The Sprinkled Blood

Try to remember what happened way back, long, long ago, almost at the the very beginning, when Cain first became jealous of his brother Abel.  Remember that Abel was a keeper of sheep, and his brother Cain was a tiller of the ground.  And each of them brought an offering to the Lord: Cain brought the first fruits of the ground, and Abel brought the firstlings of his flock.  And for reasons of his own, the Lord had regard, we are told, for Abel and his offering.  But for Cain and his offering the Lord had no regard.  All the same, God spoke to Cain in gentle tones, to guide him, and to reassure him that all he required was for Cain to “do well.”  And God warned Cain that “sin is lurking at the door.  Its desire is for you,” God told Cain, “but you must master it.”  But Cain did not master his jealousy, he gave in to his hatred, and he opened the door for sin to rush in.  And Cain killed his brother Abel.

Remember that God confronted Cain: “Where is your brother Abel?”

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” came the infamous reply.

“What have you done?” God exclaimed.  “Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!  And now you are cursed!”  And Cain, now marked and banished by God, went away, east of Eden, to settle in the land of Nod.

Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.

Ancient tradition holds that when Cain settled in the land of Nod he continued to live wickedly.  And in fact, it was Cain, according to this tradition, who abandoned the “way of simplicity wherein men lived” and “changed the world into cunning and craftiness.”  It was Cain, the tradition says, who established a system of weights and measures, (thereby creating the conditions of the marketplace).  It was Cain who marked out the boundaries of various lands (the world had been boundless until then).  It was Cain who first fortified a city with walls (there’d been no cities, and no need or desire for walls before then).  It was Cain, the ancient writer says, who brought an end to the age when people could live “innocently and generously.”*

Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.

Although the blood of Abel long ago seeped into the crevices of the earth, that blood never ceased to cry out to the Lord from the earth.  And as history unfolded, the blood of Abel was replenished in the ground by murder after murder, by warfare, and slaughter, and execution, and assassination; by terror and fury; by violence upon violence, jealousy heaped upon jealousy, hatred passed down from one generation to another, till you would think the ground itself must be saturated with blood.

How, indeed, does the earth soak up all the blood that has been spilled throughout the ages in violence, warfare, and murder?

And all that blood joins the blood of Abel, crying out to the Lord from the ground.  The blood of Abel and all his companions in bloody death cries out for justice, and for God to redeem their lives from the deaths that took them cruelly, too soon from this world.  Maybe you have never known someone whose blood has been shed in violence, warfare, or murder.  Count yourself lucky, for many of us do.

Listen, our brothers’ and sisters’ blood is crying out to the Lord from the ground.

You remember that this is our story.  It began in Paradise, but led quickly to bloodshed and murder.  And the echo of that story sounds like the blood of Abel, crying out to the Lord from the ground.  This is where we come from.

And the bloodshed and the murder, the jealousy, violence, and hatred never stopped.

Didn’t God hear the blood of Abel crying out from the ground?  Didn’t God care?

If you go back and read the story, you see that it does not go well.  The next big thing that happens is that God tells Noah to build an ark, and he saves Noah and all the animals, when he makes it rain for forty days and forty nights in order to destroy everyone else, whose wickedness God will not abide.  

And the next big thing that happens is that the people of the earth begin to build a tower at Babel, in order to “make a name” for themselves, using all the skills that Cain had pioneered: weights and measures, boundaries and walls.

And the next big thing that happens is that God decides to try a more intimate approach to his relationship with his people, so he establishes a covenant with Abraham.  And at last, with Abraham, God finds a creature who is worthy of the relationship.  So righteous is Abraham that he was willing to sacrifice his son, his only son, and to pour his blood into the ground to join the blood of Abel.  But this act of cruelty and bloodshed, God does not require.  Perhaps he can still hear the blood of Abel crying out to him from the ground, now so deep, but still audible to God’s ears.

By the time we get to Jesus, so much blood has been spilled, that who remembers Abel?  But if you listened (as God listens) you would hear the blood of our brother Abel, and all his companions in bloody death cry out to the Lord from the ground. 

What is Jesus supposed to do about this?

