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What follows is a set of reflections on the nature of Christian morality. Having been reared on and given allegiance to a morality which claimed to be rigorous, comprehensive and distinctively Christian, I have spent at least the last thirty years unlearning this in the light of experience and observation. The morality of my youth now appears as an ethics of boundaries rather than of transformation.

Jesus' discourse at the Last Supper at least in its Johannine form is a thorough-going preparation of the eleven for their imminent bereavement. A preparation not in the sense that they are expected at once to understand all that is to happen to Jesus and to themselves because of him, but in the sense of a frame of reference to clarify their minds and sustain their hearts in the coming crisis. He communicates a perspective which will spring to life for them in the light of subsequent events, the assumption being that it is only through future happenings that the truth of his words at the Supper will come home.