Scripture: Luke 22:14-27
I’m guessing that some of you, not all of you but some significant portion of you, are a little bit turned off just by the title of the sermon for this morning. I might be one of those people, but I decided to go with the title anyway so as to not beat around the bush so far as what I want to talk about this morning. As you might guess, it has to do with communion.
As I’ve been reading around in the gospels recently, looking for teachings of Jesus, thinking about which teachings I might choose to preach on and when, I have come to realize that I’m not so sure exactly what I mean, or what anyone might mean, by a “teaching” of Jesus. When I think of the teachings of Jesus, I guess the first thing that comes to mind is the kind of thing you find in the Sermon on the Mount: “You’ve heard it said, ‘thou shalt not kill, but I say to you do not be angry…” “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, turn the other also.” “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” That kind of thing. And, for sure I’ll want to get around to some of those teachings before I’m done.
But Jesus said lots of things and not everything he said would be something I would think of as a teaching, and sometimes he said things, as I was suggesting last week, that you know have a teaching in them, but it’s not immediately obvious what the teaching is. I suppose a teaching has a pretty wide meaning. As I think about it, it would be anything that instructs us or gives us insight into how we’re supposed to think about things: how we think about God, how we think about ourselves, how we think about what’s important, how we think about what it means to do the right thing. That all covers a lot of ground, so lots of different things could be teachings in that sense.
Honestly though I have never thought of Jesus words at the Last Supper as a teaching, exactly. Maybe it’s because they seemingly relate more just to a ritual of the church, as opposed to how we think about our lives in the world. But then I thought that maybe what Jesus says here can be thought of as a teaching after all. It certainly has some important issues in it, and since this is a communion Sunday, it may be worth treating what Jesus says at the Last Supper as a teaching. The church did take its observance of communion from these words. But in thinking about them, it may lead us to broader issues as well. I particularly want to think out loud with you about the “teaching”: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” In Matthew Jesus is even more explicit in his words. “Then he took a cup and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin.’” And so a few words from me this morning on the words the church, not Sojourners but certain traditions in the larger church, the words that have often been said as the cup is offered to those who come to communion: The Blood of Christ.
The Jewish writer Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor, novelist, Nobel Prize winner, has written two books that consist of chapters on various Biblical characters or stories. I have always remembered something he said in a chapter on Abraham where he was talking about the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac. It’s a difficult story and countless people have struggled with it, wondering why God would ask anyone to do such a thing, and why Abraham would say yes, which in the story he seems to have done, coming very close to killing his son in obedience to the command of God. But then at the last minute, at the last second, God steps in. An angel comes and tells Abraham that he is not supposed to kill his son after all, that he is to sacrifice a lamb instead, which is provided and waiting nearby.
Some people see this story as simply a reflection of the ancient shift from human to animal sacrifice. Wiesel’s comment on this is that as troubling as the story may be in many respects, it ends with an affirmation of life that is central to the story. Abraham does not kill. Isaac lives. Wiesel then goes on to point out that in the Christian story the death at the end is not averted. God does not step in to prevent the sacrifice. The crucifixion takes place and becomes the center of the Christian story. For Wiesel Christianity seems to be based on an event that celebrates death, whereas in his view Judaism is based on celebrating life.
When I first read this, I was offended. I was a relatively new Christian at the time. I had not embraced Christianity, or let it embrace me, easily. Having finally come to the point where I identified as a Christian, I did not appreciate being told that this faith that I had wrestled with and finally affirmed was based on a story that held up a death as its source of meaning and that therefore was essentially a life-denying faith. I didn’t think that was fair. I didn’t feel that the faith I had just taken as my own was life-denying. If I had, I wouldn’t have done it. I thought Wiesel was really off base. But you see I have remembered what he said for some thirty plus years.
I still don’t agree with what Wiesel said, but I have come to accept it as a challenge for Christians to be clear about what they do believe. For many people, for many sincere people, the wine or the grape juice of the communion ceremony signifies the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf. His death atones for the sins of humanity, of each individual human being, puts us back into right relationship with God. The church refers to Jesus as the “lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”, a phrase that can be understood to refer all the way back to the story of Abraham and Isaac, where the lamb took Isaac’s place. In just such a way Jesus took our place, being sacrificed so that human beings would not have to bear the punishment we would otherwise deserve because of our sin. Jesus’ sacrifice pays our debt. I know that many sincere Christians believe that.
