“The Teacher says, ‘Where is my guest room?’” — Mark 14:14
There are some characters in Scripture that captivate me. Many are familiar: Joseph, Jonah, Jesus. These are well-known, well-discussed, towering figures in Christian circles. Then there are others. Barely noted, rarely mentioned, often unnamed. But the one sentence they appear in is enough to send me tumbling down a theological rabbit hole.
Take, for example, the Last Supper. The meal prior gets a full cast of characters, each remembered in their own right. It’s hosted by Simon, served by Martha, joined by Lazarus, remembered for Mary, indicting of Judas. The Last Supper? The text tells us next to nothing of its setting—or its host.
Jesus’ disciples asked him a straightforward question: where are we supposed to prepare the Passover? It’s an uncomplicated string of words but a complex task to resolve. Sources disagree on Jerusalem’s first-century population. What sources wholeheartedly agree on is that the city easily doubled, tripled, quadrupled, even quintupled in size during Jewish festivals. And for good reason; this was as close to the Presence as a God-fearing Jew could get. It was, as far as practicable, a necessity for the faithful to be in Jerusalem on Passover. Every empty space would have been filled.
The disciples asking Jesus where to host the Passover was a question loaded with a borderline-unfulfillable need. This was not as banal as asking, “Where are we having dinner on Thursday night?” This was equivalent to asking, “How are we supposed to feed these thousands?” Or “Don’t You know dead bodies stink?” Or “Can I be healed?”
The wonder of the Last Supper doesn’t begin with the establishment of communion. It starts with an answer to the question, “Where are we going to have this meal?”
Enter “a certain man.” None of the synoptics tell us anything about this person save for the pertinent details—and even those barely suffice. Certain Man had a servant waiting to meet the disciples when they enter the city. Certain Man had a spare guest room that sat unoccupied during the most hectic day of Jerusalem’s calendar. And Certain Man had it furnished for dinner.
Who is Certain Man? Why would he give up his space for this? Does the story imply he was saving it specifically for this purpose? Was he expecting this months in advance? And why do the gospels tell us nothing about this person—the host of the most pivotal meal in human history? None of these questions are answered by the text.
Holiness showing up for mealtime is not an uncommon occurrence in the Old Testament. Abraham and Sarah, founding father and mother of the faith, prepare a feast for divine messengers. Gideon, as well as Samson’s parents, did much the same for a mysterious angel. In every case, we know exactly who was hosting; the identity of the guest is a surprise twist.
This time? The opposite. We know precisely who the guests are: God and assorted friends. We’re never told the name of the homeowner. The story flips everything we know about dinner with divinity, pushing us back on our heels and rewriting the script.
Jesus takes on the form of the servant-server. Foot washing, bread breaking, wine sharing are practices we perform for God. He wasn’t supposed to reverse the roles. We thought we had to sacrifice to honor Him. Instead, Jesus offered up an unquantifiably precious gift: Himself. In the reversal, He fully reveals Himself to us. And for some reason, He conceals the host.
What am I to make of Certain Man? Only what the Scriptures reveal: a homeowner who prepared and furnished a spacious upstairs guest room for the Supper to end all suppers. And in that description I find a hero worth emulating. Certain Man gets no fame, no moment in the spotlight. Two thousand years later, we continue to gloss over his contribution to the Gospel. Certain Man is no one. But maybe that means I can be Certain Man. He prepared, waited, and offered up his home to the Messiah. And maybe, two millennia later, He’s asking me to do the same.
In many circumstances, I feel like I have little to offer. In the face of tears, just a Kleenex. When confronted with questions, rarely solutions. While tackling sickness, no treatment. But I can prepare. I can welcome the Comforter, clear space for the Answer, accommodate the Healer. My name my fade into obscurity, forgotten to time. But the world will know that God came to visit my house. And I was willing to make room.
I would be remiss to exclude one final detail about this text. Mark and Luke record that Jesus told his disciples to inquire about a guest room, a kataluma. The word is only used one another time, twenty chapters earlier in Luke’s narrative. There, he tells us of a young couple on the verge of childbirth. They made it into a small town named Bethlehem, but the expectant mom had nowhere else to lay her newborn but a feed trough. Why? There was no space available in the inn—the kataluma.
How poetic that the life of Jesus began with a full guest room and ended with an empty one. And how much more hopeful, then, that He promised to prepare us rooms in His Father’s mansion.