It was one of those years when Passover and Easter coincided. I was walking through the grocery store and saw the Passover section with its kosher grape juice and matzos. I hear the matzos are as common as saltines in Israel. So, I wasn’t expecting anything big when I grabbed a box and took it home.
Later that week, I stood in the kitchen smearing peanut butter on one of the great wide sheets and began to notice the many lines of holes.
I immediately remembered the Messianic Passover Seder we’d recently attended and the teacher reciting the passage from Isaiah about how his stripes had healed us.
My throat constricted and my eyes started to burn as the peanut butter went from here to there.
My teenage daughter looked over and sighed. She asked if she was going to wind up crying in the kitchen like her grandmother and me.
“It’s nothing,” I said as I opened the grape jelly. But the dam had been compromised.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
This is my body that was broken for you.
It was just supposed to be a snack. Just a quick bite between harried activities.
There was nothing in his appearance that we should esteem him.
Jesus wasn’t especially handsome or striking. As common as … well, as common as saltines.
I closed the jelly and wiped my nose as the common met the profound. The ordinary intersected the sacred.
I broke off a rectangular strip along one edge.
This is my body which was broken for you.
I cleared my throat, broke a square off the narrow strip, and began to eat.
“Oh, come on, Dad,” my daughter said.
“I’m okay. Just put up with it.”
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