Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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    "There is power in the blood," says the old hymn, and that's true even today.  Television news editors like to say, "If it bleeds, it leads," meaning "if we have some film with blood in it, we'll make it the lead story."  Because blood grabs the attention of the commoners in the pit, like the witches in Macbeth.  Show biz.  Big burly policemen, and paramedics put on rubber gloves because they are frightened of the power lurking in some blood.  My doctor draws a small vial from my arm, and from it he can tell more about me than I know about myself.  There is power in the blood.  Oaths of absolute allegiance, to a gang or an organized crime family, are often signed in blood.  We say of family bonds that "blood is thicker than water."  There is power in the blood.

    Ancient people hadn't a clue about the circulatory system, but they knew there was something vital in that red stuff.  When it stayed in a man, he lived, when it leaked out he died.  They put blood on the door posts of their houses.  They created blood sacrifices, reasoning that if there were anything ultimately important, anything that God would be pleased to receive, it would be blood, the very life substance.  But today, because we are modern, and so wonderfully sophisticated, we downplay blood, as part of our larger campaign against violence.  (Note: we patronize violent sports, we go to see violent movies, we make very popular shows like "Cops," where violence is the coin of the realm.  But, for the record -- in public -- we're against blood and violence.)
 Some churches have even begun to remove any mention of blood from their hymns and rituals.  In the new United Church of Christ hymnal, the "Old Rugged Cross," instead of describing the cross of Jesus as "stained with blood so divine," says "which bore love so divine."  (Yuck!)  Or, in the hymn, "O How I Love Jesus," instead of saying "It tells me of his precious blood, the sinner's perfect plea," it says, "Whatever problems may befall we'll live in dignity."  (Double Yuck!)  Just a few weeks ago I had a teacher ask me how she could tell her children about Holy Week without saying that Jesus died.  (I thought later that I should have suggested a magic automobile, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, into which Jesus could hop when the bad guys got close and ride off into the sky, safe and sound.)  Who are we kidding?  And why?

    We look at these wonderful words in I John (which would made a good memory verse, by the way, if anyone feels like memorizing something):  "…but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin."  John's three-fold formula for salvation is water, blood and wind.  We need the water of baptism, he says, the blood of the cross, and the wind of the Holy Spirit to be complete in Christ.  Today we're talking about the blood and about a concept as old as mankind: atonement, getting right with God, being "cleansed of our sin," to use John's expression.  In the Old Testament, Moses gave the people sacrifices as a way to restore and repair their broken relationship with God, to atone for their mistakes, their faults, their failures.  So, at first it was a good thing.  But we know, because we read the New Testament, that sacrificing got out of hand, became a burden to the people instead of a blessing, became big business (selling doves and lambs at the Temple gate, and, in the process, cheating poor country folk with unfair exchange rates for their out-of-town money).  But at first it was good: a way of walking in the light again, as God is in the light.

    So the notion that Christ somehow atoned for our sin ("remitted our sins, and not only ours but also the whole world's"), and that he did it by pouring out his own blood, should not gross us out, but should be a source of great joy.  And, if we're going to faint at the sight of blood, we're going to miss one of the most beautiful and comforting doctrines of our ancient faith.  The citizens of Athens, in one of their famous town meetings, were about to banish the poet Aeschylus from their city.  At the last moment, the poet's brother, who had lost an arm at the battle of Salamis, rose, removed his shirt, showed his disfiguring wounds to the crowd, and asked them to release his brother for his sake.  And they did.  In a similar way, we believe that the wounds of Jesus are so full of merit in God's eyes, that for Jesus' sake, God will spare us, Jesus' brothers and sisters.  That is why, when we pray to God, we end our prayer with the words, "For the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord."
 

 Come feel with me his blood applied.
 My Lord, my love, is crucified.
 Is crucified for me and you,
 To bring us rebels near to God…
 Pardon for all flows from his side;
 My Lord, my love, is crucified.

