It Doesn’t Work Without Flesh and Blood

Communion Meditation – December 2024

Joh_6:54  Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

Just as there are boys who falsely think that kicking a ball or shooting a gun in a video game are equivalent to kicking a real ball or shooting a real gun, so there are many who identify as Christians who love the Jesus of spiritual teachings and moral philosophy, but have no concept of the Jesus of flesh and blood. To these people, Jesus is a man who embodies the highest moral and spiritual aspirations of humanity, instead of being the Son of the Highest who embodies the frailty of humanity. They love the Jesus of the abstract but cannot make heads or tails of Jesus the Carpenter. They quote with quivering fervor the Golden Rule as a timeless principle, but look around and mutter awkwardly at the Jesus who drinks and feasts with the wedding party.

Some seem offended that Jesus is a man of a certain historical period living in a specific geographic location, as if Jesus could be a man of every historical period living everywhere at once. They actually prefer the idea of spiritual ubiquity over the idea of calloused fingers and a sweating brow, of tired feet and gnawing hunger, or of a baby lying in a manger. They love the thought of a cosmopolitan Jesus, but can’t grasp the Jesus who loved the smell of the sea of Galilee. They want a Jesus who believes in the brotherhood of all mankind but can’t fathom the Jesus who showed preference to Peter, James, and John or would rather stay at Mary and Martha’s house more than someone else’s house.

These type of people want to distill Jesus to just His teachings like they want to boil down stock until nothing is left but a faint smell floating through the kitchen. But Christianity isn’t mean to waft ethereally like a vapor. It doesn’t work without flesh and blood. Christianity is not just a moral philosophy or a doctrinal system. It is atonement and resurrection. It is nail pierced hands and feet. It is a body broken on a cursed tree and blood poured out for the remission of sins. All which are only made possible by the en-fleshment of the eternal Son of God. The incarnation is the miracle that makes all other miracles possible.

It is precisely this that makes Christianity appeal more to the plumber than the professor. One lives in a world of real things, the other in a world of theoretical things. One understands that we live in a world of necessary physical mechanisms, the other lives in a world of limitless counterfactuals. One has grown accustomed to touching the unclean thing, while the other lives in a world where the unclean things are hidden from sight. Which one is more inclined to grasp the calloused, bloodied hand of the Savior?

As Christmas approaches, we must remember that the ones who hate the Christ-child are not all men of violence, like Herod. Some are men of science and some are men of philosophy and some have letters after their names, and all they want is for us rubes to come to our senses, look beyond flesh and blood, and find the “deeper meaning” of Christianity. But we eat the bread and drink the wine to remember that He is flesh and blood. If He can’t be broken, He cannot fix us. If He cannot blead, He cannot heal us. If we cannot touch Him, we cannot be saved. So come hungry, and welcome to the flesh and blood Christ.