John does not describe the actual meal at the Last Supper, just as he doesn’t describe the actual baptism of Jesus. But this, we may suppose, is not because he thinks it doesn’t matter, or that he wants to play it down, but because he thinks it matters so much that it’s important to see it as affecting the whole gospel story. So here, after the feeding in the wilderness, where (as in the other gospels) Jesus’ action with the bread is described in words very like those used at the Supper itself (verse 11), we find a long discourse in which, here at its climax, Jesus declares that in order for
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