- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: Exodus 12:1-14

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin" (Hebrews 9:22).

When last we saw Moses he was taking off his shoes before a burning bush. We found that holy ground is that place wherever it is that we are responsive to God and make our life changing commitments to God. In Moses holy place, he was called to deliver the people of Israel from their bondage in Egypt.

With some fear and trembling, Moses went back to the place of his birth, back to the palace of the Pharaoh where he grew up as a companion to the very one who was now Pharaoh. But now Moses was demanding that the people of Israel be released.

During the great contest of wills with the Pharaoh, God sent ten famous plagues upon Egypt, each more devastating that the previous. Finally, it was the tenth plague, the angel of death would come and take the lives of the firstborn of every family, human and animal.

But there was a provision which would exclude those who were obedient to God. The people of Israel were to find a lamb which was one year old and without blemish. On the same morning, all the people were to slaughter the lamb, take some of the blood and put it on the doorposts of the house. Then they were to eat the roasted lamb standing, dressed and ready for action.

Then verse thirteen explains, "The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt."

It's a familiar story and one of the most important in the early pages of the Bible. In fact, the first of the Ten Commandments says, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me." The Exodus from Egypt was the most mighty of God's mighty acts of salvation.

But I want to ask you, isn't all this blood just a little off-putting? How would you like it if the central act of your faith specifically required you to slaughter a lamb once a year and put the blood on your doorposts? What would the neighborhood association say about that blood on your doorpost? Doesn't all this blood-talk make you just a little bit squeamish? It does me.

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin" (Hebrews 9:22).

But I remember that in the little church where I grew up, we didn't really have a problem with blood. In fact some of the liveliest hymns were about blood:

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing pow’r?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

There is a fountain filled with blood

drawn from Emmanuel's veins;

and sinners plunged beneath that flood

lose all their guilty stains.

What can wash away my sin?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Oh! precious is the flow

That makes me white as snow.

No other fount I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Would you be free from the burden of sin?

There's power in the blood, power in the blood;

Would you over evil a victory win?

There's wonderful power in the blood.

Those of you who are not of a similar background may well be grossed out by these blood hymns. They sound like a dialogue out of a horror movie, don't they? Washed in the blood, a fountain filled with blood, power in the blood…

Folks in mainstream denominations, like Disciples of Christ, don't quite know what to make of all this blood talk. You won't find any of those hymns in the Chalice Hymnal. We have sanitized our hymns so that we don't have those images that may remind us of horror movies. We don't particularly like blood imagery.

But it is interesting to me that in our popular culture, blood and gore are often the measure of entertainment value. Have you been to the movies lately? In some, it seems that the more blood and gore, the better the movie. They must use gallons of fake blood in them. And video games are the same way, if not worse.

We expect movie titles like these: "Rambo: First Blood," "There Will Be Blood," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." There is a video game called "Blood" and its sequel "Blood II."

Ours is a blood culture in some ways. Now it's true that some of us don't approve of all that blood. Some of us don't like those kinds of movies and most of us think those kinds of video games are a bad influence on our children.

But even in polite company like ours, we have to admit that the Bible is bloody book! Here we find blood smeared on the doorposts of the houses. Soon they would build a Temple where the blood of an ox was frequently sprinkled on the altar of God. The proscribed method for finding forgiveness for sins was to kill an animal as a sacrifice for sin. The Temple must have been like a gigantic slaughter house with all the attendant smells and blood running in the drains. That's how people worshipped God, and that seems so alien to us.

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin" (Hebrews 9:22).

If Judaism was a blood religion, so is Christianity. Our observance of Communion comes directly from the Passover ritual described in our passage. Jesus and his Disciples were at the Passover meal when Jesus reinterpreted it to refer to his own body and blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins. Early Christians could not miss the similarity of the Passover lamb to the death of Jesus, which they quickly called the death of the Lamb of God for the sins of the world. The book of Hebrews is built upon this connection between the Jewish sacrificial system and the death of Jesus.

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin" (Hebrews 9:22).

We are a blood church because every Sunday we stand before the Communion table and proclaim the words of Jesus, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."

Fortunately for us, the Communion ritual has been sanitized and modernized so that it is far more acceptable to our modern sensibilities. But when we observe Communion, we quote the words of Jesus, "This is my body; this is my blood."

I find it interesting that we never use the words of Jesus from John 6:53-57, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me." Such language led early Christians to be accused of cannibalism.

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin" (Hebrews 9:22).

So what can we make of all this blood talk?

1) Blood is a natural fact of life, and the shedding of blood is a part of the circle of life.

Every generation until ours has known exactly where steak, pork, veal and chicken came from because they had to butcher it themselves. Today, we can easily forget that reality and pretend it comes from the grocery store.

Our missionaries to Swaziland found out that many cultures today still know where their meat comes from. Our missionaries were presented a goat on Friday, which they ate on Sunday. Our people were squeamish about eating a goat they had petted two days before, but the Swazi's knew it was a natural part of the circle of life.

Two Sundays from now, a large RV will pull in front of our church and for six hours our people will be asked to give blood. The American Red Cross knows that blood is a precious life-giving substance. When we roll up our sleeves and donate a unit of blood, we give life to someone in need.

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin" (Hebrews 9:22).

2) Blood is a natural symbolic image.

When we talk symbolically of blood, we have a visceral understanding that we are talking about the very core of our lives. Our blood is that which gives us life and sustains it. When we use blood imagery, we understand it.

It is not uncommon to hear University of Kentucky fans use blood imagery. How many times have you heard someone say, "I bleed Kentucky blue?" We don't get grossed out when they say that because we know it is a symbol. We know it means they take their UK sports very seriously.

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin" (Hebrews 9:22).

3) The blood talk in the Bible is symbolic as well.

Our God is not a blood-thirsty God out of some horror movie. God does not literally like rivers of blood pouring from the altar. There is no magical power in the substance we call blood. We do not literally drink blood from the Communion cup. It is a symbol; a powerful symbol.

In my first church, there was a dear lady who was far more astute than most of the people in that little congregation. She used to love saying to me, "The only people who understand the Bible are the people who can understand poetry." Mrs. Lovelace was right.

We should not get squeamish about the blood talk in the Bible; we should just understand poetry.

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin" (Hebrews 9:22).

The shedding of blood speaks of the costliness of a matter. The deliverance from Egypt was costly. The firstborn of most of the families of Egypt would die that night. And in fact, most of that generation of Israelites would die before they emerged from the wilderness. The exodus was a costly matter.

And so is forgiveness. The forgiveness of our sins is not cheap and easy. Forgiveness never is.

Try forgiving someone who has truly hurt you or harmed you. It is not cheap. It is one of the most difficult tasks of life. It requires our very life-blood.

And the Bible says that God's forgiveness of us did not come cheap either.

Early Christians immediately understood the life and death of Jesus through the words of Isaiah 53:

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,

crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the punishment that made us whole,

and by his bruises we are healed.

6 All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have all turned to our own way,

and the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

12 …because he poured out himself to death,

and was numbered with the transgressors;

yet he bore the sin of many,

and made intercession for the transgressors.

The Gospel of John puts the theme this way: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16).

Perhaps my favorite one sentence summary of the gospel comes from 1 Peter 3:18: "For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18).

You see, friends, Hebrews is exactly right:

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin" (Hebrews 9:22).