Blood, Jesus, and All That Yuck

1 Peter 1: 18-19

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.

The early church was accused of cannibalism because of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  Eating the body of Christ, drinking his blood, what was a good pagan to think?  Because let’s face it, we are rather preoccupied with the blood of Christ as a religion. 

Consider the Holy Grail, according to legend, it was the cup used at the Last Supper when Jesus said the wine was his blood, then later used to really catch the blood as it flowed from the wound in his side.  Kind of gross if you think about it.

Or how about the question of stigmata, the wounds to the hands and feet and side of the Lord Jesus when he was on the cross.  There are people who will bleed from these places spontaneously as some kind of tribute to Jesus.  Patricia Arquette was in a movie of that name, dealing with the same kind of stuff.

We get some of the lex talionis back in here again, life for life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood. 

The precious aspect of Jesus’ blood is that it is the blood of the innocent, the blood of the perfect, the blood of God incarnate.  This is the ransom that Peter speaks of, something more valuable than perishable gold and silver.  It has to do with sacrifice, harking back to the futile ways of their ancestors, something we consider next.