Latest / Scripture-ish / Dracula and the Sacred Wafer

Transcript

Dracula and the Sacred Wafer · Scripture-ish

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Ed Gallagher, and I am reading an essay called Dracula, a Christian novel.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: On the morning of May 16th,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Harker began his diary entry with the following words,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: God preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Whilst I live on here,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: there is but one thing to hope for,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: that I may not go mad, if indeed I be not mad already, if I be sane.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: in this hateful place,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: the Count is the least dreadful to me,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: that to him alone I can look for safety,
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: even though this be only whilst I can serve his purpose.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Great God, merciful God, let me be calm, for out of that way lies madness indeed."
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: As is clear from this diary entry, Mr. Harker is in desperate straits.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Less than two weeks into his journey into unfamiliar regions,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: he is an English solicitor sent by his employer, Mr.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: on a business journey to Eastern Europe to the old stately home of
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: a foreign gentleman in order to explain the recent purchase of a home on
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: the outskirts of London.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: The foreign gentleman is a tall, thin man, pale, with aquiline features.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: As the entry from Harker's journal has already alerted us,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: this gentleman was a Count, and his family name was Dracula.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: When Jonathan Harker received the commission to travel to Transylvania to be
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: the guest of Count Dracula,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The name raised no suspicions in him,
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: nor presumably in the first readers of the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was Stoker who introduced the name Dracula into the world of vampires.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Harker arrived at Castle Dracula on the 5th of May,
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: and after a week as a guest in this old drab castle that seems to house only himself
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: and his host,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: he writes the following,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: "'What manner of man is this,
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man?'
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let you discover for yourself in the pages of the novel what leads
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: to this despairing query.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But even without knowing the specifics, you can guess in general what has happened.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: In a week with this Transylvanian count,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Harker has gone from considering Dracula a charming,
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: if odd, nobleman to now recognizing him as sinister and perhaps not human.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately,
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: he will spend several more weeks in the castle,
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: unable to find an exit, and constantly fearful of the Count, but not only the Count.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Will Harker survive?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Can he escape the castle?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Will he be reunited with his fiancée, Mina Murray?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: The novel Dracula is structured as a collection
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: of contemporary accounts documenting some strange events over the course of a summer
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: and fall in some year late in the 19th century.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: The opening item is a journal entry dated to May 3rd, and the last entry is dated November 6th.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: There is no narrator.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, we have diaries or letters or newspaper articles.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Someone has collected these disparate materials in order to chronicle
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: the facts concerning Count Dracula,
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: as those facts became known to a few friends dedicated to destroying him.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: These friends are,
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Harker and his fiancée, Mina Murray, who would become his wife,
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: During the course of the novel,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: as well as Mina's friend,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: the ill-fated Lucy Westenra,
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: and also the three men who are in love with Lucy,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: namely Dr.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: John Seward, Quincy P. Morris, and Arthur Holmwood, the future Lord Godelming.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: there is the friend of Dr.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Seward and his former teacher from Amsterdam, Professor Abraham Van Helsing.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: These five men, Harker, Seward,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Van Helsing, Morris,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: and Gottelming,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: along with Harker's wife,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Mina, bind themselves by oath to avenge the death of their beloved Lucy.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: The collection of papers assembled in this novel The diary entries and letters
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: and newspaper clippings describe Belusi's death and the process of avenging her.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: We learn near the end of the novel that it was Mina Harker who assembled these documents.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I love the novel Dracula?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because it is one of the most Christian novels I have ever read,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: one of the most virtuous, one of the most noble.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I love the novel because the characters bravely entrust themselves to God
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: in their fight against evil.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love it because it inspires me to be a better person, to imitate Jesus more closely.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I've never read the novel Dracula, not in the normal sense of the term read.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: About 20 years ago,
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: before I moved to Alabama,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to read it But after about 100 pages,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was so bored I put it down, and I have never picked it up again.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: But a few years later,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the local public library and came across a recorded books version
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: of Dracula,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: one read by Alexander Spencer and Susan Adams, and I thought I would give it a try.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: A few years later,
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I listened to it again in October,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: and And most years in October, I decide to re-listen to that version of Dracula.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have found this version available on YouTube, highly recommended.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot recommend the experience of reading the novel Dracula.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I've never done it.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I won't recommend to you any particular film version of the story.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen a few Dracula films, including the classic 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Which is,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: a must see for movie lovers,
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: but it is not much like the novel at all and contains little of what I love in
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: the story.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I can recommend the recorded books version that I mentioned.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've listened to it perhaps a couple of dozen times.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: What about Dracula versus Frankenstein?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who would win in a battle, but as for which book is better, that's easy.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Dracula.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Mary Shelley's 1818 novel about a scientist who assembles a man out
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: of random body parts and then manages to create life is,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I am sorry to say, pretty boring.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: The monster does a lot of whining in that novel.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even come close to being scary.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the recent film version on Netflix directed by Guillermo del Toro is excellent
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: and much better than its source material.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Back to Dracula.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is it scary?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, some of it is, or was.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at this late date,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: after having experienced the novel so many times,
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: I find that its power to frighten me is somewhat diminished by