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, we are given a suggestion at the end of the eloquent passage that begins by reminding us where we have arrived, after all the bloody history of our past.  “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

It’s not fashionable among Episcopalians to dwell much on the blood of Jesus.  I suppose it’s too messy for us.  But it is striking to hear in the epistle this ecstatic account of what it means to get to Jesus: an account that begins with Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem, and reaches its climax with the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. 

There is an old hymn, that I certainly have never sung, called “The sprinkled blood is speaking.”  It was written some time in the second half of the 19th century, around the time this parish was getting going.  As a hymn text, it’s a little too much, which makes it perfect for a sermon.  The hymn extols the voice of the sprinkled blood of Jesus, speaking a better word than the word of Abel.  Here are a smattering of lines from the hymn:

“The sprinkled blood is speaking
Before the Father’s throne,” it begins.

“The sprinkled blood is telling
Jehovah’s love to man.”

“The sprinkled blood is speaking
Forgiveness full and free.”

“The sprinkled blood is pleading
Its virtues as my own.

“The sprinkled blood is owning
The weak one’s feeblest plea.”

“O precious blood that speaketh!”
Should I not value thee?”

As I said, it’s a little too much.

But listen, our brothers’ and sisters’ blood is crying out to the Lord from the ground.  Will there be no answer?  Has God nothing to say, at last, in reply to all this bloodshed?

Before long there will be more bloodshed.  It will happen in a school, or at wedding feast somewhere.  It will happen on a roadside where American troops have been sent again and again and again.  It will happen at a rally, or at a protest.  It will happen at a church, and it will happen in a synagogue, and it will happen at a mosque.  It will happen.  There will be more bloodshed, and that blood will cry out to the Lord for justice, and for redemption for lives taken cruelly and too soon from this world.

And we believe that Jesus shed his blood in answer to the cries of the blood of our brothers and sisters that cries out from the ground.  For we believe that his blood is the promise of peace, and the assurance of mercy.  His blood is the balm to soothe a troubled world, and the cure for our dis-ease.  His blood insists on justice, and carries the message of hope.  His blood is the way to freedom, and the light when all is darkness.  Christ’s blood has an answer for all the blood that cries out to the Lord, lost, defeated, and in distress.

“I hear you!” cries the blood of Jesus.  “I know who you are and I know where you are!  I am with you,” Jesus’ blood cries out to the blood of Abel and his companions.  “I am bleeding right here beside you.  But, see, I am dead no longer; see, I am alive!”

O precious blood that speaketh, 
should I not value thee? 

We live in a world that is soaked in blood that cries out to the Lord.

But so many have forgotten the meaning of the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel, because to remember the meaning of that bloodshed, you need a little faith…

… faith that you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God!

… faith that you can see the heavenly Jerusalem, and innumerable angels in festal gathering!

… faith that you are among the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven!

… faith that you are in the living presence of God the judge of all! 

…and of the spirits of the righteous made perfect!

… and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

The sprinkled blood of Jesus is speaking words of love and forgiveness, and hope, and redemption.

O wondrous power, that seeketh 
from sin to set me free!  
O precious blood that speaketh, 
should I not value thee?**

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
25 August 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

*the ancient tradition is from “The Antiquities of the Jews,” Book 1, by Flavius Josephus, translated by William Whiston.

** the hymn was written by Frederick Whitfield

Heaven

Fifty years ago this weekend, about half a million music lovers crowded into vans and cars and buses, and journeyed down muddy roads to congregate on Max Yasgur’s farm for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.  The whole event was famously and somewhat wondrously mismanaged. If you listen to the recorded concert you will hear announcements about how the hamburger stand burned down but they will be trying to get some food to people soon.  You’ll hear announcements like “If anyone found a cassette tape, please bring it to the stage.” Nothing about the logistics inspired confidence.  

But there were many utopian proclamations made about the gathering, in the moment and after. Many stories and myths have spun out about the gathering, but there remains the seemingly miraculous fact that the weekend was largely non-violent—maybe with the exception of an altercation between Abbie Hoffman and Pete Townshend.

