One striking thing about this meal is its ordinariness. What is more common than bread? What is more common than wine? We put a nice tablecloth on the table and a platter under the bread, but in some ways that just highlights the everyday-ness of the elements. The bread is baked in your homes; we don’t go get it from robed monks in a high mountain bakery on the fourth day after the full moon. The wine is just wine. The same sort of stuff you might have with dinner on a Thursday night.

And yet it is the body and blood of Christ Jesus.

This is rich with instruction for us. God takes up that which is ordinary and unremarkable and makes it the instrument for his purposes in the world. He took shepherds and made them prophets and kings and stewards of the oracles of God. He took fishermen and put pens in their hands and through them breathed out a story that has shaken empires and fills the whole earth with joy. And most dramatically of all, God himself took on man’s flesh and soul. Hidden in the carpenter from Nazareth was all the fulness of God, and by his death, the death of a common criminal, He takes corpses and makes them saints of the most high and ultimately eternal splendors.

This meal is utterly ordinary, and yet by it God is making you like Jesus, by it God is sealing his promises to you, by it God is declaring his presence with you, by it God marks you out as a people for his own. And something often overlooked is the fact that we pass the bread and wine from hand to hand. How do the things of God get to you? They come in a basket that your little brother hands to you. So as you receive and pass the elements, rejoice that God has chosen to make us his. Rejoice that he has condescended to us so profoundly, and receive and pass holy mysteries to your brothers and sisters.

[Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash]