“This is my body, this is my blood”.
We are used to thinking about this extraordinary statement from the perspective of a meal. That was the context in which Jesus spoke these words. John in his gospel elaborates the idea of eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus in a way that we now find almost commonplace. The horrified, and completely reasonable, reaction of sophisticated Roman pagans has been swept away by the centuries. Eating his flesh and drinking his blood no longer shocks us as perhaps it should.
Be that as it may, today’s readings point towards an alternative perspective on these words. That is not to say these alternatives are in conflict, or that we have to choose between them. The nature of our relationship with God can be viewed from more perspectives than we can entertain in a lifetime.
Thinking about a meal naturally starts with bread rather than wine, and that is the order in which Mark presents them (although in the Passover ritual the wine comes first, and at end also) (Mk 14:12-16, 22-26). Mark has Jesus say nothing more of the bread than the simple statement: “this is my body”. However he goes on to place the emphasis on the wine: “this is my blood of the covenant”. For his Jewish audience those words would have resonated like Churchill’s speeches or the Gettysburg address. For us less so, but helpfully our first reading spells it out (Ex 24:3-8). The blood of the covenant is the blood that Moses sprinkles over the people as a sign of the relationship between God and his people, the equivalent of everyone signing the contract.
The idea of sprinkling blood over people is simply repellent to us. Blood is obviously important, but I doubt we can put ourselves in the mindset of those early Israelites. It may help if we recall that the three things that would commonly be used in sacrifice were blood, oil, and wine. They were all highly valuable. Blood was the most significant because it was a sign of life. Sprinkling with confetti is a sign of sharing or promising wealth to a newly wed couple. Sprinkling with blood is a sign of sharing life.
In our case, the life that is being shared is not that of animals offered to God in recognition of what he has given to us. It is the blood and life of Jesus, and thus of God, which is shared with us. As our second reading from the Letter of the Hebrews points out (Heb 9:11-15), this turns everything upside down. We are no longer making offerings to God – rather he has given to us the perfect offering, his life, his love, and it is signed in Jesus’ blood.