1 Corinthians 11:23-25 “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

“This is my body…This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” You know that Christians have debated the exact meaning of these words for over a thousand years. Call me simple, but I believe that Jesus meant exactly what his words say, just like billions of others have.

This bite of unleavened bread is at the same time the body that had the skin peeled off its back by scourges, that slowly suffocated to death over six agonizing hours one Friday afternoon, all for my sake.

This cup holds the blood of the same man whose blood ran from wounds where thorns pierced his forehead, nails pierced his hands and feet, and a spear pierced his side and punctured his motionless heart, all so that he could create a new relationship between me and the God who made me.

I have no explanation for the process, the exact nature of the change, because Jesus gave us none. But that is typical of his miracles. “Draw water,” he once told the servers at a wedding. “Now, go and serve it.” And the water was wine. Did some kind of concentrated, fermented material from grapes suddenly appear in the water and mix with it, sort of like making orange juice or lemonade from concentrate, only miraculously? Was the water instantaneously replaced by wine in the jars? Did some of the water molecules transform into organic material from grapes? And was this a Cabernet, a Merlot, or a Shiraz? I don’t know. He didn’t tell us. But his disciples knew that a miracle had happened, and they put their faith in him.

Jesus once faced a hungry crowd of 5000 men with just five little loaves of bread and a couple of small fish. So he prayed, and gave the bread to his disciples, and told them to go and serve it to the people. Somehow, the bread never ran out. The more the disciples gave away, the more bread they had. All 5000 people ate their fill. Did the loaves in the disciples’ hands somehow come to life? Did the baked cells of crushed wheat begin to reproduce themselves, something like the growing process in the field, only thousands of times faster? Did entirely new chunks of bread materialize out of nowhere as the disciples pulled pieces from each loaf? I don’t know. Jesus didn’t tell us. But at the end there was more bread than they had at the start, and the crowds were ready to make Jesus their king.

It is no great challenge for the one who turned water into wine, and fed five thousand from five loaves–more than that who created the universe and raised the dead– to put his body and blood into a little bite of bread and sip of wine to be present with us for a few moments. Admittedly, it takes a miracle. But that’s the kind of business Jesus is in.

And if he wants us to remember him, isn’t this a better way? A little bite of bread or sip of wine isn’t much of a memorial if that is all they are. What do bread and wine have to say by themselves? The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials in Washington have giant images of the presidents carved in stone. Great quotes of their wisdom are etched into the walls around them. You don’t have to wonder about whom they honor or what they are trying to say.

            But Lincoln and Jefferson themselves are never there. Jesus comes to us in his supper, with the body and blood he gave to save us, in a little miracle he has performed for his people countless times over nearly twenty centuries, so that his people can remember the love and the sacrifice that saved them.