At one point on Saturday morning of that weekend, the owner of the farm, Max Yasgur, spoke to the crowd:

I think you people have proven something to the world — not only to the Town of Bethel, or Sullivan County, or New York State; you’ve proven something to the world. This is the largest group of people ever assembled in one place. We have had no idea that there would be this size group, and because of that you’ve had quite a few inconveniences as far as water, food, and so forth. …But above that, the important thing that you’ve proven to the world is that …a half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music, and I – God Bless You for it!

Master of Ceremonies and ad-hoc security chief Wavy Gravy was predictably more lyrical, declaring “we must be in heaven, man!” and “there’s always a little bit of heaven in a disaster area.”  

He was looking on the bright side, I’m sure: at least two people died at the festival, one accidentally and one of an overdose. It’s sometimes said that a baby or two might have been born there, but I don’t think that has ever been confirmed.  

It was, in other words, a horrible, muddy mess with utopian aspirations, a lot of substance abuse, and a fragile but largely maintained commitment to peaceful squalor.  And yet the words from the stage made it sound like the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the coming of a new world order. It was what it was, but the participants shaped it into something more.  They shaped it into an age, an event, a happening, the hallmark of a generation. Maybe you were part of that generation and these folks didn’t speak for you, but to look back on that time is necessarily to contend with what those speakers had to say about themselves and their dreams of peace, community, and freedom.  In its own muddy way the event was decisive. The lofty rhetoric held up even after the ideals of that generation seemed severely compromised.  

Jesus had been hearing high-flying rhetoric since before he was born.  While he was still in the womb, his mother proclaimed stirringly that the poor would be lifted up and the rich would no longer be obstacles, that the mighty would be cast down from their thrones.  This truth was in his blood. Presented in the Temple, he saw Simeon looking down on him and heard him declare that now his eyes had seen salvation, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of the people of Israel.  His cousin John let everyone know that when Jesus began his earthly ministry he would baptize with the Spirit and with fire, and that all would see the salvation of God. Everywhere around Jesus were the words of revolutionary new life.  He was spoken into being by the proclamation of an angel and the power of the Holy Spirit.

In Luke’s gospel, it seems, Jesus is surrounded by the sound of a new epoch beginning. Before he can do much of anything, even in utero, it seems that his presence causes the people around him to perceive time bending, the universe reaching toward what could be: the lowly raised up, rough places made plain, justice and mercy rolling like a river.  Jesus knew that the sound he was hearing, the sound of an age arriving, was a very old song, one of God’s most beautiful melodies. In Luke’s fourth chapter, when Jesus teaches at a synagogue in Nazareth, he opens the scroll and lets the song burst forth: “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk 4:18-19).  All this, he tells us, if fulfilled in his presence.  

Jesus knew, I think, that the prophecies about him were not so much about what would happen in the future, but about the way the view of the future was changing in the present moment when people encountered him.  The way the universe was bending around the presence of God in him, the way that he was drawing others in to hear God’s ancient song of promise sung again as if for the first time. Sung this time as inevitable, sung as an irresistible force, as a truth carried in and communicated by his very flesh and blood.  

What we hear Jesus speak in this morning’s gospel is a word of frustration and distress, and a word of warning.  Hearing that song of rejoicing and promise will be decisive, and we can’t hear it soon enough. And if we are to know him, we must be ready to see our sense of what is inevitable change.  It may change so thoroughly that all our relationships are altered. It may—it will—change our sense of what must happen in this world, not only what is possible, but what must be given room to take place.  We will share his urgency if we are really encountering him. We too will be in distress until that fire of love purifies our world.

Let the world tell us that we are moving backward in the battle for justice or that we are doomed to fail in our stewardship of creation.  Let the world go ahead and fabricate unnecessary and fraudulent harm in the name of “the times in which we live.” But remember always that when we know God’s love, when we really see the face of Jesus, it will take an act of hypocrisy and denial for us to go on believing what the world says.  It will take active resistance to live as if our lives are unchanged. We’ll have to pretend painfully that we are not being called by God to be part of an all-encompassing embrace of love. Because we know we are. We know what God’s creation must be because we know God incarnate in creation, in this strange prophetic salvation we’ve found in Jesus.  If you’ve heard that song, the one that runs through Jesus and all around him and back as far as God’s word, God has broken through what the world says.  You are moving to the rhythm of God’s ancient song.