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Though I still anticipate the thrill of certain sections,
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Harker's growing realization of his dangerous predicament
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: at Castle Dracula early in the novel,
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: and in Chapter 7,
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: the Captain's Log,
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: found in the hands of the dead captain of the ship called the Demeter,
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: who had lashed his own hands to the will of the vessel,
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: But most of the novel is not scary exactly, more of a thriller.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you also are curious about how much sex is in the novel.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: The answer, not much.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly not as much as in the film versions.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any sex?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the sexiest part of the novel is near the beginning at Castle Dracula
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: in Transylvania when Jonathan Harker In a hypnotic state,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: encounters three women who materialize out of particles or dust in the air.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: While Harker is vaguely asleep on a couch,
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: one of the women bends over him to, as he thinks, kiss his neck.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Harker admits that her approach excited him.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: But he also observed that as her mouth drew closer to his neck, She strangely licked her lips.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: As it turned out, the two never made contact.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I said, no sex.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you very briefly what the novel is about.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Dracula moves to London, and there he does shenanigans.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've already introduced you to the main characters,
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: including the woman Dracula kills upon first taking up residence in England.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Lucy Westenra.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or he does not kill her exactly,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: but he slowly drains her blood until she becomes no longer alive, but not dead.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: She is undead.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lucy happens to be friends with Mina Murray,
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: and the two were on holiday together at the seaside resort of Whitby when
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: the Demeter arrives into port,
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: covered in fog and And apparently completely unmanned,
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: except for the corpse at the wheel.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the ship was carrying only 50 boxes of earth.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: That was its cargo.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: The newspaper reports on the arrival of the Demeter
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: appeared on August 8th.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And only a few days later,
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: on August 11th,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lucy walks in her sleep outside her house where she meets a strange man in
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: the night.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the result is that she looks pale.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow there are two pinprick holes on the side of her neck.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: The other characters, again, are the three men who each love Lucy.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Dr. Seward,
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: who is a psychiatrist who runs a lunatic asylum, Mr. Morris,
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: who is a rich Texan,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: and Arthur Holmwood,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: who, upon the death of his father, takes the title Lord Godelming.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then there is Abraham Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker, Mina's husband.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Aside from these, who are our heroes, there is also the lunatic R.M.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Renfield,
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Who inhabits Dr.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Seward's asylum and has a strange disease of the mind for which Dr.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Seward coins the term zoophagus, life eating.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Renfield seems to imagine that by consuming insects and animals,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: he can absorb their fate into his own and perhaps live in perpetuity.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: On the character Renfield, I also want to say something.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have not seen the movie starring Nicholas Holt as Renfield,
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: and it sounds like I probably don't want to.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Aside from the quality of the film,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: it seems that the character is not very close to the character in the novel,
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: but that seems to be true of most adaptations.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: In the novel,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Renfield is a psychiatric patient of Dr.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Seward's, Who,
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: as I said,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: seeks to increase his life by consuming smaller species such as flies and spiders
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: and birds.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so Dr. Seward comes up with the diagnosis, zoophagus, life eater.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually he becomes a servant of Dracula's, that is Renfield does.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: But at one crucial part of the novel, it's in chapter 18 in Dr. Seward's diary.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Renfield tries to do a most noble thing in defiance of Dracula,
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: but he fails because he cannot win to his side the heroes of our novel.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful scene, heartbreaking.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: It brings about great pity for Renfield among readers.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: In chapter 21, again, he tries to thwart Dracula, but is overpowered.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And suffers a mortal wound from his encounter.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, one aspect of the novel that I like very much is its refusal to explain everything.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: How is it that Dracula became Renfield's master?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: While Renfield,
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: on his deathbed,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: offers some explanation, it is not clear why Dracula selected Renfield as a servant.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: He never tried to suck Renfield's blood.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that doesn't happen because,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: it's like, well,
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: in the novel,
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: maybe in the film versions,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: men don't select,
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: men vampires,
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dracula is the only one we meet, don't select men victims and the female victims.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Vampires seem to only target male victims.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe it doesn't even make any sense for Dracula to target Renfield as a victim
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: of sucking his blood.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I mean, he doesn't.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Also, Renfield is already a zoophagus before Dracula came to England.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't Dracula's influence.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's a problem that Renfield has in himself.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then it seems that as soon as Dracula takes up residence at Carfax,
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: which is the house next door, Renfield is aware of his coming.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now how can that be?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Does he just know his presence?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: But also in that wonderful scene in which Renfield is trying to do something noble,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: one of the reasons he fails is,
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: he says, because he cannot reveal all of his motives.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why not?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It must have something to do with Dracula's power over him,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: but the novel never explains How that should make Renfield unable to talk
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: on certain subjects.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: On his deathbed, Renfield says that his tongue had seemed to be tied.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most of what we know about vampires comes up in this book.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: They are the undead who suck the blood of the living by biting the neck.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: A person bitten by a vampire will become a vampire at death.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Vampires can operate during the day in this novel, but they are basically normal people.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: From sundown to sunrise, however, they have magical powers and super strength.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: The novel mentions some of the familiar weapons, garlic,
