It's the Blood!

Romans 3:19-28

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

Reformation Sunday happens at this time of year because it was on All Hallow’s Eve… Halloween… that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thesis to the door of the Wittenberg church and kicked off the Protestant Reformation. It also seems appropriate that we have this lesson from Romans every year too, because it talks about THE BLOOD! “A sacrifice of atonement by his BLOOD!” You almost can’t help but read it in a Béla Lugosi accent… THE BLOOD!

When we hear about… THE BLOOD… what comes first to mind, for a lot of people, is that sort of gruesome, blood-going-everywhere, Passion of the Christ, sort of image. I don’t think that’s an accident either. It’s an image that’s been pushed for centuries by the people who really love the theory that God was so mad at humanity and God just couldn’t get over it without some blood being spilled! It’s called the Substitutionary Theory of Atonement. It’s basically the idea that in order for you and me to achieve atonement, or “AT-ONE-MENT” with God... in order to be re-connected with God, God (the One who created the entire universe out of nothing, by the way ) was simply UNABLE to reconnect with us without payment IN BLOOD.  But lucky for us, Jesus substituted his blood for ours. It’s a super popular theory. Evangelicals and Fundamentalists of all sorts seem to love it. Mel Gibson’s movie, Passion of the Christ, pushed it with tankers full of cinematic Hollywood blood and the only problem with it, is that I think it’s horribly, gruesomely, terribly WRONG!

With Jesus God gets OUT of the retribution business, not more gruesomely into it! God isn’t unable to forgive without first receiving payment… God can do whatever God wants! God doesn’t need showers of blood to quench the fires of some sort of uncontrollable Divine rage. It’s people who have PUT that vengeful rage ONTO God because they themselves can’t imagine forgiving without payment first. They themselves want (a what John-Arthur?  Quid-pro-Quo.  Right!) retribution and punishment in order to quiet their OWN rage. They’ve plastered their own human nature onto God, because making God work like they do is MUCH easier for than accepting that God, in Christ Jesus, has just HANDED atonement to us as a FREE GIFT! Because, you see, if it’s true that God has given it to us as a GIFT… well, then we might be expected to forgive others as a gift as well… and honestly… most of us really want some BLOOD to be spilled!

I know that BLOOD spilling stuff has been pounded into us for centuries, but for just a minute, try to put the Dracula, Halloween, gruesome, horror-movie-style-bloodbath stuff away and try to SEE this passage, NOT through all you’ve heard before, but just as it is on the page. Because when we focus so intently on the blood flowing-out-in-a-horrible-death part, we miss something really important. So let’s hear it again… “The redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by Jesus’ blood, effective through faith.” What does this mean? (That’s a little Martin Luther humor there!)

Redemption is what happens when a brokenness is repaired or healed. But that can happen in many ways. If it’s a monetary debt, it can be healed by the debt being paid off OR simply forgiven. If it’s an injustice it might be healed with recognition and a commitment to walk a new way with something like reparations and then forgiveness and healing. If the brokenness is a bondage like sickness or addiction or incarceration or slavery, it would be healed by being set free. The take home on redemption is that blood-spilling as payment is NOT the only way that redemption can happen nor the only way brokenness can be repaired.  St. Paul uses LOTS of different images to try to get people to understand this in his letters depending on his audience. 

BUT, Pastor Erik, it does say, “God put Jesus forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his BLOOD” and indeed it DOES. BUT what it DOESN’T say is that it was put forth by the SPILLING of Jesus’ blood. Blood does a whole lot of other stuff… hopefully for years and years, decades and decades, on our insides before it does any fatal spilling! So, might it be, that God gave us his Son to give us the gift of atonement… A way to be AT-ONE with God… through MORE than just the SPILLING of Jesus’ blood? Could it be that God gave us, not just the Jesus of the Passion, but the rest of Jesus as well?  Including the part where Jesus’ LIVING blood allowed him to walk around and teach us about God’s infinite love? The part where Jesus’ LIVING blood brought healing to the sick, food to the hungry and life to the dead? The part where Jesus’ LIVING blood flowed through him as he walked on water, calmed the storms, stood up to oppressors, and insisted on lifting up the least and the lost and the last of the people of creation?

I think we have unfortunately been tricked over the centuries to not pay close attention to Jesus’ LIFE BLOOD and focus only on Jesus’ DEATH BLOOD. I think we not only MIGHT want to work on fixing that, but rather that we MUST! And we MUST because it is Jesus’ LIFE, and yes, his death as well as HIS RESURRECTION… ALL OF IT… that makes up the FULL gift of God, given to all of us and all of creation without any strings attached. 

Then, when we imperfectly step into each day of our lives, putting one of our imperfect feet after the other, clumsily into the footsteps of the Jesus who LIVED, the Jesus who DIED and the Jesus who ROSE AGAIN... THEN we are living our FAITH, and in that imperfect walking we will begin to really understand that we are already, AT ONE with God. Amen.