Blood: Life Liquified
By Rev. William Dohle
I am a meat-eater. I admit this. My diet consists each meal(except breakfast...usually) of some form of meat coupled with a couple veggies, a starch, and some bread to fill us up. That's just what we eat. If you came to dinner unannounced at my home you would find these things offered to you too.
I am no vegitarian. (Nothing against them, I just love to eat meat instead). I eat beef, pork, chicken, turkey. I've been known to eat antelope, elk, bison, and deer. And I'll try just about any meat you set in front of me.
So, when I say that the most annoying thing to do when you're cooking hamburgers is to make sure the blood is all cooked away...you understand where I'm coming from. Blood is nasty to cook away. It fills the plate where my ground beef sits. It's buried within the meat I am cooking. It's the way I determine if something is cooked or not. "Is it bloody?" Yes...and it's not cooked properly. No...it's ready to eat!
Of course this very act of eating blood is in violation of letter of the Law described in the 17th chapter of Leviticus. Here, God explicitly says:
"Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood--I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people. 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." (Leviticus 17:10-11)Blood is life. It is life liquified. The only time that life is allowed to end, according to Leviticus, is when it makes atonement for one's life. The life of an animal takes the place of the life of the person. "Life for life." Any other time, that blood is sacred. It is not to be eaten but drained away and covered with earth.
"Any Israelite of any alien living among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth." (Leviticus 17:13)Today, Jews follow this commandment by eating Kosher which basically means that a Rabbi has certified whether the animal has been humanely killed and whether the blood as been properly disposed of. Without such certification, one never knows if eating this piece of meat will violate the commandments found in Leviticus 17.
For this reason, many Jews decide to eat a vegetarian diet. Staying away from eating the blood of other animals makes keeping this commandment easier.
As a Christian, my tradition has interpreted this text figuratively and metaphorically and not literally. In the bread and wine of communion, I believe we receive the body and blood of Jesus in the bread and wine. Why the blood? Because, as Leviticus says, the blood makes atonement for one's life. In the blood of Jesus, given in communion, we take that life into ourselves. By eating and drinking in that meal, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. A death that frees us from sin and death. A death that atones.
We may still eat the blood of animals, thus violating the letter of the law here in Leviticus, but, in seeing the blood as life-liquified and taking that blood into ourselves in communion, we are participating in the atonement of sins that dates, even back to Leviticus. Through Communion, we are reinterpreting this Law to speak to us today, giving us access to Christ through his body and blood.
So, come to the table! Meat-eaters and vegetarians alike! Come and eat and drink the bread and wine which is the body and blood of Christ Jesus given to atone for you!
Give me a deeper appreciation of life, Lord, in all its forms. Thank you for the life you give me in the blood of Christ my Lord. Amen.
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