At the company where I work, an employee posted this on a public Slack channel for all to read:

“Catholics believe that they are actually eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus during communion. The priest says the magic words and the cracker and wine are magically transformed into the ACTUAL FLESH AND BLOOD of Jesus Christ. Ok, maybe I am stretching, but there is no denying that it is RITUAL cannibalism.”

Now, if this kind of language was used on any other religion or identity, the person would have been fired. If I had written a half-truth about Islam or sexual identity, I would be looking for work. But let’s be honest: this type of language is as common today as it was the day Jesus said the words we find in John 6. In fact, the Bread of Life Discourse and the Last Supper alert us to this mentality and misunderstanding even during Jesus’ ministry. Arthur Schlesinger Sr. once said that anti-Catholic hatred is “the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people.” But it goes much further back than that, literally all the way to Judas, as his faith stumbled after Jesus mentioned the requirements of eating and drinking of his body and blood. Normally a knife separates bread, but with Christ, the Bread is the knife. The Eucharist is central to faith and it separates people, whether they be non-believers or Christians. Even with the Catholic Church, it divides people, as many fall into the mistaken camp of “symbolism,” and everyone likes to quote Flannery O’Connor here, who famously said, “If it’s just a symbol, then to hell with it!”

Amen, Flannery.

But here’s the thing I want to talk about: my co-worker is halfway to the truth with his accusation. He’s just missing some very, very important distinctions.

He’s close to being correct with this insult, but misses the most important part of the Eucharist. Yes, the Eucharist is literally the body and blood of Jesus Christ, but it is the risen and glorified body of Christ. Notice that the saying, “He is Risen” uses the present tense.

From the first time Jesus mentioned that we must eat his body and drink his blood, it has divided people. The attack on the Eucharist has been going on since the Jesus’ first gave the Bread of Life Discourse, and Judas first turned away. The attack on the Eucharist goes hand in hand with persecution, and seems to resurface often, almost every time Christians are mocked or violated in the Lives of the Saints.

“They…accused us of feeding on human flesh like Thyestes and of committing incest like Oedipus, as well as other abominations which it is unlawful for us even to think of, and which we can scarcely believe ever to have been perpetrated by men.”

These same accusations are happening today. You can hardly go online without hearing that Christians are a bunch of inbred, ignorant fools. And as for the attack on the Eucharist, this has been happening since the first days of the church. This happened in the Reformation with Zwingli and many of his spiritual descendants. It happens now.

So as I said, my co-worker was close to being correct. There’s just one problem with his insult: it’s not cannibalism.

Because Jesus isn’t dead.

What my co-worker forgot, perhaps willfully, is that Jesus rose from the dead. It’s just such a fundamental error, but somehow people always miss it.

Jesus has never been eaten while dead.

He was not eaten on the cross after saying, “It is finished.” He was not eaten while he was in the tomb.

He was eaten as the Bread of Life at the Last Supper, while he was alive, and he is eaten now, after the Resurrection.

Never, not once, was Jesus eaten while he was dead.

People get all these images of The Walking Dead and zombies in their head, and miss the whole point, mostly because no one reads the Bible. But we should take note here - no one went into the tomb to eat him or try to drink his blood before it congealed. He experienced a real death on the cross and no one, not Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimethea, are recorded as eating him on the way to the tomb.

For those who have forgotten, Jesus was only dead for a short time. He’s alive now, even more than he was at the Last Supper. Here’s a take on it that may help folks like my co-worker:

“The early Church…was accused of cannibalism….  It’s not cannibalism.  He’s not dead.  He’s alive in glory with power for us…” In order to practice cannibalism, the cannibal must kill his victim, and then the cannibal’s body converts the dead flesh into his own living flesh. That’s not what happens when we consume the Eucharist. When we receive Holy Communion, Christ remains alive. We don’t change Him into us. On the contrary, He transforms us into likenesses of Himself. We become like Him whom we consume, and in so doing, we become the selves God intended us to be. (Apology Analogy)

This is mostly a problem of how we view space and time, because we struggle think of it outside of our limited, finite brains. God lives outside of space and time. Jesus is God. The risen Christ lives outside of time and space, seated in heaven. “God’s life has no end (it’s interminable), and that he possesses all of that life all at once (in a simultaneously-whole manner). He does not experience it moment-by-moment, the way we do. God’s life thus is not spread out over time the way ours is, meaning that he is outside of time.” (For more reading on the theological view of time and space, please read Jimmy Akin’s three-part series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 or listen to Trent Horn’s podcast. I’m trying to distill it down a bit here, because to understand the Eucharist, the key point is knowing that God, the Creator, lives outside of time and space).

It’s critical here to point out something that is so obvious that almost no one ever points it out.

At the Last Supper, Jesus was not dead.

He was alive when he said, “This IS my body.” In the Bread of Life Discourse, before the Last Supper, Jesus spoke on this in detail. He even repeated it to drive the point home, telling his followers that we must eat his body and drink his blood to have eternal life. There is nothing metaphorical about it. This isn’t like him saying, “I am the vine” or “I am the living water.” We get exposition on the metaphors from Jesus himself, but in John 6 and at the Last Supper, he hammers this point home.

