A MEAL FOR THE WOUNDED

By Dr. Eric C. Stumpf, Senior Pastor

St. Paul’s Ev. Lutheran Church – Munster, IN

April 9, 2009 + Maundy Thursday + Exodus 24:3-11

             I am sure for some people the image of sacrificial offerings of oxen may seem rather messy.  The picture of Moses taking basins of blood and throwing it on an altar and sprinkling blood on the people may seem startling and troubling.  The words Moses said to the people, Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words, may cause some to criticize. 

             It is a peculiarity of our time that we would be critical of this, but night after night we watch TV and movie shows where blood is constantly shed in the name of entertainment.  We seem to accept that.  The use of blood is part of our language.  Consider the list of phrase I thought about – “blood, sweat, and tears,” or “written in blood,” or “blood is thicker than water,” or “stirring up the blood,” or “a person’s blood is boiling,” or “blood brother,” or Shakespeare’s immortal phrase, “who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.”  In these cited phrases we know that the word blood means the highest seriousness of commitment and dedication.  Its roots go back to what Christ did on the cross and before that the pattern God set for his people.

             In the days of Moses God instructed Israel to understand the importance of blood and its link to atonement – forgiveness, 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;  it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. (Lev 17:11)  God’s purpose was to take something deadly serious, blood, and the highest cost, life, and tie it to the high purpose of forgiveness; it is not a cheap or trivial matter.  It would be God’s own Son who would pay the highest price for our atonement, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus, God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. (Rom 3:24-35) 

The Story

            Do you think the Israelites had any idea what they were agreeing to in the covenant?  Moses read the law, the law which could be summed up, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and your neighbor as yourself.  They said, All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.  Did they understand what they were agreeing to?  They quickly found that it wasn’t easy to obey all the words.  A whole generation of Israelites, all but two, who left Egypt, died in the wilderness because they miserably failed to obey all the words.  They grumbled their way behind Moses, complained against the Lord for bringing them out of slavery, despised the food God provided, and at every turn rebelled against Moses and God.  They failed, but God was faithful.  The covenant was sealed with blood, the blood brought forgiveness in their lives, and every time they sinned and then repented, God forgave.  There is no remission of sins without the shedding of blood.

             How has our journey been during this Lent?  Forty days, not forty years, how faithful have we been to follow our Lord?  Do we love God with all our heart, mind, and soul?  Before you answer consider do you love to hear his Word, worship him above all things, seek his forgiveness weekly, hunger for his strengthening power in the Sacrament to the point you are faithfully here all the time?  No, we do not love God with anything close to our all, as our attendance shows, as our lack of sharing the love of Christ for others show, as our poor commitment to support the work of the Gospel shows.  Nor do we love our neighbors as ourselves.  Yet, our Lord still faithfully comes to us and offers the treasures won on the cross to save us, ours when we repent of our sins, for it is the only way we can be saved.

 Transfusion

            When you go to the hospital and there is a planned surgery you are often asked to sign a paper giving permission to receive a blood transfusion.  It is serious business.  Last time I signed one of those I was still a little apprehensive about HIV contamination.  But being assured, and feeling too ill to debate the issue, I signed.  It is a procedure taken for granted, but you might be surprised at how only recently has it become a safe and accepted practice.  The first blood transfusion attempted was in 1492, the patient died.  One hundred and fifty years later they tried transfusing the blood of animals to humans, the patients died.  Something I can hardly believe is that as late as the 1870’s and 1880’s it was thought that transfusing milk from cows and goats would work, the patients died.  It was only about 100 years ago that they figured out the blood groups, like A and B and O and AB.  But a still people died, not all, but more than were acceptable.  It took another 40 years to figure out the RH factor and methods to stop coagulation of blood.  It was at Pearl Harbor that blood transfusions were used on a large scale to save people.  Today we almost take it for granted and it is seen on almost every hospital show on TV.

             But from the beginning of time when man fell into sin, God had a plan to bring a blood transfusion to sinful mankind that would save lives.  The blood was the covenant God began to train his people to think about and then was finally realized in his own Son.  The seriousness of salvation was sealed in blood, it cost the Savior’s life, and he obediently and lovingly laid it down to clean us from all our sins.  It is the strength of his obedience and sinless life, his death and resurrection, his payment for all sins, that is imputed to us, charged to our account, and we are redeemed.  In the Lord’s Supper he gives us his body and blood in, with, and under, the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink, and thus receive his forgiveness.  His blood is transfused into our life, cleansing us from all our sins, and providing full and complete redemption.

             God is very serious about our salvation.  The word blood might evoke all sorts of images in our mind, but from the Lord we see one image that is for our salvation, Jesus’ shedding his blood to win us forgiveness, life, eternal salvation.  Amen.

SDG