Dinner or supper? I used the terms interchangeably most of my life until I was invited to an Epiphany dinner. The meal was elegant and intentionally derived to mark what the prior year had held for each dinner guest. Epiphany is the season in the church calendar when we feast to celebrate the wise men’s successful journey to find baby Jesus. It is told, the wise men had to ration their food as they searched for the newborn king since they didn’t know when they would find him. They had no idea their journey would involve two years of searching. When they did reach the town where Jesus was staying, everyone put bread and cakes outside their houses for the wise men to feast, celebrating the end of their journey. This is where we get the French tradition of king cakes.
While I was enthralled by the tradition of an Epiphany dinner, this year I found myself in Milan, Italy, on Epiphany, standing in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper. Wrong meal perhaps.
My family of five is out of breath. After missing one bus and two trains, we are desperate to get into the last tour of the day, for which we have paid hundreds of dollars. Our kids are crying because we have given a very kind man all of our luggage to keep in his car while we duck into the tail end of the tour to see the painting. The children are afraid he might steal their things, and for a little while, we aren’t certain either.
But here I am, trying to smooth down my American tourist frazzle and focus on the guide’s Italian-accented English in my earbud.
“Da Vinci chose not to paint this as a fresco because he wanted time to sit with the painting and each character at the table. Because of this, it is his greatest failure.”
Wow, I hope my greatest failure is this magnificent.
The tour guide is explaining that the main difference from all the other renditions of The Last Supper is the placement of Judas. In every other painting of this meal, Judas is on the opposite side of the table, set apart from the other disciples, but Da Vinci painted Judas on the same side of the table as a way of conveying the Basilican belief that there is always a way to belong with free will.
I am mesmerized by this information. Tears form as I take in Judas’s placement amongst his brothers. Even as Jesus states, “Tonight one of you will betray me,” Judas belongs at the table. Da Vinci chose to highlight this one monumental reaction during this last meal together.
My son’s voice redirects my thoughts in a different direction: “Mom, why did Jesus tell them at a meal that one of them would betray Him? It doesn’t seem like the type of thing you say at a supper.”
Actually, a supper is pretty intimate. I grew up hearing the men in our small Southern Louisiana town call a “supper” the meals they would cook for friends during hunting season or a football game. My uncles all took turns cooking their kill in the best gravy they could conjure up. Men would spend hours together hunting and feasting together over a weekend. In Cajun culture, supper has always meant that men gather for a meal. Maybe that is why they did not call the painting The Last Dinner? By definition, a supper is an informal meal in the evening, and a dinner is a formal meal midday or evening in honor of someone.
“Supper” seems actually profound—informal and intimate. In this setting Jesus was willing to discuss with His best friends the free choice each of them had at any moment on this mission they were on. He seems ready to have an open discussion with them about how this would affect their continued time together.
Da Vinci captures Jesus perfectly as He accepts the cost of free will while the disciples react in shame, fear, denial, or rage. In the original mural, Da Vinci painted Jesus’s feet viewable under the table; they are positioned in the same shape as His feet were on the cross. The Last Supper depicts Jesus’s hands and feet in submission, in the moment He radically embraced the cost for all people to return to the table again.
Christy Bauman, Ph.D., MDFT, & LMHC is committed to helping women come into their true voices. She offers meaning-making and storywork consulting. She is the author and producer of Theology of the Womb, A Brave Lament, Documentary: A Brave Lament, and The Sexually Healthy Woman. She is a psychotherapist, supervisor, and adjunct professor who focuses on the female body, sexuality, and theology. Christy is co-director of the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma with her husband Andrew. They live in Brevard, North Carolina with their three kids: Wilder, Selah, and River.
At our house, it was breakfast, lunch, and supper. It would be outside of family and friends if it was called dinner. I never made the connection with the Lord’s Supper being a intimate meal even though it makes sense since Jesus was eating with his closest companions/disciples/devotees. Thank you for opening another view of supper to me. I enjoyed reading your story and learning something today.
I was born in the mid-west. When we moved to Washington supper became dinner. I assumed it was just a difference in areas you lived in. This article is very interesting to me.
Thank you for showing me the differences. And the info about Jesus feet. I love that.