    But what should atonement mean to a congregation of Christians, worshipping on a Sunday morning, in Silver Spring, Maryland, in the twenty-first century?  (Decent people, for the most part, reasonably well-adjusted.)  Why should we should we still be talking about blood, even though it's a turn-off for some?  First, because it keeps us, and our faith, real.  Because it does not hide from the awful realities of this world, but faces them head on.  One of the reasons the church has been effective over the years in places where violence and poverty and death are so common is because we have been able to say that Christ knew violence, and Christ knew poverty, and Christ knew death -- but Christ knew no defeat!  And, because of that, we are not going to run from these things and hide in the comfortable suburbs of our souls, and try to insulate ourselves from reality with gloppy, feel-good love which, in so many places, passes for religion.  The early Christians were tough people, tough in body and in spirit.  They were disadvantaged in many ways, but they were not poor.  Every week, in secret, they would gather and drink the blood of Christ, and understand in that that God loved them with a love beyond all measure, that he had atoned for all their sins, and they were and would remain in good stead with Him.  So they could face their trials.

    We are fortunate.  Our world is softer.  We don't have to be so tough.  One American woman who had recently hosted a woman from Bangladesh, said later, "I will never forget the day my visitor was standing by the kitchen sink, looking out the window, and asked, 'Who lives in that house?'  I looked out and realized what she was seeing, and said, 'Oh, nobody lives in that house.  That's the garage.'  And she said, 'Where I live there are not nearly enough houses for the people, and you Americans have houses for cars, and houses for lawn mowers and shovels and rakes.'"  We are supremely fortunate.  But we need to be honest about the larger world in which we live.  There are many, many places where life is tough, and where we need a savoir tough enough to matter.  And, in spite of our good fortune, there are times in our lives when we suffer desperately.  Let us not run too quickly from the Christ who bleeds and dies.  Many will identify with him.  It is a wonderful thing, in the midst of suffering, to know that Christ suffered too, and that, through his suffering something good has come.

    There is another benefit of atonement (this blood transfusion we've been talking about, that brings life) -- another benefit for the world today, and it has to do with our ability to get along.  We have a terrible problem with that: wives and husbands can't get along, and the divorce rate shows it.  Parents and kids can't get along.  Neighbors can't get along.  Races, generations, genders can't get along.  But John says, "…if we walk in the light as he is in the light (that is, if we have nothing to hide from God or from each other) -- if we walk in the light… we have fellowship -- koinonia -- one with another.  We get along.  And I believe that is true.  There are two prerequisites for genuine fellowship and love: first, that we hide nothing, nothing from God, or from ourselves, or from each other (we walk in the light), and second -- which is why we can do the first -- that we are absolutely certain, by Christ's death upon the cross, that there is nothing in us, nothing on earth, that can separate us from God's love (…the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin).  At that point, when we lay aside all pretense and are honest with ourselves and with others, and when we are assured of God's love, we begin to get along, to experience genuine fellowship.  Husbands and wives, parents and children, races and nations.  We begin to love again.  In that sense, atonement is an instrument of healing.  Lord, by your blood make me well, and enable me to love others and to allow others to love me.

     In Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, there is the grave of a Civil War soldier, with the usual information on the stone (name, dates), but under that are the words, "Abraham Lincoln's Substitute."  It seems that Lincoln was so distressed by the thousands and thousands who were falling in battle, that he decided to honor one particular soldier as his substitute.  It was a symbol, of course, but a very important symbol: it said that each soldier who died died as a substitute for others.  And these others were not nameless and faceless, but were real.  They died so that other people (men, women, children) might live.  If the Civil War was the just punishment for the awful crime of slavery, then it was these men whose blood paid the price.  And they did it as our substitutes, to atone for the sins of us all.  They did it so that we might live, and be free.  Just as our Lord died to pay the price for our sin and to free us from the house of bondage, and make us free.  There is no "thank you" big enough for that.