Back in 1951, an Australian man named James Harrison needed 13 pints of other people’s blood to endure a major chest operation that took hours. After hearing that, he vowed to become a blood donor as soon as he was eligible at age 18.

At about this time health officials in the country were trying to figure out how to prevent thousands of miscarriages caused by hemolytic disease. Known as HDN, it often occurs when a mother with Rh-negative blood becomes pregnant with a child of Rh-positive blood. The mother’s body is incompatible for the child’s blood and attacks it.

Doctors determined that donated plasma with a rare antibody could prevent this rejection. They searched blood banks and found what they wanted in James Harrison, who had been donating blood regularly for a decade.

Harrison donated plasma from his blood for the first time in 1967. It was such a perfect match that the government built an entire program around it, creating an injection for pregnant women called Anti-D. Harrison donated his blood and plasma regularly over the next 60 years, helping more than 2.4 million Australian babies survive in the womb. One of them was his own grandchild.

His blood saved millions of lives. You may see where I’m going with this.

About 2,000 years ago, the Son of Man in Israel fulfilled His destiny to become a blood donor for the whole world. The imperfect blood of sacrificial bulls and goats had fulfilled their purpose for a time, but they could never be redemptive. Mankind needed the pure, perfect blood of Jesus for that.

Heb. 9:11-14
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

The Great Physician gave His own blood and His own body to save all of us and everyone else who comes to Him. And He gave us this memorial to remember every week what He did – the unleavened bread, which represents His broken body on the cross, and the fruit of the vine, which represents the blood that reconciled us to God.

May we partake of this spiritual feast today in a manner pleasing to God and befitting the greatest blood donation of all time.