“SURELY, not I?” What could more blatantly expose the guilty consciences of the disciples as they shared the Passover meal with Jesus? NIV translates it pleadingly: “Surely you don’t mean me?”
The location was an upper room in Jerusalem. There, the hazards of their mission should have begun to dawn. Previously, that they had been an insignificant local group. Now, they’re within the holy city, site of the central Roman administration, residence of the Roman governor, abode of the chief priests and elders — Jesus’s implacable enemies.
It is hardly surprising that the disciples ask, “Surely, not I?” The indisputable fact that they ask in any respect hints that they’ve realised the possible consequences of their friend’s challenge to the religious and imperial authorities. Perhaps they already considered deserting him, pictured themselves quietly melting into the faceless crowd. After all, not many hours later, they did exactly that (14.50).
The term, “the Son of Man” occurs 4 times on this passage (14.21 [twice], 41, 62), with its usual overtone of a job description, or title. Some commentators downplay its distinctiveness, drawing attention to Ezekiel’s habitual use of “son of man” (without the definite article) as a synonym for “human being”. Others go further, arguing that Jesus used the term to refer to not himself, but to the approaching of one other being who would carry the hopes of the Kingdom with him.
Against such scepticism, I suggest that, if the article “the” is present (“the Son of Man”), it’s secure to say that Jesus is speaking about himself. All but two of the examples within the New Testament (and there are greater than 70 such) come from the Gospels. Always utilized in direct speech by Jesus, the term embraces two ideas: first, that by being human he’s subject to death; and, second, that, through his death and beyond it, God will vindicate him. Beyond this lies a greater significance that resists interpretation in mere words.
Palm Sunday is a great time to analyze what Jesus means by calling himself the Son of Man; for that is when the meaning of Jesus’s life as a human individual shades into what we sometimes call the “Christ-event” — a shift, in other words, between Jesus, son of Joseph, and Christ, the everlasting Word. Only when this shift takes place can we start to ask one among the deep questions of Passiontide: what does Jesus’s suffering and death say about him; and the way can it speak to us, beyond the pathos that marks the suffering or death of another human being?
Our answer comes with the fulfilment of the story of “the Son of Man”. Way back in Mark’s Gospel, people had responded to Jesus’s teaching by asking each other, “Where did this man get all this?” (6.2). They have seen nothing in his background, upbringing, education, or work life to mark him out as different. And yet, after his baptism, his life seems to burst its bizarre human bounds. He calls, communicates, and cures. He guides, challenges, and inspires, in ways which are utterly overwhelming. Jesus teaches about God like one who knows him fully and is at home in his presence.
The word that we give to the seek for a solution to that long-ago query (“Where did this man get all this?”) is “Christology”. By uniting present subjection to death with future vindication by God, “the Son of Man” shows us the method to follow. All through the next years, Christians juggled scriptures and creeds, councils and canons, to try to pin down the meaning of Christ’s Passion. They excluded misguided versions, they usually defined verbal approximations to the reality.
But they might not — cannot — define the Son of Man in a way that communicates the gruelling experience of worshipping through Holy Week. We are battered by waves of empathy and pathos; by the challenge to look inside and find traces of Peter and Judas in our own denials and betrayals. The spiritual and emotional tsunami builds towards Maundy Thursday, right up to date when the disciples desert Jesus and flee.
Then, we wait: first, for the crucifixion to occur; then, for it to finish. Finally, we wait for the tomb during which he was laid to be found empty, in order that death can bring us to life over again, beside our friend and brother: beside the Son of Man.
