The Final Evening: The Passion narrative is the account of the suffering and death of Jesus. It normally includes all the events beginning with the garden scene in Gethsemane and finishing with the burial. The centrality of the cross in early Christian preaching is reflected in the major emphasis given to it in each of the four Gospels. Matthew 26 records the events of Wednesday and Thursday of the final week of Jesus’ life.

26:31–35 On the way to the Mount of Olives (east of Jerusalem across the Kidron valley), Jesus tells his disciples that that very night they will desert him (skandalizomai, “find a cause of stumbling,” Rotherham). Their failure is described by the prophet Zechariah,…