If I hadn’t grown up immersed in Christian symbolism, I suspect that I would find the Eucharist both bizarre and deeply disturbing, perhaps even offensive. Even as accustomed as I am to the whole thing, the sheer strangeness of it still hits me at times. I wish that Jesus had come up with a different ritual for remembering him, I sometimes think. I’m not sure how much I care for this one. In John 6, Jesus graphically comments that “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink” (v. 56), and links this eating and drinking to eternal life. The disciples complain that this is a difficult teaching (v. 60), and then many of them end up leaving him (v. 66). Honestly, I’m sympathetic. I don’t think that this would have won me over.
But on a week-to-week basis, I find that I struggle less with the weirdness of the ritual, and more with how mundane it actually is in practice. Maybe I’ve read too many exciting accounts in which the Eucharist worked wonders, but I find myself wanting it to be a mystical experience, to be somehow transcendent. I don’t think that it ever has been. Read More