Clearly Jesus was no stranger to the awful tension of being in the world but not of the world.  Clearly Jesus understands what it is to find that the world around you, the times in which you live, are a kind of funhouse mirror of distorted aspirations.  We’ve all been subjected to empty utopian promises again and again, but scripture tells us that the word that courses through Jesus and swirls around him is a different kind of word.  It’s a word that changes everything when it changes us. It’s a word that means what it says: this must be heaven.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
18 August 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Counting the Stars

With more time on my hands, I could easily become obsessed with genealogy. But I’m at least sensible enough to avoid going down that rabbit hole. Purchasing a subscription to ancestry.com would be like opening Pandora’s box for me. I’d never get any sleep. I’d be up all night delving into the never-ending genealogical black hole, determined to see just how far back I could go in finding my ancestors. Found those ancestors from when the Magna Carta was signed? That’s nothing! Let’s go for the Norman Conquest!

The most I’ve done is send a packaged tube of saliva off to 23andMe. Modern genetic science is incredible, isn’t it? After a couple of weeks, a computer-generated map had the bulk of my DNA located right in the heart of France.

It’s an odd fascination we humans have with ancestry, isn’t it? We’re awfully preoccupied with where we came from. Whether it’s finding that famous king or queen in your family tree or seeing how your surname has morphed ever-so-gradually over time, there’s some mysterious human obsession with lineage and the history of one’s own family. Is that obsession itself genetic?

Maybe some of us are less interested in where we came from than in where we’re headed. Are my genes really that good, or will I be prone to cancer, dementia, and a long, lingering illness that ultimately ends my life? The possibilities for worry are endless. I don’t need to name them for you.

There’s an innate human desire to imagine our biological connection to future generations, as well as to our past. Call it pride, but maybe it’s really just a practical concern about survival and a hope that something of ourselves can live on after we leave this earth.

This is Abram’s great fear, isn’t it? When God’s word comes to Abram in a vision, God first acknowledges that Abram is scared. Can we blame Abram? He’s legitimately worried about the future of his family. He and his wife Sarai are really too old to produce children, and his property and bloodline are all at stake. Family ties were sacred in ancient Israel, and perhaps that’s exactly why Abram nervously laughed when God later announced that Sarai would conceive. Abram thought it was a preposterous idea at his ripe old age and yet, at the same time, he couldn’t bear the thought of not having an heir.

When God’s word comes to Abram and tells him that his reward shall be very great and urges him not to be afraid, Abram has every right to be scared of a future without any children. He’s already put a lot on the line for God, and God’s promise of innumerable heirs is still a pipedream at this point in the story.

Abram has uprooted his family from Haran and moved to a strange place. He’s experienced a sojourn in Egypt to avoid a famine. He’s gone into battle against invading nations who threatened his kin. It’s an epic story. Abram’s vision from God in chapter 15 is, in fact, the third time that God has said to him that he will make a great nation of his descendants. And guess what? Abram still has no heir. Things aren’t looking so hot.

I don’t know about you, but I’m on Abram’s side when he verbally takes God to task and challenges God to honor his promise. It’s hard not to sympathize with Abram after all he’s been through in following God’s call. And so, Abram lays it all out there. He reminds God of his promise and he specifically notes how that promise has not yet been fulfilled. And God’s response must be more than frustrating. It’s yet another rephrasing of the same assurance God has made all along: look at all those stars in the night sky, uncountable in number. Your descendants will be just as numerous.

Given the circumstances, is that really reassuring news to Abram? It’s not until several chapters later in the Book of Genesis that Abram’s wife does indeed conceive a child. But after God promises him descendants as copious as the stars in the night sky and without a biological child in sight, Abram suddenly ceases his questions and we are told that he believed the LORD. Can you believe it? He believed the LORD. For this, Abram is considered righteous.

Now, I think a modern reaction is to turn on Abram. Abram, you chickened out! Why didn’t you stand up for what you had been promised? Why didn’t you wait to believe until you saw the delicate head of your firstborn child? Don’t we want to cry out and defend him: Abram, make God deliver on his word!

