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What’s the Weirdest Thing Jesus Ever Said?

Cy Kellett

Jesus said a lot of provocative, jarring, and outright weird things. But one instruction in John’s Gospel stands out as almost insane. What’s the weirdest thing Jesus ever said? Cy Kellett tells us on Catholic Answers Live.


Caller: I was wondering, in writing your book, what did you find that was the strangest teaching of Jesus?

Cy Kellett: The sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. It’s possibly the strangest set of things any human being ever said. If it was anyone else who said what Jesus says in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, we would not think well of that person. We would think ill of that person. The only reason Jesus can get away with saying all of that stuff in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel is: he is God, the son of the living God, the Messiah, and he can do it.

When he says “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you,” that is shocking. That is—if Joe said that to me, I would say “Joe, it’s been great working with you,” and I’d refer him to a psychiatrist, because that is the most shocking set of words that I think you could—”Eat me and drink me!” That’s what he’s saying.

That is so strange, and the fact that we have a whole kind of strand of modern Christianity that does everything it can to take the strangeness out of that is a bad sign. But that—for 2,000 years, bishops, priests, New Testament writers, and apostles have had to stress to us: “This is serious business. Do not try to get around this, do not act like this is a metaphor.” Jesus said, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life within you.” That is irreducibly strange.

Was that a clear enough answer, Christine?

Caller: Yeah! How do you think we can get the other people to get on board with that?

Cy Kellett: You know, live it, keep inviting, keep sharing that, I think…I have had conversations myself with folks who were raised—for example, I’m thinking of one young woman, raised in a non-denominational, what do you call them, like a megachurch? And she wanted to talk about why I would be Catholic, and I said, “Well, try the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel,” and she read it, and she said “I’d never even heard that. I’d never heard that.” And I was like, “Yeah. That’s something, isn’t it?” And so I think we need to keep having those conversations.

I think we—you know, Catholic Answers, we do apologetics, where we explain that and defend that, and Joe, you know, if a real sola fide Protestant brother or sister were to—and they are our brothers and sisters, we are all brothers and sisters in the baptism of the Lord—but if they were to call right now, Joe could defend that better than I could defend it. What I can do is, I can say: This is shocking. And if you are not shocked by this when you read it, read it again, ’cause it is really shocking.

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