Cannibalizing Christ

John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Did anything in that story strike you as strange? Nothing? …what about the whole eating human flesh thing? As many as 2 billion people will receive bread and wine today. They will be told “Take and eat. This is my body, given for you” and “Take and drink. This is my blood, shed for you.” And they’ll take and eat and no one will think it strange. No one will run screaming from the church in horror. Here’s why: We have neutered the Gospel’s power to revolt us - even its power to simply surprise us.

I was able to find one person who is revolted by Jesus’ words. Jim Walker is a writer for an atheist blog called nobeliefs.com and he says this:

“The Church tricked me and turned me into a cannibal! Since Jesus represents an actual human being, and I ate him, that made me a cannibal. Not only did I drink [human] blood and eat [human] flesh, but they made me do it in front of a statue of a bloody corpse hanging by nails on two pieces of lumber – the representation of the human whom I had just eaten. When I discovered the shocking realization that I had eaten human flesh, and drank human blood I felt like vomiting. Where in the world did this morbid practice begin?”

Jim Walker is asking the right questions. He sees the eucharist as those disciples saw Jesus - as a watershed and you can only roll off the roof one of two ways: either you are utterly repulsed and say, ”This is too hard to believe. How are we supposed to stomach this?” or a ridiculous trust enters you and you say, ”Where else are we supposed to go? You are the One. You are our life.”

Remember what happened earlier that preceded this part of the story. Jesus fed a hungry crowd of 5,000 people and it says, “The people saw the sign that Jesus had done and began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” But the people wouldn’t stop there. They crossed the sea, went and found Jesus because “they wanted to take him by force to make him king”. The irony is that they were already cannibals at heart. They wanted to take him by force so that they might take power. This is the heart of cannibalism. But when Jesus revealed the heart of what they wanted to do, they were repulsed and the majority of 5,000 disciples left him. Jesus has the opportunity to become make serious change with the support of 5,000 persistent people and he goes out of his way to gross them out of following him.

When you think about the catalogue of popular movies that explore themes of cannibalism, like Sweeny Todd, Silence of the lambs, Soylent Green,

and just about every Zombie movie ever made, cannibalism has been safely placed into the category of psychopathology or fantasy. It seems that we are equally drawn to the thing that repels us. But this is hollywood pop culture cannibalism. When we look closer at the practice of cannibalism in tribal cultures it’s not the unsophisticated and savage blood lust of the movies.

At its best, there is an undergirding respect for the thing that is eaten. There is a system of belief that holds that each animal possesses a unique medicine or virtue or life-force; For instance if you eat a dog you gain the medicine of that dog – which is loyalty. (Did you know that Americans eat an average of 90 lbs. of chicken a year… I wonder what that says about us.) It’s the same for instances of human cannibalism in these cultures. Eating the heart of a warrior killed in battle was thought to give you the ‘courage’ of that warrior. You take by force the power of that person.

Jesus asks the people, “What is it that you really want? Do you want to consume my power? Do you want me king? Or do you want me dead? This entire conversation is pointing to the Cross where Jesus will hang with a sign over his head that sarcastically reads ‘King’”. Jesus reveals our cannibalism, our competition, our drive to conquer and consume - in international politics, over the environment, in our workplaces, over our families – conquer and consume. Our cannibalism is revealed.

So does Jesus mean to repel or welcome the disciples with this word? Is the cross intended to repel us or to welcome us? Is the Eucharist meant to repel us or to welcome us? Yes! Both repulsion and welcome. But in Jesus Christ everything is a “yes”. Even God’s “no” is a “yes”. Even the repulsion is meant to welcome us. Here’s how – the time to hear the Gospel is when we’ve come to the core of the problem, namely, that I’m a cannibal who is repelled by the things of God. And when I come to this realization, Jesus says, “I know that you are a cannibal and I know that you want to consume me. But you cannot take my life from me. I am giving my life for you. Even when you thought I was your enemy, in fact, I was your friend and your lover. While you were a cannibal, I came for you, and actually, that is what is happening right now.”

Here is the mystery of communion: When you eat something it becomes a part of your body. But when we eat Christ we become a part of the body Christ and we consume the One who doesn’t consume others. (Essentially, Jesus is the lowest on the food chain, and he is sustainable!) Consuming my neighbor wont give me life, but Jesus will. Jesus will give you life. This bread and wine is not going to magically become flesh and blood tonight. And yet Jesus promises, I am truly, truly present with you here in bread and wine. It‘s here to repulse and welcome you. It‘s here to heal you. For the medicine of God is forgiveness. The medicine of God is grace. The medicine of God is real life and lot’s of it. And it‘s for you.“