Abram is kind of like the spiritual forefather of the modern person of faith, isn’t he? He’s still putting trust in a God who often seems not to deliver on promises, at least immediately or in any form that resembles the expectation. And the modern skeptic is waiting in the wings to point this out. Oh, you foolish believer! Look around, can’t you see your naïve and superstitious ways? Show me the proof. The proof is in the pudding.

It’s a point well taken. For those of us, like Abram, who are concerned about the security of our descendants and who consider ourselves descendants of Abram himself, trust in God’s promises might seem ludicrous indeed. Are we wrong-headed to be afraid that our own ancestors might drown in a natural disaster caused by receding coastlines? Is it idiocy to worry that our own relatives might be killed when shopping for groceries? Are we silly to fear that a reckless political leader with access to nuclear weapons might get angry enough to hit that red button? Sure, we can look at the night sky and try to number the stars and imagine an endless earthly future for our offspring and future relatives, but it’s hard to be assured of that promise. Sometimes, because of the havoc we have wreaked on our planet, it’s even hard to see the stars.

Why then, is Abram considered so righteous rather than foolish? Is it because he’s simple-minded and too trusting and therefore allows God to withhold the fulfillment of his promises while yet demanding obedience? Or does contemporary, post-Enlightenment skepticism have us in its grip?

I think that to see the root of Abram’s righteousness, we need to return to his conversation with God. Here we see that Abram argued and wrestled with God in conversation. Isn’t that worth something? It’s precisely because Abram cares enough about God’s promise and God’s perceived trustworthiness that he demands that God deliver on what he has said he would do. Abram’s pleading with God is evidence that Abram does indeed expect that God will fulfill his vow.[1] Abram may argue with God. Abram may even accuse God of failing to honor his word, but it seems pretty clear that Abram assumes that God could do nothing other than keep his word. Abram may not see the evidence, but he’s convinced it will be revealed.

There is quite a bit of merit in that attitude, if you ask me. Isn’t it much easier and arguably less honorable to write God off by assuming that he isn’t trustworthy enough to keep his promises? Isn’t it just a lazy way of excusing a lack of trust in God or a turn to atheism? It seems to me much, much more difficult to engage in heated words with God, laying it all out there and naming the reward we expect to see because God has pledged a rich future to us, a future of believers as numerous as the stars of the sky who can still be around thousands of years later to have their own stormy conversations with God.

If we rightly call ourselves ancestors of Abram, then our genealogy should tell us something about our spiritual selves, about who we can be, and about our future and our descendants’ futures. Our spiritual DNA from Abram gives us permission to bring our questions to God. It sanctions a heart to heart conversation with God in which we name to him exactly what we believe he has promised and what our wildest hopes are based on that promise. Sure, we don’t have to win God over. But acknowledging our painful human inability to fully know the ways of God is part of what faith entails. Only in such a relational dialogue with God might we begin to see God’s offer of hope manifested in our lives in ways to which we were previously blind.

Faith isn’t unflinching acceptance of a blissful future. Faith is born in our laments before a God whom we dare to deem trustworthy. Faith is strengthened when we cry our eyes out in sorrow and anger before God because we can’t bear to hear about one more act of violence. Faith is present when we demand from God an answer to the long, slow suffering that seems to have no merciful end. Faith is present when we lie awake at night wondering if our children will ever survive into adulthood because we live as if natural resources are as plentiful as the stars of the sky. Faith is present when we are courageous enough to claim Christ’s victory over death as our shield when all seems darkness around us.

Make no mistake about it: this is hard. It’s much easier to give up and to dismiss any prospect that God has a better future in store for us and for our ancestors. No wonder so many choose this route and label the rest of us as simpletons.

But imagine this: if we only heeded our spiritual genealogy as intensely as we obsessed with our biological genealogy, we could learn a lesson or two from Abram. So, go for it: call God out on his promises. Demand that the hope that comes from Jesus, which we boldly hold in our hearts, can indeed be realized. This is our fervent prayer. Be brave and expect that God is faithful and utterly trustworthy, because he is. Go on and claim the righteousness of your heritage. Lift up your heads and look toward heaven and count the stars. Dare to believe that as countless as those twinkling stars are, so our descendants shall be.

Preached by Father Kyle Babin
11 August 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[1] See commentary by Sara Koenig, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1730.