Kirkepiscatoid

As you know, I've been winding my way through the book of John. I got to John 6 early this week and realized I needed to spend a week looking at the "Bread of life discourse" as a WHOLE rather than immediately start tearing into it. So, much as I did with John 1, I'm spending two weeks on John 6--one to think about it as an entire unit, and one to take the pieces apart and look at them.

I have to admit something. I had a dream a few nights ago that has to do with this discourse and I didn’t even BEGIN to figure it out until the next morning when I re-read John 6. I dreamed that Jesus was sitting in the hospital lab here, and he was coming to get a transfusion. My lab techs had called and said, “You ain’t gonna believe this, you GOTTA COME OVER right now. JESUS is over here, he’s BACK, and he wants to get TRANSFUSED.”

Of course, my reply was....”WTF?” As my dreams would have it, it was my tech who is sort of known for her ability to bring me all the weird situations...and this one was definitely weird. I said, "Are you sure this isn't just some weirdo who THINKS he's Jesus?" Her reply was, "He's got the nail holes and everything!"

I walked over, expecting to see some nutjob that I’d have to call security over. He was wearing jeans, Birkenstocks (with socks, so the foot nail holes didn't show, LOL), and a t-shirt. Don’t ask me why, but I knew it was Jesus for real, even though he did not look like “Jesus of the crappy truck stop art.” He was darker and more rugged than Jesus of the crappy truck stop art. He said, “I need to be transfused and I came to you to get it.”

Ok, now here is where the dream gets funny. I go, “Ok, well, uh...Jesus, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I have all these regulations and I can’t have my lab shut down...soooo...uh....I need a requisition signed by a physician.” I’ll be damned if he didn’t produce one! In my dream, I remember thinking, "Well, gee, if he made it through Admissions, I can't fight much here." (BTW, he has a social security number.)

Then I go....”Uh....well...um....Jesus, I have to have you typed and crossed.” So my blood bank people did the type and cross and Jesus was type AB--the “universal recipient"--but Rh negative (AB positive would be the absolute "universal recipient") but since he was not a woman of childbearing age, the Rh is of less consequence.

Here's another comic moment of my dream. A few of my techs and my supervisor and I start discussing if we're SURE of that Rh because we would have figured Jesus to be AB positive.

So he got his unit of blood, and he’s talking to me. He goes, “I know this sounds strange, but I needed your blood.”

I reply, “Well, uh..you know...this isn’t “my” blood, it comes from volunteer donors. YOU surely know that.”

He answers, “You’re the lab director, aren’t you? You’re in charge of the lab, aren’t you? Therefore, even though the units came from someone else, it’s still YOUR blood. So now I have your blood in me.”

I am feeing a little weird in the dream at this point and he adds, “Hey, it’s ok. I’m the anemic one here. You’re the one who had what I needed. You shouldn’t be afraid of that.” Then he leaves.

Then, in one of those wonderfully non-coincidental moments, Fran of FranIAm posts over on Facebook about the paper she is working on for her class, and the word "perichoresis" came up. From Wikipedia:

"The mutual inter-penetration and indwelling within the threefold nature of the Trinity, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Although clear references to full-blown Trinitarian theology in the New Testament are rare, it can be seen between two persons of the Trinity in passages such as the following from John's Gospel:"the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father."

Then I had the big "A-ha!" because that is exactly what we are talking about in the latter part of John 6:

⁵⁵for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

That's when it hit me. Periclesis is simply like getting a transfusion. When we participate in the Eucharist, we are being transfused with the essence of Christ within the elements of Holy Communion. Conversely, when we do things that honor and glorify God, we are transfusing "our blood" into Christ.

Wow. All this from a dream and a blogfriend's aside. Who knows, maybe it can give Fran some ideas!