To say that the Last Supper wasn’t a Passover meal, we have to disregard the direct statements from the synoptic gospels. That just doesn’t work. So what do we do with John’s gospel?

The NIV translation of John 13:1 is less than helpful (the insertion of “it was” has no textual support). Let’s look at the NASB:

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” (NASB)

The meaning is still a bit hard to pull out (John could write such complex thoughts with such simple words!). But the time reference is obvious. John starts at a point before the Passover.

However, as Dr. Neil Lightfoot pointed out at the ACU lectures a few years ago, Passover began with the meal. It wasn’t Passover until they ate. The next verse references the meal. What is described, the washing of feet, happened at the very beginning of Passover; it’s likely that Jesus did right after the meal was served what was normally done before the meal. This special Passover began with an act of service.

The passage about the Jews not wanting to defile themselves has two explanations, both possible and not mutually exclusive.

1. In their obsession with Jesus’ arrest, they had not yet partaken of the Passover meal. They intended to see him killed, then eat of a slightly delayed supper.
2. The feast of Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread occurred one after the other. The two were often referred to as one event: the feast or just Passover. These were holy days, and these Jews didn’t want to defile themselves by entering the court of a Gentile. They could scheme, lie, and hold unjust trials; they couldn’t enter the dwelling of a non-Jew.

We need to remember that the idea that the gospels were written as part of a legal code would have been foreign to early Christians. They weren’t reading these stories to see if the Lord’s Supper was supposed to use unleavened bread or not. This was the powerful story of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.

We need to read the story the same way.