Real Presence in Sex and Sacrament

Jessica Martin:

I am not sure that we meant to place the holy eucharist inside the temple to the marketplace gods; but we did. We put it there for consumption (along with a lot of the Church’s other highly marketised ‘missional’ activity).  Perhaps by doing it we have become subversives on the marketplace gods’ territory. Or perhaps we are the subverted. The internet is a strange platform upon which to choose to place the ritual that reverses all other greeds.

It might be the boldest thing we could do – placing communion in the heart of all commodification. Or it could be the silliest choice, the most foolhardy. Are we blaspheming? Or are we, urgently hungry, sick of gobbling shadows, filling ourselves with the bread of the Presence?

This is a remarkable essay by Jessica Martin, meditation on what happens when two vital experiences — sex and Eucharist — are made virtual. Can there be a Real Presence in a medium predicated on absence?