So if you believe that Christ is the son of God, and you reject the Bread of Life Discourse as metaphor, and call the words of the Last Supper nothing but a symbol, then you are thinking too small about God. A man living in time and space may have limits. A God that enters that same time and space does not. If we think of Jesus as dead in the Eucharist, then why would we waste our time on it? No, he’s alive. The reason the Jesus prayer says, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” He is a living God, not a dead one. Thomas Jefferson and Richard Dawkins can have their dead Clockmaker God. I am not interested in that God, because, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, that God does not matter to us living here in matter. The only God that can change your life is the one that knows the number of hairs on your head. I feel that one of the biggest impediments to belief today is a bad concept of God, because once you turn and see him as a Living God, then every event in life begins to make sense.

It’s the point of the Resurrection, in case we forgot. Jesus did not stay dead. He defeats death by rising. Rigor mortis and decay sets in for our bodies when we die, and he died a real death, but then took up his life again just like he said he would. So he’s not dead. The Resurrection really is forgotten, I think, because what it means is that death does not contain our souls, nor in the end will it even claim our bodies. We tend to just think of the Resurrection as some kind of fairy tale, but the believers of the last two thousand years did not build beautiful and immense cathedrals for Little Red Riding Hood, who died and was cut free from the wolf’s belly. No, they built them for a living God who loves each of us and can give us spiritual re-birth here and eternal life after our body dies.

I think the flatness of deism crept into our Enlightenment brains, because if God is not alive, then why would we care about him?

He is the Creator of the universe, the author of all things, who knows your little league batting average and where your first kiss took place. He knows your weaknesses and burdens. He is alive. That is the Creator and Living God that I understand and love, and he has shown his infinite mercy for us in coming into this story, this world, this game. “Oh, we say, then why did he create this game with all this suffering?” I don’t know. But knowing that he is alive and with us changes the game, the entire game. In our age of gaming and puzzles, I don’t know how this hasn’t caught on yet, because we love games. If he has indeed written each of us into this story, he has a purpose for each or us, and to win this game we must cooperate with his grace, and to me, rejecting his words on the Eucharist means turning away from Him, Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. Rejecting the Eucharist is treating God as if he was the absent Clockmaker God, and I reject that entirely. He is the living God, and he is alive in the Eucharist. The creep of doubt and half-hearted faith starts with the rejection of the Eucharist.

Wasn’t it exactly after Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse, that many disciples left him? Do you see the parallel? Crowds abandoned him because they couldn’t deal with his crystal clear teaching about the Eucharist. Jesus announces Judas’ path to betrayal. Judas had doubts about the Bread of Life at this point.

After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.  Jesus said to the twelve, “Will you also go away?”  Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life;  and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was to betray him. (Jn 6:64-71)

So there is no surprise when someone attacks the Eucharist that they were looking for something more than Jesus. He wasn’t enough. Judas wanted a king, a social climber, a celebrity. His faith is gone because Jesus isn’t popular and powerful. Thus he lacks the gift of faith. Judas and those who leave demand a greater sign from Jesus, which is a game Jesus will not play, as he says that if we won’t believe Moses and the prophets, or the miracles he has already performed, what will we believe? He literally just fed 5,000 people right before the Bread of Life Discourse.

So if someone says the Eucharist is “a cracker blessed by magic,” then that is his or her own testimony before God. We must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling before God. Thus there is no reason for me to be upset with those who say cruel things about the Eucharist, because if Jesus is our model for living, we should notice he did not get angry at those who departed from him. The lost sheep always are most in need of forgiveness. For goodness sakes, even on the cross, Jesus prays for those who know not what they do. He only seems to get sad when they leave, or beat him, or mock him, or crucify him. Profaning the Eucharist is the most shameful act we as humans can do, and yet people do it brazenly thinking they have overcome God, spiritually cutting off their nose to spite their face.

The amazing and beautiful thing is that even after we do all of that to him, he still wants us to come back. He still loves us. I have done all of those things to Jesus, denying the Eucharist, denying his divinity, mocking his name. In my own falling away, I said things much like my co-worker, and I have crowned Jesus with thorns of mockery, calling his life a hoax, a myth, a fantasy, a crutch. The only hoax, myth, and fantasy in the end became my truth about the world, heaven, and hell. I was the fraud, not Christ.

Then he asks his next question to the apostles, saying, “Do you also want to leave?” And that is when Peter shows his faith, where grace floods over him, and he submits his intellect and will to Jesus.

“Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” (Jn 6:68-69)

In my life, I have read those lines before. I had heard them before. But there came a night in my life when they were no longer words, but a fact as sure as the sunrise. I cannot read those lines without feeling like I am there. This response from Peter are convicting lines that cut to the heart. He knows. He has looked everywhere else. He knows that Jesus is God. How? I don’t know. But he knows. And so do I.

When you put that question to yourself, you will have to answer it. When Jesus asks, “Do you also want to leave?” what will you say? Will you deny that he is the Bread of Life? Will you follow him? Or is something else your master?

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