. Not directly this time. Instead he motioned to John, "Ask him which one of us he means."

John, reclining next to Jesus, leaned over and whispered, "Lord, who is it?"

"It is the one," said Jesus aloud so all could hear, "to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the gravy." As he spoke, Jesus broke a morsel of bread from the loaf; then, dipping the morsel in the bowl of lamb gravy, he gave it to Judas Iscariot. "Here, Judas, my 'friend'; take some nourishment. You seem faint."

Judas did not take the food. His expression showed, what? Contempt? He looked at Jesus and said evenly, "Surely not I, Rabbi?" Jesus continued to hold the bread out to him, dripping lamb gravy forming brown pools on the table. Judas clearly did not want to take it, but the embarrassment of the mess and of being singled out overwhelmed him. Evil does not long endure the light of focused attention. He took the bread.

"You know it is you," Jesus said quietly.

Judas took the bread and slowly moved it to his lips. Inserting it into his mouth he chewed softly, his eyes never leaving the face of Jesus. When he swallowed, he strained and almost choked, as if swallowing a rock.

"What you are about to do, do quickly."

As Judas took the bread, something came over him. To us, he seemed too clean, too innocent. His expression was one of being victimized, unjustly accused. Was Jesus right in what he said about him? There was a not-to-be-unexpected distance between Jesus and Judas, indeed, between the rest of us and Judas. I believe John was right. Satan entered into him, which is to say that Judas allowed himself a certain vulnerability to satanic influence. He did not scream, or howl, or run about naked, or otherwise cut and abuse himself. He did not foam at the mouth or speak in voices that were not his own. To look at him, you would think nothing terrible amiss. He seemed perfectly rational and in control of himself. He was perfectly, well . . . Judas. He seemed no different than he had always been except, perhaps, for resignation. Judas seemed resigned now, almost at peace, as though some important issue were resolved with him. He was a strange man, and now licking gravy from his fingers, stranger still.

Whatever resolution had taken him, it drove him away from Jesus and the rest of us. The time had come for him to quit, and it was important to do so from a position of power. His leaving was not unlike an employee who decides that the time to terminate his own employment has come. Surely there was a better place to labor. Surely there were better friends and associates. His "position of power" was that he knew the intimacies and the intricacies of the twelve and of Jesus. He knew, or thought he knew, how Jesus operated. He thought he knew his supposed weaknesses. His weaknesses, Judas was certain, were his adversarial posture toward the Jewish leadership. Since they were indentured to Herod, they were in position to do Jesus considerable harm. All Judas had to do was provide them with the information they needed to accomplish that harm. Judas had that information. Judas had that power. Better to sever his relationship with Jesus and the others while he had it, than to risk a moment when he did not. Jesus is, after all, despite his magic, only one man. The Jews had the power of Herod behind them, and Herod Antipas, while not his father, still had the Romans in the folds of his robes. It was time for Judas to move.

Did Judas love Jesus? I think in the beginning, he probably did. Some say that there is but a spider-web of difference between love and hate. What could have happened along the way that might have turned the intent of his heart? Of this I am ambiguous, but certainly his concern for money was a part of it. How many times had he objected to the way Jesus had directed him to disperse it. Thoughts of Mary of Bethany come to mind. Further, Judas, for whatever mad thoughts that ran through his head, held himself aloof from the rest of us. He never seemed a part of us. He rarely joined in the laughter, joking and foolishness that we often fell into, including Jesus. In fact, it was often provoked by Jesus. Is there some juxtaposition of thought, some tangle of worms in the mind that makes a man conclude, "I am not one of them," when every effort has been made to make him feel as a brother? I confess gross ignorance here, but something happened to Judas that caused him to conclude that money was more to be considered than fidelity.