Pastor's Message

April 2006

As we enter into April we will once again remember the story of Christ’s passion. Holy Week forces our attention to the price Christ paid for our salvation. It is a difficult and somewhat gruesome story that we can not avoid in our rush to celebrate Easter, with its ultimate promise of victory over death for Christ and for us. Our world knows much of blood. We analyze its properties in test tubes and under microscopes. We know that a blood donation gives life to another human being and so we respond to the Red Cross Appeal. “Blood is life” (Deut. 12:23). It is as simple as that: if you shed blood, you strike at life itself. But we also know that blood is feared. One of the first lessons every healthcare professional learns is this: Do not ever touch blood without protective gloves.

Gift of life or the end of life? Much ambiguity surrounds our sense of blood. We know this fact as well: like a distorting and heated fever, a thirst for blood – spilled blood – can overtake the human spirit. Blood-thirst we call it. Angry Cain kills his brother; a fearful Herod kills the boy children. The ancients knew the color of blood. While blood runs through the veins, unseen to the human eye, it remains a deep blue. But when the skin is cut and bleeds, oxygen transforms blood into a deep red, tinged with hints of purple.

The ancient Israelites recognized a similar process in the vineyard. When the skin of a ripe, deep-red grape is cut, its juices flow dark and freely over the hand. To drink the blood of the grape is to taste the mercy of God. For us the Maundy Thursday liturgy brings these images together. In the sometimes strange symmetry of scripture, is this message the antidote to our bloodthirsty ways: to cure the fever for blood, one need only drink the blood of the grape? Is the great paradox over which the human race continues to stumble simply that the merciful presence of God is revealed in the scarlet bruises of Christ that can, at last, heal our thirst for blood.

Let us worship fully in the knowledge that the story of Holy Week is intentionally brutal, bloody and dark. Our faith in the risen Christ is paid for in this color. Our communion with Christ is celebrated in the most visceral way on Maundy Thursday, but in truth it is renewed each time we receive Holy Communion. His shed blood poured out for us is the only antidote to the bloody mess we would make of this world without Him.

Pastor Cluley