Not me. Jesus did not have to die a horrible death at a young age in order for God to love us. It is not as though God was poised like Abraham to carry out a death sentence for sinful human beings and Jesus, the Lamb of God, was provided to step in and stay the hand of God through his sacrifice. It is not as though God stands ready now at any moment to condemn human beings to a horrible fate and the only way we can avoid that is to believe in the sacrifice of Jesus and this will open for us the gates of eternity. The love of God does not require sacrifice for it to become real, not human sacrifice, not animal sacrifice, not the sacrifice of the messiah. The love of God does not require anyone to die, not Isaac, not a lamb, not the Lamb of God, Jesus. If the love of God is free, if there is nothing we need to do or can do to earn the love of God, if the grace of God is free, if the forgiveness of God is free, then even Jesus does not need to earn it for us. His sacrifice is not necessary for God to love us, and therefore our believing in that sacrifice is not necessary for God to love us, all of us. God does not have a need of any sort for anyone’s blood to be shed.
I believe Christians need to say this often, and to say it as clearly as we can, that God does not have a need of any kind for any reason for anyone’s blood to be shed, not even the blood of Jesus. I can’t speak for everyone at Sojourners. I can’t speak for anyone at Sojourners really, but I know that at least some of you share my feelings about the theology of Christ needing to die, to shed his blood, as a sacrifice to atone for our sins. Others would certainly express it differently than I have, but I know I am not the only one who cannot accept a God who requires violence. God does not command violence anytime, anywhere, against anybody, not the violence that would have had Abraham kill his son, not the violence that killed the one known as the Son of God, and certainly not the violence that human beings have been known to do to each other in the name of God. The meaning of our faith is not rooted in an act of violent sacrifice that God ordained and orchestrated.
All of this is why I said at the beginning that I suspected some of you were put off by just the title of the sermon. “The blood of Christ” is not a phrase that conjures up helpful and inspiring associations for many of us at Sojourners. Instead, it conjures up images and ideas and theologies that are troubling at least, and that suggest a different idea of what the Christian faith is all about from the one we hold. We may not be able to put this into words easily. Every time I try to put it into words, it comes out a little differently. But the “blood of Christ” is not a phrase which expresses for me the meaning of communion or the meaning of my faith. I even have trouble choosing hymns that have very much of that imagery in them. Nevertheless…
Jesus did say, as he lifted up the cup of the Passover meal he was sharing with the disciples on the night which turned out to be the night of his arrest, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood” or “this is my blood of the covenant”. Is there a positive teaching in this for us? I don’t know if Jesus saw this as a teaching moment, or whether he meant his words to be taken as a teaching. It probably doesn’t matter. It feels a little bit like quibbling with words. But there is, I believe, something for us learners, us disciples, us followers of Jesus, us listeners and seekers—something for us in Jesus’ words.
Blood does not have to signify violence, though it often does because of the idea of bloodshed and because the church has often emphasized the sacrificial notion of Jesus’ death. But blood is also a symbol of life, a basic, fundamental, primitive symbol, not of death and of violence, but of life. When Jesus said “this is my blood”, could it not be that he was not thinking so much of blood sacrifice but that he was using blood as in lifeblood. In the Passover, the cup is lifted up in just that way, as a sign of life, a joyous gift of God. “Blessed be the Holy One who gives us the fruit of the vine.” Doesn’t it make sense to think of Jesus saying, “think of this as my lifeblood that I have given on behalf of humanity?” “This is my life which has been poured out in love,” not “this is my blood which is shed as a sacrifice”.
“Do this in remembrance of me,” he said, but I hear him saying that I am to remember not just his death but his life, his life lived fully in the face of death, his life given, as I was saying last week and will have occasion to say again in the weeks ahead, his life given to the hope of a new creation. “This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of sin.” He is not, I believe, concerned about our various misdeeds, yours and mine, certainly not only that, but about our collective falling short of the reign of God and our need not to wallow in guilt or get stuck in cynicism but to be able to envision that reign of God, to let the lifeblood of Jesus flow to our very souls. And when we come to the Lord’s Table, we do so not only remembering Jesus but dreaming of and praying for that new creation, that welcome table where all God’s children have a place and we remember that we are sisters and brothers to one another. “This is my blood,” Jesus said. “This is my life that I have given for the life of the world.” May our life be enlarged by his. Amen.
Jim Bundy
November 2, 2008