This Is My Blood Analysis

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Lang connects the pagan rite with the language of Jesus in the Last Supper narrative – “this is my body” and “this is my blood” – to identify the cultural influence of first century context on Christian sacramentality: not merely bread and cup, but flesh and blood of the lover to the beloved. Justin Martyr’s treatise on the Eucharist reflects such solidarity and revival through consuming identity when he writes that “we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink … the food consecrated by the word of prayer…from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.” To partake of the Eucharist was to bring into the body the life-blood of the Christ who, through life and death, pledged the ultimate oath of love and loyalty to humanity. …show more content…
Taussig argues that the sharing of the meal in these largely Roman contexts, the church engaged in a Christly version of the symposium and embodied a distinctly political activity because it countered the claims of empire in their pledging of loyalty to a god other than Caesar. They believed that their participation in the activity enacted the bringing into their bodies the Christ to whom they were pledging loyalty.
Further, when the meals of the Kingdom were convened and celebrated, they were a haven for those marginalized or oppressed by the ways and identities of empire. The meal became an expression of the people’s new allegiance born in the midst of the pledge to a new politic, that of Christ the King. It was a way to “imagine social alternatives” against the totalitarian claims of empire, while similarly expecting God’s full presence as an incarnational reality in their