March 6, 2010

Hebrews 9

What is with all the blood? That's not precisely what Paul's asking or explaining here, but it's a repeating theme of this chapter. There was blood sacrifice in the first covenant, and now there is a permanent blood sacrifice to replace it in the new.

Why the blood? Is it because we are a barbaric race, deep at our roots and down in our hearts we respond best and know violence so we must see sacrifice and even purification in such terms? Is it because we die, and that thought obsesses us, so God made us free of it with blood? Or is it a show of how even something so dark and human can become sacred? Or is it about giving our lifeblood, our very health and strength, when we speak of sacrifice?

Is it about what we know in the modern world - waiting to make full sense to us until now. Rushing through our veins, continually giving us life, putting in the good, taking away the bad, pumping through our very hearts over and over again, unceasing and involuntary, spilling out into the world if we are brave enough to expose ourselves, giving from one to another in Blood Drives, a necessary part of any surgery or healing.

Or is it all of them?

They're all plausible answers, in their way, so they're all probably to one degree or another true. But why do we need it? The blood. Is it the only sacrifice we would understand for what it is? Is it the best way of illustrating what it is we must give to be free?

We give at Blood Drives almost casually now, we trade blood in and out of sick bodies and healthy ones. But we can feel it then, can't we? Sicker, weaker, colder, as if we've just given away a part of our life - our vitality. Reminded that we are mortal and someday the blood will no longer flow.

If we give that, of our very lives, for God, it can be terrifying. Shocking. Cold and sickening and weakening. But we do not die. That's faith.

Our blood grows again, strong as before in almost no time at all.

Some of us are asked to give all, as Jesus did. We are all asked to give.