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: for instance,
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: and a wooden stake through the heart,
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: although it turns out that it need not be a wooden stake,
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: but just whatever a bowie knife will do.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: There are also other less familiar weapons,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: such as the Wild Rose,
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: which apparently,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: when put on the vampire's coffin,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: will prevent the vampire from exiting during the night.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: The most powerful weapons, however, are the Crucifix and the Host.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: As Dr. Seward reports about our hero's second face-to-face meeting with the Count in Chapter 23,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: The following are the words of Dr. Seward.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Instinctively,
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: I moved forward with a protective impulse,
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: holding the crucifix and wafer in my left hand.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I felt a mighty power fly along my arm,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: and it was without surprise that I saw the monster cower back before
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: a similar movement made spontaneously by each one of us.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: What made this demon recoil in horror?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was the crucifix and the wafer,
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: the visible,
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: dare I say,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: sacramental signs of Christ's self-sacrifice,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: so repulsive to the count that they repulse him.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: What is this wafer or host of Here, things get a little bit Roman Catholic.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: The wafer is what we would call the Lord's Supper bread.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say we, I mean my own religious tradition, Churches of Christ.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas in my experience,
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Churches of Christ have been typically Zwinglian in our approach to the presence
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: of Christ and the elements of the Lord's Supper,
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: a more sacramental approach to the meal envisions a more robust account of
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: the real presence of Christ in the elements,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: including a Roman Catholic idea of transubstantiation.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Such that once the bread has been consecrated by a priest,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: it does truly become the body of Christ.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got a link here.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you go to the Substack,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: you can read some more exposition or thoughts about what that word,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: what work the word truly is doing there.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: That the bread, once it's consecrated, truly becomes the body of Christ.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: What does truly exactly mean?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I mean...
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hard to define,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: but anyway, I've discussed this a previous time, and I've got a link to that essay.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I assume that Van Helsing,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: who is the one who supplies the consecrated bread to his friends, is Catholic.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I assume Van Helsing is Catholic, though I think the novel never explicitly says.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly the other characters are not Catholic, they're Anglicans.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: I assume Van Helsing believes in transubstantiation,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: that the wafer is the actual body of Christ.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And more importantly, apparently Dracula believes it.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I will say that Van Helsing does things with the wafer,
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: like smearing it around the cracks of doorways,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: that the Catholic priests I have known would not approve,
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: except maybe in the case of fighting vampires.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: By the way,
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: a different Catholic idea of the Lord's Supper,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: which is equally foreign in Churches of Christ,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think, lies behind the term host in reference to the bread.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: This word host is short for the Latin hostia,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: referring to a sacrificial victim,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: and it has to do with the Eucharist being a type of sacrifice that humans offer
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: to God.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: At any rate,
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: I love the idea of the body of Christ being the most potent enemy of evil,
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: the weapon before which demons cower.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, the body of Christ has multiple referents.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: It brings to mind first,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: and most obviously,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: the incarnation,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: the enfleshment of the internal word of God about which we read at the beginning of
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: the fourth gospel.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of John 2,
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: the narrator uses the phrase,
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: the temple of his body, in reference to the physical form of Jesus.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: The body of Christ is the temple, the dwelling place of God.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we remember Jesus.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not in the fourth gospel,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: but in the other three,
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: how the demons cowered before Christ,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: almost uniquely knowing his identity as the Holy One of God and begging him
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: for mercy.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the Apostle Paul also applies this term body of Christ to the community
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: of believers who have confessed their allegiance to Christ and even to
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: the individual believer.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are individually and collectively the body of Christ,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: the habitation of God, where the Spirit of God has now taken up residence.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is the church and the Christian that stands opposed to the gates of Hades against
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: which we are assured of victory.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And thirdly,
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: about the phrase body of Christ,
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: it's The incarnation,
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: it's the church,
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: but there's a third thing that is called the body of Christ in the New Testament.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the night on which he was betrayed,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: our Lord enjoyed a last supper with his disciples,
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: during which he took bread and after blessing it,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: broke it and gave it to them and said, take, this is my body.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's the wording of Mark, closely paralleled by Matthew.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: But Luke has, this is my body which is given for you, similar to Paul's account.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: The bread is the body of Christ.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Catholics and others stress that is...
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And about such matters as the real presence, I am happy to leave the matter open.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: But what I think is essential,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: and the story of Dracula makes clear by its joining of the wafer with the crucifix,
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: is that the bread does not only represent Christ, but in particular, his sacrifice.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: As Luke has it, this is my body, which is given for you.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: It is the sacrificial nature of Christ's life,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: his self-emptying,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: his voluntary death for the sins of others that is so baffling to the forces of evil
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: and yet so powerful.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is that same power that the church,
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: the body of Christ, embodies as it takes on the self-emptying nature of Christ.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: My power is made perfect in weakness,
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: which is a statement sensible only to those who have trusted in a self-emptying God.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Such weakness overpowers the vampire who lives by feeding on the life of others.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I haven't yet told you what I love most about the novel Dracula.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Next time.