Around the Thanksgiving Table and at Christmas time, we tend to do a funny thing: we tell the same stories over and over again. And this can get tedious, so going into the holiday season, we all should do a quick check, “Am I that guy? Do I bore people with the same self-aggrandizing stories over and over?” But in general telling the same stories over and over is a good thing, it binds a people together and the curating and sharing of family stories should be encouraged.

And hopefully you can think of stories in your family’s lore that never get old. Going into Edgren family gatherings, there’s always the hope that someone will get Uncle Dan going on one of his tales. And maybe you’ve noticed that stories grow in the telling, not always in a bad way, but they wrap up other people in the story who weren’t there. When you’ve heard the same story over and over, told by someone you love, it becomes yours. And the story grows to encompass not just the events, but the effect the retelling of the events have. So when I hear Uncle Dan tell one of his stories, I am thinking not just of the event that happened when he was 14, but of all the laughter of the intervening years when he’s told it to friends and family in the happy haze after a festive dinner.

That’s what this supper is too. It’s a retelling of the greatest of all the stories, the story of which all our tales and myths are dim reflections. And this story is big enough to wrap you up in it. Because a story is more than the event it recounts, it also encompasses the effect that it has on the hearer. This is not a story that leaves the hearer unchanged. This story is the beating heart of reality itself and the source of all your joys. It’s yours, if you hear it in faith. And here is proof: the Author has invited you to join in it by this bread and wine. You are invited to take, eat, remember and believe. This is who you are. You are bought with Christ’s blood and joined to his body. This is your story. Tell it again.