Cadavers & Communion

I've been in med school for two weeks now, and it's been exhausting. It's hard to get back in the school mode again, with no time at all to do the little things I enjoy - cooking, painting, reading, thinking, and with paralyzing fears of inadequacy and failure. I've been studying so much it feels like it's been finals-week. Yet despite it all, I've been surprised by how I have enjoyed learning the things I have (sadly, learning seems to be a different thing for me than remembering).

One of the things I find sad is how little time there is really to think, to process what indeed is going on. Particularly the anatomy dissection. I posted awhile back on dissection and cremation, but I'm learning new things from the experience itself. It's been not as horrifying an experience as I had feared, and I haven't had cadavers haunting my nightmares. Because somehow, when you subtract the gripping soundtrack and add a list of things to do and learn, the experience seems much less phantasmagorical and more common-sense. Part of it, certainly, is because the cadavers have turned pink or orange or greenish-grey from the embalming process.

Another part, though, is realizing how different life is from death. The body, when not animated by life, seems somehow much less human. It has more in common with the meat we buy from the grocery store (indeed, the shoulder muscle we looked at- the rhomboids - look a LOT like beef brisket, which is, after all, beef shoulder.) It really makes me realize that we aren't so different from animals, from the meat we eat. Despite all our efforts to make a separation (e.g. becoming vegetarian), it is indeed our soul which makes us human, the breath of God. There is nothing particularly unique about our bodily form. A sobering, humbling realization. It stands in stark contrast to the exaltation and glorification of the human body in movies and glamor and body-building magazines.

We've been attending a wonderful Vespers service at our church every Wednesday, and one of the things that really hit me last Wednesday was when the pastor said when presenting the communion, quoting Christ, "This is my body, which is broken for you. Take, and eat." And I realized really what it meant, that Christ gave His body. These generous people donated their bodies to us medical students, to be examined, carved apart, learned about. That is what Christ did. And those neat small foam wafers which we took at communion, in remembrance of Christ - they were standing in for the pieces of Christ's body. During the dissection, we cut away parts of the flesh and put them to the side, so that we can better examine particular bones, muscles, etc. That's what communion was - eating those little pieces of Christ's flesh. Gag-inducing? Twisted? Disgusting? Horrible? No wonder the Jews had such a response to this command of Jesus'.

That's what Christ did - He presented His body, broken, for us, for the forgiveness of our sins. He presented it to us that we might take it, and find life through His death. He didn't say that he presents us His soul, broken for us, but His body. What does that mean? What does that mean for the importance of the body? What does His gift to us mean?

1 Corinthians 11:

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

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