The “feast of the gods”, The Last Supper, The Olympics, and our Christian Response.

A Theological Reflection and Response

The Christian world (at least some) was in a frenzy after the opening ceremony of the Olympics aired an artistic presentation of what was initially presumed to represent the famous picture by Leonardo DaVinci’s Last Supper. Now, right from the start, there are some challenges.

1. What was aired to some was a stripped-down version missing key elements of the representation.

2. Screenshots of the artistic display started to make their rounds on social media alongside the Last Supper image at a viral rate. Many who heard about this were introduced by a reaction post rather than the source.

3. The response by the art director, the producers, and the Olympics PR came out later and at times seemed to lack the clarity that we would have hoped for.

If we were to take a charitable approach to this whole situation taking into account what has been clarified we could say that the opening ceremony was influenced by the painting of Jan Harmensz (dated 1635ish) to depict the Greek god Dionysus and the feasts th…