Preached 2/25/07

The Blood of Christ Series #1

“The Life is in the Blood”

Preached by: Dr. Paul R. Smith

West Side Presbyterian Church

Seattle, WA

Contact: office@wspc.org

LIFEBLOOD

[Leviticus 17:10-11; John 6:46-57]

Prayer for Illumination - Lord God, in the remainder of this worship hour, as we consider what your word says and what it means to us, may you prepare our hearts to receive what you want to give us, both here in worship generally, and particularly as we gather at your Table at the climax of the hour. Father, I want to say only what you want me to say. I pray that you would grant power to my words as they come from your Spirit, and I pray that you would grant conviction to all of our hearts as we consider how to apply this word of truth. We are here to listen to your voice, Father. Speak to us, we pray, in the name of Jesus, the Living Word, AMEN.

Message

“Within the human body flows a river unlike any other earthly river – a crimson stream that courses through every organ, twists past every cell on a journey that stretches sixty thousand miles, enough to circle the planet two and a half times.” Like any earthly river, it carries within its fluid veins the stuff of life, collected and dissolved from other sources and deposited where it may nourish new life. Remarkably, human blood still carries the same balance of minerals and salts which nourished life in ancient Cambrian seas a half billion years ago.

But this red river of life within the human body is an amazingly complex and adaptable system which must carry out its appointed rounds flawlessly, often under the most adverse conditions, in order to sustain this mystery of animation and consciousness which we experience as life. Once every minute, 1440 times a day, our blood cycles through the entire body, traveling the double loop – from heart through lungs, and from heart through body. Fresh blood, loaded with oxygen, begins its voyage to the body’s tissues and cells by bursting from the left side of the heart into the aorta, the body’s largest artery. Even at rest, each beat of the heart hurls about 2 ounces of blood against the aorta walls with such force that rigid metal pipes would soon break down – five quarts a minutes, relentlessly throughout each day, month, year. But the aorta has elastic membranes that stretch on impact, and strong muscle fibers which recoil, channeling each mighty surge into a steady, flowing stream as it is massaged through your body by those muscles on all of your arteries.

With vigorous exercise or in an emergency, the heart may have to double or sometimes even triple it’s output to keep the body’s distant cells supplied with the fuel and nourishment they need for repair and growth. You can only imagine the amount of force necessary from this small pump in your chest to send the blood surging through your body – 60 thousand miles of arteries, capillaries and veins, that vast network called the cardiovascular system, which must carry its cargo to every one of the 50 trillion plus cells in the body. Without it’s precisely timed arrival, those cells will die.

But if the heart hurled the blood with that kind of force into the tiny air sacs in the lungs where it receives it’s oxygen, it would drown us. So, once again to keep us alive, the heart pump is divided into two sides, each of which has two chambers, an atrium to receive the blood, and a ventricle to pump it back out. And here is an interesting thing: the left side, which pumps blood throughout the entire body, has four times the muscle of the right side, which gently massages the blood through the lungs (isn’t that fascinating!) even though the two sides are synchronized to pump together.

The heart itself is a remarkable muscle which begins to beat just four weeks after conception, and continues without interruption, without relief, without rest for 60, 80, perhaps 100 years, beating with great force every second or so. The contractions begin even before nerves connect the heart to the brain, and, you may know, a transplanted heart will continue to beat even after all nerves have been severed and it has been removed from the chest. That is the relentless, persistent beat of the heart. In fact, even a single heart cell alone on a microscope slide pulsates as long as it has a fresh supply of blood! Isn’t that remarkable? This is the astonishing beauty of God’s creation invested with relentless life.

The blood has many functions. We’ll be exploring some in the weeks to come. This morning we are focusing particularly on one of them, namely blood as the carrier of the nutrients necessary for life. This is the job of plasma, the clear, golden liquid in our blood which dissolves and distributes the food we eat, carrying salts, minerals, sugars, fats, and proteins to every individual cell of our bodies. Of course blood also carries away damaging waste products, it distributes disease-fighting cells, carries healing tools to injured tissues, and fuels the tiny furnaces represented by each cell in the body. In short, it is accurate to say that the blood is a river of life. We could not live without the nourishment and healing it carries throughout our bodies.

Many of you will be familiar with the fascinating book on the human body, In His Image, written by West Side’s own Dr. Paul Brand. In that book he tells the memorable story of the experience which compelled him into the practice of medicine. You can read it for yourself, but it bears repeating here as he describes an incident that happened at a hospital where he was taking a required course in hygiene to prepare him for mission work in India. He had not yet determined to go into medicine, but he was required to take this course. While he was there in this hospital, a beautiful young woman was brought in who had lost vast amounts of blood in an accident. She looked, as he described her, like a waxwork Madonna. There was no color in her body, even in her lips, the darker tissues of her body, and she did not appear to be breathing. The pallor of death hung over her.

