Matthew 26:30
When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
There’s something about this solitary verse that I find quite touching.
It’s a bit of an orphan, serving as a transitional verse from the tension and drama of Jesus’ prediction of his betrayal while sharing his Last Supper with his disciples to the tension and drama of his prediction of Peter’s denial and prayer at Gethsemane.
But in addition to serving as a transition, it also feels strangely normal. Because this is what you did at the end of a Passover meal. You sang a hymn. Not just a hymn, actually, but the hymn.
Which reminds us that whatever else my happen on this evening, Jesus and his disciples were also a group of friends and devout Jews who gathered together to celebrate the Passover, just like thousands of other friends that evening and millions of Jews across the centuries. They gathered for a meal, for reading and recitation of the story of God’s deliverance, and for prayer. And at the end of it all they sang the hymn that brought their observance to a close.
It’s easy for us to forget that there was something very normal about Jesus and his disciples gathering to share this meal, even as there was something quite extraordinary about the larger story and night of which it is a part. We tend to focus on the extraordinary, of course, because this is the night that begins our Lord’s great passion, and within the next twenty-four hours he will be betrayed, denied, accused, tried, found guilty, and crucified. All, we confess, for us.
But for just a moment, I’d invite us to remember that this meal, this company, their bond of faith and friendship, were also terribly ordinary, even mundane. For it is through just such ordinary events and people that God quite often does extraordinary things.
Prayer: Dear God, open our eyes to see your presence in the ordinary moments of our lives this day and always. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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