Related articles and links |  1 of 6

Blood is life—spiritually and physically. Few persons were more appreciative of this truth than surgeon and devout Christian Paul Brand. This article, originally appearing in the February 18, 1983, issue of Christianity Today, is the first in a three-part series on the life-giving power of blood. In it, Brand presents striking insights, polished by writer Philip Yancey, on the themes of blood and the Lord's Supper.

I turn up the collar of my wool topcoat and bow my head against the penetrating, moisture-laden wind. Snowflakes are gradually transforming the tired modern city of London into a Dickensian Christmas card.

On a deserted street I stop under an ancient street lamp and look up. Snow arcs around the lamp like an endless shower of electrical sparks, then floats down to cover pothole, gutter, car, and sidewalk alike with a uniform coat of softly glowing white.

From somewhere I hear music, muffled brass and what seems like human voices. On a night like this? I walk toward the sound and the music grows louder until I round a corner and see its source: a Salvation Army band. A man and a woman are playing a trombone and trumpet respectively, and I grimace as I imagine the effect of metal pressed against lips in the numbing wind. Three others, evidently new recruits, are lustily singing a hymn based on a poem by William Cowper.

Only two other people are listening: a drunken gentleman who is propping himself against the stone porch railing of a Georgian-style townhouse, and a businessman on the corner who keeps glancing at a pocket watch. The words are familiar to me:

There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.

An unavoidable smile crosses my face as I hear those words. I have just come from hospital rounds, where I saw blood being drawn from some veins, transfused into others, and diligently scrubbed off surgical smocks and nurses' uniforms. With my church background, I know the origin and meaning of that Christian hymn, but these other two bystanders, listening half-heartedly—what images fill their minds as they hear those words?

Would not such a phrase as "washed in the blood of the Lamb" seem to the modern Englishman as bizarre as a report of animal sacrifice being practiced in Indonesia?

We moderns have an initial resistance to the intrusion of blood into our religion. In this respect, we differ from all previous cultures. Virtually all "primitive" religions, including those of Rome and Greece, believed blood had sacramental power, and a bloodless religion would have seemed feckless to most ancients. To them, blood was an everyday substance. They killed their calves and chickens with knives before feasting, whereas we moderns select ours in shrink-wrapped packages, drained of blood and all reminder of slaughter.

Besides this unfamiliarity, an even greater barrier blocks off the meaning of the blood symbol from modern hearer;. Consider the term "washed in the blood": nothing in modern culture corresponds to the idea of blood as a cleansing agent. We use water, with soap or detergent, to clean. Blood is a soiling or staining agent, something we try to scrub off, not scrub with. What possible meaning could the hymn writer, and Bible writers before him, have intended?

The symbol of blood with its specific quality of cleansing appears throughout the Bible, from the earliest books to the latest. In Leviticus 14, for example, a priest sprinkles cleansing blood on the skin of a person with an infectious skin disease and on the mildewed walls of a plaster house. New Testament authors often refer to Jesus' blood "cleansing" us (e.g., I John 1:7), and Revelation describes a multitude who "have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev. 7:14).

next page... |  1 of 6

share this page

July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47