Anyone who has ever complained about water spots on their glasses following a sprinkling rite ought to count their blessings! Would you rather be sprinkled with blood as a reminder of our covenantwith God?
The ritual described in Exodus sounds gory. Splashing blood on the altar and then on the people, Moses said, “This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you.” The Israelites viewed blood as the source of life from the mother’s womb to the moment the heart stopped beating. As ordinary as blood is, its presence leaves an impression. I’ll never forget seeing Jacqueline Kennedy returning from Dallas in her pink suit stained with her late husband’s blood.
Moses used blood to seal the covenant between God and the Hebrew peoples in the Sinai. Being a word we don’t use often, we could confuse covenant with contract. A contract is a legal document while a covenant is a relationship, a lasting bond between two parties. One example of covenant is a sacramental marriage, a permanent relationship between a man and a woman made in the presence of God.
Throughout the Hebrew scripture, God repeatedly offered a covenant for one reason: to be passionately one with us. “You will be my people and I will be your God.” For the Hebrew people, this solemn bond was nothing trivial. They pledged fidelity to God’s commandments. With one voice, they answered, “We will do everything the Lord has told us.”
If a covenant is to survive, both parties must fulfill their obligations. While God never fails to keep the divine end of the deal, we fail to keep our end whenever we sin. In ancient Jerusalem, when the people desired to atone for their sins, the priests of the temple would slay sacrificial animals, then sprinkle blood and ashes on the penitents.
Jesus radically altered this practice, shedding not the blood of animals but his own blood on the cross for our sins. The Eucharistic prayers remind us of what happened. “When supper was ended, he took the chalice and, once more giving thanks, he gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.’”
Jesus is telling his disciples that he is totally giving them himself, complete, whole and very much alive. His message did not have a lasting impression on all believers however.
The letter to the Hebrews was written to an early Christian community in danger of turning away from Christ and his new covenant. They were on the verge of returning to their old faith and the covenant offered by Moses but the letter offers a logical concern. “If the blood of goats and bulls can sanctify those who are defiled so that their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the blood of Christ cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.”
Many Catholics have entertained the same notion of turning away from the Eucharist. Their choice to do so reminds me of a couple sitting on their porch during a sunset. They had both worked hard that day and in the cool breeze of the evening, the man dozed off. His wife watched what became a stunning beautiful sunset. She woke her husband to tell him what was happening. “Dear,” he mumbled, “it’s just another sunset” and he went back to sleep.
If we are tempted to think of the Eucharist as a very ordinary event, then we fail to appreciate the fullest love God has for us. What can we do when we think of the Eucharist as just another ordinary or even boring encounter with God?
The opening line of today’s psalm asked, “How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?” The question is quickly answered, “The cup of salvation I will take up, and I will call upon the name of the Lord.”
Each of us can experience God’s love as deeply as we choose to. Each of us can experience God’s love freely if we dare to honestly answer this one question. If Jesus died for me, how might I die for him?
Something will always die in us when we love deeply and selflessly. Doing what we know is right in the sight of God is not always easy or popular in the sight of others. By offering his body and blood very concretely, Jesus established the new covenant. When we share in the Lord’s Supper, we repay the goodness of the Lord by laying our own flesh and blood on the line. Nothing less.
I suspect many who receive communion see themselves as only being recipients of Jesus Christ. But there is more to the Eucharist than receiving the Lord. We affirm our acceptance of our covenantwith God. The original intent of this feast was to remind us that we are also the body of Christ, a congregation of believers, a gathering of the community of faith. As the body of Christ, we exist for the sake of others. We are expected to bring the real presence of Jesus to them by what we say and do. The grace of this sacrament empowers us to honor our covenant by doing so, namely “we will do everything that the Lord has told us.”
Jesus nourishes us with his body and blood so that we in turn can nourish the world with our body and blood, that is, with love and compassion we make others aware that Jesus Christ is truly present in the world around us.