"This Is My Body!"

 When Jesus lifts up the bread and declares, "This is my body," he affirms his

connection to the material world - not only the bread in his hand, and the bread on the table, but all the elements that made that bread - from the very dirt of God's earth, the seeds and the weather, to the farmer and the baker - all of it in that piece of bread, the whole of creation, from beginning to end, "This is my body."

Paul the Apostle challenges the impetuous Corinthians to "see the Body of Christ" in their gatherings (1 Corinthians 11.29) ... to see one another as belonging to God, from the widow with not enough, to those with much too much ... and in so seeing the Body of Christ, recognizing it in one another, in that gathering, in the world around them - from the bread and drink that sustains, to the very presence of Christ which redeems, to then confront and diminish the social gaps, created not by God, but human greed and desire - to then fulfill Paul's hope for a better world, expressed so eloquently, clearly, directly, in 2 Corinthians 8.15.

"This is my Body" reaches all the way back to the earliest moment of creation ... and reaches ahead to the End, the Omega Point, wherein all is made new ... the Body of Christ, raised and gloried, in particular, as a promise of that which is to come for all ... the healing and reconciling of all creation ... and the task ahead of all who ever sit at a table - to see the glory of God, to behold the Body of Christ ... in the burger we eat, the milk shake we drink, the waiter who brings it all to the table, the cook in the kitchen, the farmer in the field, the sun above, and the rains that fall.

"This is my Body!"