Reading the Gospels Together The Story of the Last Meal – Part 3 As we begin to read John’s gospel we might wonder if we are even reading about the same meal. For one thing John’s story is much longer – 150 verses compared with Mark’s 14, Matthew’s 13, and Luke’s 28. John has invested 10 times more space than either Mark or Matthew and 5 times more than Luke to this event – three times the space all three synoptic writers combined give it. That in itself indicates that this event was very important to John. But it’s not only the length that differs – the content is so different that John’s story is almost unrecognizable compared with the others. But there are some similarities. And we will start with those. John agrees with the others that this is a meal that Jesus shares with his disciples on the night in which he was betrayed. We will need to discuss further what sort of meal this is but at least John is in agreement that a meal is shared. John also shares with the synoptic writers Jesus’ ominous announcement that one of the twelve will betray him. Mark and Matthew wait until just after the meal to tell of Jesus’ warning to Peter that he will deny him but they do share this story with John who includes it within the meal as does Luke. Aside from these connections there is very little in common between John and the others. John’s story differs in two ways – a number of things John adds to the story and a number of things that John omits. Of course an argument could be made that it is the others who have done the adding and the omitting but for the sake of comparison we have been using Mark’s gospel as the base line for the story. John also differs fundamentally with regard to the time frame of this event. We will look at each of these differences in turn.