Cleansed (?) by the Blood

The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Reflecting on the Word

By Dr. Karla J. Bellinger

“Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people? Yuck . . .  gross.” Her face wrinkled with disgust. As I looked around the room,  all of their faces said the same. Sacrifice and the splashing of blood  and the slaughter of heifers and goats; the ninth-grade girls whom  I taught had no cultural framework for that use of blood. “That’s  repulsive,” they grimaced. 

We talk about “the bread” on this feast day. But what about “the  blood”? 

The Hebrews sacrificed an animal for its blood. Blood was life.  Life was from God. Sprinkling with blood was to purify, to set things  right, to atone for sin. To sin meant to throw things out of kilter, to  break a relationship, to miss the mark of what we should be or do,  to sever a bond. So the blood was for cleaning things up. But why  did they need to do that? 

At the core of Jewish theology is the “bigness” of God. God is  untouchable. God is inaccessible. The God who is holy is so pure  that sin cannot even be looked upon. We who are sinful, therefore,  have no access to the Almighty. The atonement of blood made things  right again when people messed up and strayed. Think of the psalms:  “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” 

The reading from Hebrews also talks about this cleansing of  blood. But goat and bull blood are temporary. Jesus shed his own  blood so that we would be made clean eternally; clean so that we  could draw near to God. He said, “This is my blood,” then took  a cup, and they all drank from it. Did they, like those teenagers,  maybe . . . gag a little?

Consider/Discuss: 

  • “Wash up for dinner,” my grandmother used to say. I can still hear her  words. “Wash up for dinner;” whenever we say the words, “I am not  worthy that you should enter under my roof” Jesus says back to us that we  will be healed—also made clean, restored, and sanctified. Have we grown  so accustomed to that cleansing of Jesus’ blood that we don’t think about  it? Does it (or should it) unsettle us a little bit? 
  • When our image of God grows inordinately small, almost teddy bear–like,  we can become presumptuous, as though we ask, God is so nice, how  could we not “get through?” What happens to our worldview if we grow  blasé about the “bigness” of God? What does that do to reverence and  awe? 

Living and Praying with the Word 

Jesus, Blood of cleansing, you have opened the way for us to be  holy. You came to make things right. Yet we are still broken. We still  mess up. Life knocks us around. Life knocks around those we love.  Wash us this day with your Blood, for we want to be healers as well.  You who are infinite have chosen to dwell among us. Let us not take  you for granted. Come, Lord Jesus; bring us into your presence, so  that we can bring you to others.

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