This Is My Body

NLT Matthew 26:26

As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take this and eat it, for this is my body.”

Why is this ponderable?

While biblical scholars disagree about whether Jesus was speaking in literal terms or using bread symbolically when he said these words, all agree on the translation.

 Here is what Paul writes to the Corinthians around A.D. 54: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is [broken] for you. He did not say "think of this bread as though it were my body. And other stories in Matthew support the notion that Jesus had the power to transform water, bread, fish, and wine. So it is unlikely he wanted his disciples to think of the broken bread as a symbol rather than the real thing.

Breaking bread is associated with miracles of the multiplication, as when Jesus fed the multitudes with loaves and fishes. The very first transformation that Jesus performed was at the wedding feast when he changed water into wine. So, in ways we do not understand, Jesus was capable of transforming the bread at the Last Supper into the elements of his physical body.

Perhaps, at some future date, scientists will figure out  how matter and energy interact with each other and  the words of Jesus will make complete sense. Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. Few people in 1905 understood what that really meant. One hundred and fifteen years later, we not only understand it, but we can use it to develop things previous generations never have imagined possible.