An emergency nurse rushed in and attached a bottle of blood, asking Paul to keep an eye on it while she went for more. For a time, he felt in vain for a pulse, but then – or was it his own – he thought he felt a slight tremor. Another bottle of blood arrived and now a faint spot of pink appeared on her cheek. Then it began to spread across her limp, pallid body. Soon the color returned to her lips, and a sighing breath escaped her throat. Within minutes, eyelids fluttered, then opened, pupils constricted from the light, and she looked directly at Paul and asked for a drink of water!

For Paul, it was nothing short of a miracle. It was the resurrection of a corpse, or perhaps the breath of life animating Eve in the Garden of Eden! Clearly and unmistakably – the ingredient of blood alone having been added – the miracle of life was in the blood!

Most of us have a negative image of blood. I mean that literally – a negative image. What you see in a negative is the exact opposite of what you see when light is passed through it and a positive image is created. So we tend to associate blood with death. Speak of blood, and images come to your mind of lifeless corpses, lying in sticky pools of murky red blood. We become squeamish about blood, and may even faint when we see it.

But of course the whole point is that blood is so wonderful, so teeming with life! It is only the loss of blood which leads to death. Turn that image on its head and, quite frankly, instead of fainting at the sight of blood, all of us should be fascinated with a closer look at this brilliant red fluid welling up from a pinprick on our finger tip. What a magnificent thing. Let’s look at it. Let’s examine it. The life is in the blood.

In the Bible, we find a fascination with blood, not unlike that in every culture, ancient or modern. But the Bible brings a unique perspective to it. The first mention of it is all the way back at the beginning, when Adam and Eve’s firstborn son, Cain, killed his brother. Do you remember that incident? “What have you done?” God asks, and the question begins to burn it’s way into Cain’s soul. “Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” One can imagine, as perhaps in Edgar Allen Poe’s Tell-tale Heart, that this incomparable fluid, teeming with the life it had so recently distributed throughout his brother’s body, was actually crying out to it’s Creator, stunned by this violent interruption of it’s purpose for being.

Some time later, speaking to Noah and the survivors of the Great Flood, God underscores this seminal truth with a symbolic prohibition. He says to Noah:

You must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.”

It was a powerful prohibition, and it stuck with Noah and with his descendants. When God established His people in the Promised Land, a people who represented Him and His compelling purposes on earth, this prohibition became an indelible law. We read it a few moments ago from Leviticus 17: “Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood – I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people.” And then He explains, “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar.”

Blood was used regularly in those sacrifices of atonement, the system of sacrifices which underscored for God’s people the fundamental reality that sin results in death. When there was sin, there had to be a death to pay for it. It was a powerful statement of the gravity of any and all sin. Our disobedience had introduced death into this remarkable living planet, the gem of God’s creation. There would be a price to pay for that sin and for that disobedience – the greatest cost for taking this most precious gift lightly!

The Jews would never forget this prohibition. Blood could not be consumed under any circumstances. It might be poured out on the ground as a sacrifice, but it could never be consumed, for the life was in the blood. And the atoning sacrifice was all about the loss of this vital commodity of life. To the Kosher housewife, devising elaborate means of assuring that no blood remained in the food served to her household, blood seemed to be the ultimate contaminant. No Jew now, none of her ancestors for over a thousand years had dared to violate this commandment.

And then, in this inviolable context of prohibition, the unpredictable Jesus steps in and says, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Can you imagine the impact of that statement? It was outrageous! “On hearing it,” verse 60 in our text tells us, “many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’” And down in verse 66 we read, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” Of course not! The man had evidently lost his mind! What is this, Hannibal Rising?

Look at verse 61. “Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you?’” (I don’t know that he really had to ask.)

Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

You understand, Jesus was a true revolutionary. He was indeed turning the world upside down. We have attempted to tame him, but beware, he will not be tamed! Just when you think you have him figured out, just when you think that you, at least, are safe from his upending challenges, he will shock you with something new – something world changing!

What he is doing here is taking his followers exponentially beyond their safe and comfortable little ritual of atonement. This is not to say that atonement is insignificant. Clearly, in the Scriptures it is very significant. Atonement must happen before anything else can happen. Sin is serious and life-defying, and may be dealt with only through this ultimate sacrifice of atonement. But if this is all you have, you have only begun to understand the blood, and you have only begun to understand the lamb of God.

You understand, paying the price for sin is only the opening foray. Everything follows! Everything follows! It will not suffice, he is telling them, simply to slit the throat of your little sacrifice, no matter how gruesome or graphic the symbolism. For God is not ultimately about Death. God is ultimately about Life!! Christians today, just like the first disciples, miss the point if they think Christianity is simply about the cross. It is about am empty cross. Yes, it begins with the cross, but where it goes from there is what the story is really all about! The cross was the starting gate, like the stanchions at the Downs. But the tomb burst open and the race was on! No one need be preoccupied now with the empty prison left behind. This is about Life! Let yourself be drawn into the energy of the race, compelled along the track by the fluid motion of the muscles contracting and expanding as they are fueled by the lifeblood coursing through the veins. The race is on with the resurrection of our Lord!

