I have a little wooden cross hanging above my office door. If you’ve seen it before, you’ve probably never given it another thought. It’s not big or flashy. At first glance, it just looks a lot like the crosses that many of you have hanging in your homes somewhere.

But I hang this cross above my door because it’s special to me. It has a story behind it. While I was in seminary, I was leading a Bible study for a few undergraduate students at UVA. It ended up being a far more intense experience than I imagined when I committed to it – and a far more rewarding one at that. I forged valuable friendships I still enjoy today. I saw God move in ways that still lead me to praise him. That’s where this cross comes in. This cross was a gift from one of those students, as he studied abroad in Jordan. He knew Greek class was a struggle, so when he saw the Lord’s Prayer written in Greek on a little wooden cross, he knew it was made for me.

Stories like that give familiar experiences rich meaning, don’t they? You probably have something in your home that’s an ordinary item with a meaningful story attached. The Passover is something like that. By the time the disciples sat down to eat the Passover with Jesus, it would have been a familiar experience to all of them. They would have known which foods on the table were their favorite and which ones weren’t. They would have understood what the symbols meant and their connections to the Exodus. But as they ate with Jesus in Matthew 27:17-25, Jesus would imbue that familiar meal with a rich new meaning.

No longer were the bread and cup symbols of what God had done in Egypt. Now they were symbols of what God was doing in Jesus Christ. These elements symbolized God’s deliverance, but no longer just from slavery under Pharaoh. Now they pointed the disciples to deliverance from their sin. The Passover became a symbol of a new and greater Exodus: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We continue to celebrate this meal together as Christians when we celebrate communion. We sit with Jesus by faith and he breaks the bread and passes the cup. It’s easy to see communion as just one more thing we do in a worship service, like a little wooden cross that looks like all the others. But when we remember the story behind it, it becomes something else altogether. It becomes a means of grace, an avenue of our spiritual growth. It goes from an empty ritual to a spiritual communion with our Lord Jesus.