This is my blood, which is for you (Celeste Mueller)

   The blood of the covenant, in our reading from Exodus, marks the eternal relationship between God and the people who, by their assent to this covenant, make their unity visible. The blood poured out on the people and the altar signifies the blood of their communion. They are one. 

   Jesus’ free gift of his body and blood, the night before his own unjust and violent death, forever tears away our illusion of separateness and the illusion that the violence in the world is not also in us. 

          This is my body, which is for you
          This my blood, poured out for you and for the multitudes. 

   In this act we see, we know, we receive that we are one body, with one river of blood flowing through the veins of all. 

   This is not simply a poetic or spiritualized notion. Our faith is incarnate, corporeal, lived out in our physical bodies — and the blood that flows through the veins of every human person is one: 

           The bodies broken daily by violence are our bodies; it is our blood spilled out.
           The enraged, or perhaps cold, blood that flows through the veins of the perpetrators of violence, is pumped by our hearts as well. 

And together we receive, our common healing and transformation through our participation in the free gift of Jesus: This is my body, This is my blood, which is for you. 

--Celeste Mueller

Image source: Roger van der Weyden, The Descent from the Cross, detail & full painting, (1435), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_from_the_Cross_%28van_der_Weyden%29#/media/File:Rogier_van_der_Weyden_-_Deposition_(detail)_-_WGA25580.jpg
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