Yes, Jesus says in our text, I’m talking about the Spirit. It is the Spirit that gives life. But the image of blood which carries the nutrients of life to the entire body is the compelling image that you must understand here. That’s why I’m telling you, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.”

You remember that the apostle John, as he introduced his gospel, had pointed out in the first chapter that all of creation-life depended upon the Word, who became flesh in Jesus Christ, “for in him was life,” the life which now coursed through the veins of all creation. “In him was life!”

“What was it, in that primordial sea,” Susan Schiefelbein writes in The Incredible Machine, “that turned chemical to creature? Modern researchers have tried to unravel the mystery. They assembled the supposed ingredients of the early atmosphere – hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water vapor – in their laboratory flasks. They electrified this brew with flashes of man-made lightning. They watched the liquid in one flask turn pink, then muddy red, as amino acids took form. But there the transformation ended. These scientists and others since have produced the components of life but not life itself.”

“The Spirit gives life;” Jesus had said, “the flesh counts for nothing.” What are we? The dust of the earth, if we are not animated by God’s Spirit.

Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me [Jesus explains]. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.

Paul Brand believes that if Jesus had come to the people of the 21^st century instead of the first century, he would have used a slightly different analogy. Instead of suggesting that we drink his blood, the only way they would have known of ingesting it, he would have suggested a blood transfusion. He is probably right. Actually, Jesus came pretty close to that in another analogy which he shared with his disciples a bit later, when they were still confused about all this. Don’t you understand, he asked, It’s as if “I am the vine; [and] you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit [because the life is flowing through him]; apart from me you can do nothing.” You see, there is absolutely no life originating in the branch. The vine is the source of life for each of it’s branches. And the life of that vine needs to flow through the branches if we are to know life. “If anyone does not remain in me,” Jesus continued, “he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”

Jesus is desperate for them, and for us, to understand. A branch detached from it’s source is dead. What is the source of life in you? Detached from your source, you are dead. If it cannot be grafted back in, so that the lifeblood can flow through it again, it must wither and die. No other outcome is possible. However we might dream or wish or hope or work, no other outcome is possible. Yes, blood can be used for an atoning sacrifice, but unless the lifeblood of our Creator is flowing through us, we simply cannot live.

People complain today about the exclusive Christian claim to life. Well, they are right. We are a people who believe that Jesus Christ is the author of life. Surrendered to Him, engrafted into the vine, adopted into His family, the life of His Spirit flowing through us, we can live. Otherwise, detached from the source of all life, we must certainly die. Frankly, understood in this context, every other religion is a valiant but fruitless attempt to stir life in a dead branch. All my efforts to get this dead branch to blossom and bear fruit will be fruitless.

So we come to Jesus Christ today, and at His Table, this fundamental truth is made vividly clear. If it helps, come this morning like that young woman who inspired Paul Brand to enter medicine. We come weakened by the world’s assault. We come pale and breathless because of our distance from the Lord and giver of life. But here in the sacrament of Holy Communion we are offered, if you will, a transfusion. We confess the certainty of our death apart from Him, and ask that the life-giving blood of Jesus Christ might surge through us, giving us life once again. Yes, it is ultimately a spiritual accomplishment, as Jesus explained, but without the Spirit which animated creation, indeed the Spirit which animated Christ Jesus himself, and raised Him from the dead, without that lifeblood carrying it’s life to every cell of our being, we will not survive. It is as simple as that. The life is in the blood – the blood of Jesus Christ.

Let me leave you with you a moment of epiphany which happened to me several months ago and which was the basic inspiration for this message. It was a communion Sunday, and like the rest of you, I had been served a tiny glass containing the simple element of grape juice. But the metaphor is precise. Wine is called “the blood of grapes.” As I sat in my chair, holding the glass and reflecting on God’s gift of life through His own lifeblood, I looked down at the glass and I was stunned to see a rhythmic ripple spreading across the surface like a tiny beating heart! In a few moments I realized, of course, that it was the reflection of my own heart pulsing through my fingertips. But it was a powerful image of the life offered each of us through the fingertips of our Creator, passed along by our proximity, our abiding in Him. Indeed, the life is in the blood! He has already absorbed death for you. Now let Him give you life!

Closing prayer - We come now to your Table, Lord, and we do not understand this mystery. But we come because of the instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said that in coming we find your life invested in us. So we come. We come with open hearts. We confess our sins. We confess that the road we are taking leads only to death. When we pursue our own advantage, we pursue our own pleasure, we pursue our own comfort, we pursue our own goals, we are walking a pathway that leads only to death. May we come today and renew our commitment to surrender our lives to you, to seek what you have for us, to seek real life, life that brings delight and fulfillment now, and life that brings more than we can imagine for eternity. Father, invest us with that life at your Table, for we pray it in Jesus’ name, AMEN.