Blood

 Anywhere in the world, if you cut into any person body and blood spurts out, the blood is red.

No exceptions, we’re all red-blooded citizens of the world.

Yesterday, as I was walking through a large parking lot, I noticed a large van with the Red Cross logo emblazoned on its panels.

Seeing that big Red Cross prompted a memory from 2005, when I accompanied my wife, Pat, and a group of other nurses from our Carolina home, down to south Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina had destroyed so many homes and displaced so many persons.

That was a work of mercy and I was glad to play my small part in being a go-to guy whenever the RN crew, or other Red Cross volunteers, needed some tasks done.

Fond memories there for me, but not for the people whose lives were destroyed or displaced down there in my original home state of Louisiana. 

The Red Cross depends on volunteers to do the works of mercy that they do wherever they go.

Volunteers sacrifice their time, their treasure and their talents to help folks who are in severe need.

Sacrifice—it is a very important part of many essential, systematic human agencies in this life, including the very fabric of society itself.

That precious gift, called Sacrifice, goes back a long ways in the dark shadows of human history.

In ancient times, sacrifice was certainly important in civilized life, or tribal life, or clan life, or family life. God knows . . . fathers and mothers have sacrificed buckets of blood, sweat and tears for their children’s well-being and protection.

In the wider circumspect, leaders and defenders in tribes and clans have sacrificed for the sake of their people. . . for their protection, for their provisions, for general peace and prosperity. 

Sacrifice is a necessary component of communal life, and it goes back a long ways in the dark shadows of our origins. 

Several thousand years ago, a leader named Moses ascended a mountain in the middle of nowhere to obtain some important information about sacrifice. A very important part of what Moses brought back from his meeting with the Creator—the author of DNA and RNA and the life-force for yesterday and today and tomorrow—were some guidelines about Sacrifice. 

Sacrifice, as it turned out, is so important in the life and times of homo sapiens that we have set aside some aspects of it and ritualized it. This is an historical development that Jordan Peterson, a secular savant, has recently  explored and explained in his psych lectures illuminating the importance of stories, symbols and cultural heritage in human experience and history.

Sacrifice, it turns out, is so important to the well-being of human life that we have, down through the ages, ritualized it. 

And that ritual involves the other important element of human life—blood. 

In the ancient priesthood that was established after Moses’ revelation, blood was a central component in Sacrifice. But the blood in those sacrifices—and in our modern institutions today, is the propritiationary blood of animals. 

Humans have, for a very long time, sacrificed animals so that they could live. That custom has proved so important in human progress that we ritualized it, from the earliest stages, in order to emphasize the importance and necessity of this precious thing called Sacrifice. 

Well, by ’n by, that ancient sacrificial system of animal sacrifice got phased out. For us Christians, that phase-shift began with Jesus’ sacrifice at Calvary. He offered up his own blood, shed at the hands of Romans who were just doing their job, so that we could receive and comprehend the deep preciousness of this life.

That blood sacrifice at Calvary was, for us Christians, the last propitionary offering. Ritual sacrifice was done away with.

Oh, we still slaughter animals for food, but there is no longer any symbolic spiritual significance; the meat thereof is just for Sunday dinner, or Tuesday lunch or whatever.

Even so, that ancient heritage that is the taproot of our Christian worship still mentions, in sacred texts, in theological writings and in worship of our Resurrected Jesus—the Blood of the Lamb that covers our sin and obliterates its significance.

Some of our traditional images still harken back to that long-standing tradition. This morning, while singing songs of praise with other Christians, I noticed some wording that disturbed me, and prompted me to conduct this thought process which now manifests in bloggish writing about the blood and the ritual sacrifice.

The worship song included a line about the Blood of the Lamb, Jesus, washing me “white as snow.”

Whoa! Wait a doggone minute! That’s controversial stuff, these days, when so many folks are all hot and bothered about white privilege and white cluelessness and honky this and white that. 

I felt the need to explain. This is what’s called, nowadays, Christian apologetics.

So here it is.

First of all, I’m not white. I’m more pink that I am white, which does not mean I’m a communist pinko, nor does it mean that I’m a racist.

That “white as snow” reference in Christian worship is a reference to—wait for it— garments!

It's about clothes, robes, which are symbolic of that apparent identity which we--each one of us--present to everyone else in the world as we encounter others. 

Our righteousness before God is presented as a clean and acceptable sacrifice only because our “robes”— the outer presentation, the superficial stuff, the garments that we wear, our identity as citizens, the good standing that we have as members of mankind, citizens of the world, all that— is acceptable only because of the sacrificial Blood of the Lamb, Jesus . . . shed, so to speak . . . symbolically.  

White garments that are near a blood-letting wound get stained with red blood. If we attempt to clean those clothes, to wash them, the blood is, well, stubborn. It does not come out easily, if ever.

Offense against our Creator—or our fellow-man—is also stubborn, often quite injurious and damaging. In most cases, it doesn’t just go away.

Injurious acts against fellow-man, or God, don’t just go away. They have to be atoned for, and often compensated for.

For us Christians—white, black, or whatever— It is only by the propritiationary sacrifice of Jesus sacrifice that that stubborn stain agains God and fellow-man gets washed out.

The "white" garments symbolism is Christian hymns is not about skin color. Black Christians understand this, and have preached, for many centuries, about the Lord’s holy righteousness in all of us.

But the world generally does not comprehend the symbolism. They think we’re racist because we sing about our “spiritual” garments being washed “white as snow.”

So I just thought I’d share these thoughts that I had while singing with my people this Sunday morning.

It’s not about skin color. It’s about our ultimate destiny—all of us—black, white, yellow, red, precious in His sight, who claim Jesus’ blood sacrifice at Calvary as being our only admittance to heaven. 

White privilege—whatever the hell that is— needs to be driven out of our institutions and our society. 

Black Christians understand the symbolism explained above. So, you secular critics . . . just please go back to your hallowed halls of academia or your mellowed-out gathering-places of spirits libation, and give us Christians a break. 

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52j9JhkheeE

 

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world . . . red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.

 

Glass half-Full