Lent 5 - Passion Sunday
Bishop Ray Sutton

“So much shedding of blood in the Bible seems a bit grim to me.” So spoke one of our seventy plus members working at reading through the Bible in 90 days. How very proud we all are of them. Finishing any good book is a challenge. The Bible has its own surprises. One of them has to do with all of the blood in the Old Testament. Our new students of Scripture have discovered the enormous amount of shedding of blood in sacrifices was required. One writer puts it, “The Bible from first to last never lets you escape from the fact of sacrifice.” (Collin Dunlop, Anglican Public Worship, p. 79).

On this Sunday of Passiontide we head toward Golgotha on Good Friday. Our Epistle and Gospel turn our attention to the same theme of sacrifice, particularly the shedding of blood. The Epistle to the Hebrews states, “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he . . . obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to the living God?” (9:12-14). Therefore the Old Testament teaches of the need for the shed blood of a sacrifice without blemish to atone for sin. Accordingly, the Gospel lesson today from John 8 describes Christ as the true sacrifice without sin. The first sentence in verse 46 has Christ speaking to His detractors, “Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” The point, Christ was the ultimate perfect sacrifice to shed His blood for the final, eternal atonement.

So what really is going on with the requirement for blood sacrifice, even Christ’s own spilled blood? The key to everything is in the Old Testament teaching, “Life is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). It is through the life of the blood, not just the slain victim, that forgiveness was secured. Here’s how it happened. When a person wanted forgiveness of sin, he brought his sacrifice to the priest. He put his hand on the animal under the priest’s hand. Then the creature was actually slain by the lay-worshipper who brought the sacrifice. The priest caught the blood in a vessel and took it to the altar of God. He sprinkled the blood on the altar. Next fire consumed the blood. The blood turned to smoke. This smoke is described as being caught up into God as a sweet smell. Thus, if you follow, the life of the sinner represented by the life contained in the blood of the sacrifice, was eventually taken to God by this sacrificial process. In the end, the one who had sin was cleansed and joined to God by the blood of the sacrifice.

When it comes to Christ’s sacrifice, it is the life in His blood that takes our lives to God. He did not remain dead. He was raised with His shed blood to go to His heavenly Father. From there He gives His blood to us through the sacrament of Holy Communion. His life comes to us as we partake of the Body and Blood by faith. We are united to God, cleansed and saved. What seems so grim produces in the end a sweet smell of the comfort of Christ’s nearness, His life’s blood purifying and taking us to God the Father.

This was all powerfully illustrated not long ago. A cold march wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news. That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean procedure to deliver the couple’s new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature.

Still, the doctor’s soft words dropped like bombs. . . “There’s only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one.” . .  But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana’s underdeveloped nervous system was essentially “raw,” the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn’t even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl. . . . At last, when Dana turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later, . . . Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.

Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life, she showed no signs of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story. One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother’s lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother Dustin’s baseball team was practicing.

As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, “Do you smell that?” Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, “Yes, it smells like rain.” Dana closed her eyes and again asked, “Do you smell that?” Once again, her mother replied, “Yes, I think we’re about to get wet. It smells like rain.” Still caught in the moment, little Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, “No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head upon His chest.” Tears blurred Diana’s eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter’s words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well. In a similar way, Christ’s shed blood produces the sweet smell of God’s presence. Our life was in the blood of His life on the Cross. His sacrificial life’s blood is communicated to us in the sacrament of Bread and Wine. We are forgiven through it. And so if we take the deep breath of faith in His blood, we might just smell something like the newly fallen rain of Christ’s living presence. He’s there in the Sacrament you know, to take us near to God’s chest. Amen.