Devotional Thought of the day:

32 If the bull kills a male or female slave, its owner shall pay the owner of the slave thirty pieces of silver, and the bull shall be stoned to death.  
Exodus 21:32 TEV

The Eucharist is not a private business, carried on in a circle of friends, in a club of like-minded people, who seek out and get together with those who already suit them; but just as the Lord allowed himself to be crucified outside the city wall, before all the world, and stretches out his hands to everyone, thus the Eucharist is the public worship of all those whom the Lord calls, irrespective of their personal make-up. It is particularly characteristic of him, as he demonstrated in his earthly life, to have men of the most diverse groupings, social backgrounds, and personal views brought together in the greater whole of his word and his love. It was characteristic of the Eucharist, then, in the Mediterranean world in which Christianity first developed, for an aristocrat who had found his way into Christianity to sit there side by side with a Corinthian dock worker, a miserable slave, who under Roman law was not even regarded as a man but was treated as chattel. It was characteristic of the Eucharist for the philosopher to sit next to the illiterate man, the converted prostitute and the converted tax collector next to the religious ascetic who had found his way to Jesus Christ.

It always amazes me when I read the value the priests of Israel put on the life of Jesus.  Thirty pieves of silver, the same value as the servant killed in an accident, gored and trampled by an uncontrolled bull

Mankind, uncontrolled, would gore and trample Jesus, and they paid the penalty in advance, to the one, no really, one of several who would betray Jesus.

But in paying the price of a servant killed, there is another message.  Jesus is the servant of all, and that is seen as we look at those He gathers together. People, as is noted in the second quote, as different as can be.  From every economic class, from every culture, from those who people look up upon, and those that are looked down upon by society.

He gathers us all, cleanses all of us of the sin that would entrap us, heals us of our brokenness. 

This is the service Jesus renders, even as we dismiss him as insignificant.  As we dismiss Him as someone who just was there, whose value was not visible, despite the healings, the miracles, the teaching.

Despite the death and resurrection.

It is time now to realize His value to our lives and praise Him for the way He loved and served.  To know that and be sure of that more than anything else. To experience value the love he pours out and the way He mercifully serves us. 

And to do this together, with the people we have only two things in common with, sin and a Savior. 

Ratzinger, J. (2003). God is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life. (S. O. Horn & V. Pfnür, Eds., H. Taylor, Trans.) (p. 108). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.