And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” (Mark 14:22 ESV)
Replacement
In reviewing the mechanics of some sleight-of-hand magic tricks, I was reminded that stage magicians work primarily through substitution and replacement. You think you are looking at the hand holding the ball, but things have changed. You think you have independently selected a card, but your card is not the card you chose. You think the girl is in the box, the coin is in your hand, and the rabbit is not in the hat, but nope… you are wrong.
In a way, Jesus pulled a fast one on Satan.
And He talks about it during the Last Supper. Way back in the Book of Exodus, God replaced the blood of the sinful Israelites with the blood of a lamb. From then on, God switched the blood of that lamb with a symbolic dinner. And here, Jesus replaces that symbolic dinner with His own body… about to be sacrificed in the place of the bread, in the place of the lamb, in the place of their sins.
And as He speaks, He makes one more replacement. That bread is not only Him, but it is His people. In I Corinthians 12:27, we learn that we are now the Lord’s body.
I admit I do not fully understand, and probably will not until my brain grows in heaven, how this works. But I do know that it is a continuation of that series of replacements. And it is a full circle.
Because it is our unshed blood and unbroken body that takes the place our that wine and bread.
Our broken selves were replaced by the perfect Christ Jesus… and the replacement is then made complete when we are in turn made into His body.
We are peculiar, we are replaced.