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So the other day I'm walking through a Tokyo-area shopping center, and in a drug store I see stacked boxes of Jesus Body! (exclamation mark theirs).

What's this? Communion crackers? No, those would make for grisly boxes of actual Jesus flesh (or so the priests insist). The tomato-red Jesus Body! boxes I saw are a diet product – 180 tablets of slimming ingredients. 

Putting aside the skeptic's natural suspicion of diet tablets, why the name "Jesus Body"? Well, the association of Jesus with miracles must be part of it. But I assume the product is mainly seeking to attract lady shoppers with a well-known popular image: the lean, slim-bodied Jesus that artists have been hanging on the cross for near 2000 years now.

(I mean, Buddha was a miraculous guy too, but would you shell out for Buddha Body!?)

So, there's no mystery behind the appeal of a savior who always looks so fit (well, fit apart from the blood and the dying and all that). But on the other hand, there may be more to a "Jesus body" than just slimness. A church in Oklahoma has a painted Jesus whose... interesting anatomy has some faithful up in arms. (And maybe has a few swooning as well.) 

My, Christ certainly does appear to be pointing the way to heaven, doesn't he. Or as quicker wags have already quipped: I knew Jesus was crucified, but I didn't know he was hung!