American
Christianity is far less bloody than it used to be.
Songs like “There’s
Power in the Blood,” “Nothing but the Blood,” and “Are You Washed in the
Blood?” are still sung in some places, but it is becoming a rarity in American
churches. And even more rare, new songs or praise choruses focused on blood of Jesus.
The Cross, yes; redemption, yes; but blood, very rarely. Modern preachers are eager
to speak of life, but hesitant to speak of the blood.
And this is not
only a Protestant phenomenon. Roman Catholics—centered as they are on the
Eucharist—often seem to go out of their way to speak of the “real presence” of
Jesus in the elements, without going so far as to mention that this presence is
believed to be that of his body and blood, as well as soul and
divinity. Even Catholic communion hymns, I’m told, prefer terms like “the Cup”
to “the Blood.”
In my opinion, this
is the result of the lingering sting of liberal Christianity’s hostility toward
what they perceive as a “slaughterhouse religion.” Some of it is the result of
an age that fears blood but doesn’t know why. Some of it is the result of our
ignorance, as we think that “blood” is just another metaphor, one we can easily
replace.
This modern,
bloodless Christianity leaves a huge void. The lack of emphasis on blood of
Jesus in Evangelical Protestant churches at least partially explains why followers
of “mainstream” Christianity, who otherwise would have nothing to do with Roman
Catholic imagery, found themselves openly weeping in movie theaters as they
viewed The Passion of the Christ? Did they, perhaps, need to
remember that “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we
are healed” (Is. 53:5)?
Embarrassment over
the bloodiness of Christianity often results in blood atonement being presented
in discipleship of believers in an attenuated, abstract sort of way. Less and
less often do ordinary believers hum to themselves songs about the blood of
Jesus. Less and less often do small children memorize Scripture passages about
the blood of Christ. And rarely do you hear this younger generation plead the
blood of Jesus over their lives and the lives of their family members like the
elders of old, and that in my assessment, is sad.
We assume that we
first convince unbelievers to follow Jesus—and then we explicate the meaning of
his blood, when we think they’re ready for this specialized theological
knowledge. But how do we address consciences indicted by the ancient Accuser of
Eden—some of them tortured by the knowledge that they have shed innocent blood
themselves—without pointing them to the only means of conquering him, “the
blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:10–11)? A young preacher in our church recently
pointed out, “the blood comes before the testimony.”
We assume that we
teach young Christians how to live, to abstain from sexual immorality and greed
and worldliness, before we move to something as seemingly arcane as blood
sacrifice. And yet, Scripture assumes that personal morality is built on the
knowledge that we were bought “with the precious blood of Christ, like that of
a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:19).
We assume that we
build “community” in our churches before we address something as raw and potentially
alienating as the shedding of blood. And yet, the community we share—bearing
with all of one another’s faults and transcending our petty ethnic and cultural
prejudices—comes only through the recognition that we share a common
condemnation as sinners, but, as we will still confess to our Christ in the
heavenly places, “you were slain, and with your blood you ransomed people for
God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). Shared
life is based on shared blood!
Even the vampires
in the popular fiction novels of today’s culture know that. That’s what makes a
bloodless Christianity ignorantly ironic. They believe they’re more in tune
with unbelievers around them, but unbelievers all around them are talking
constantly about blood, from pharmaceutical advertisements to horror films,
from vampire romance novels to AIDS and DNA testing.
The nineteenth-
and twentieth-century revivalist tradition gave the Church a valued psalter of
“blood medleys.” We should never be embarrassed by our emphasis—in song, in
public prayer, in evangelism, in discipleship, and in preaching—on the blood of
Jesus. As a song I sing in choir states, “Your blood is a rescue for the sin
stained life, your blood is healing for the hopeless and broken – Your blood is
enough, Jesus it’s enough” And it is enough. Without the blood, we are all dead
in our sins, “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and
without shedding of blood is no remission.” – Hebrews 9:22
There is power—wonder-working power—in the
blood. Our culture already sees that. They’re simply looking in the wrong
veins.
