These Wednesdays in Lent will focus on blood. The sight of blood tends to make most people a bit squeamish. Knowing what we know about infectious diseases, we are afraid of blood. Many of our contemporaries find the frequent references to blood in the Scriptures and in our hymns, primitive and even repulsive. The sophisticated are prone to scorn the blood theology of the Old and New Testaments as a relic of the ancient world. But the fact of the matter is that there is no life, either physically or spiritually without blood. It is not accidental that God ties our life and our salvation to blood.

Dr. Paul Brand, a Christian physician, wrote a series of articles on blood in the magazine Christianity Today a few years ago. Listen to Dr. Brand as he describes the way blood cells work: No cell lies more than a hair's breadth from a blood capillary, lest poisonous by-products pile up....Through a basic chemical process of gas diffusion and transfer, individual red blood cells, traveling slowly inside narrow capillaries, simultaneously release their cargoes of fresh oxygen and absorb waste products (carbon dioxide, urea, and uric acid). The red cells deliver these potentially hazardous chemicals to organs that can dump them outside the body (Blood, the Miracle of Cleansing- Part I Christianity Today, February 18, 1983, 13). Blood cells literally cleanse our bodies from the inside out. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin (I John 1:7).

And that is what we need - cleansing - if we are to stand before God. Our sin pollutes us, making us unfit to live in God's presence. Try as we might, we can never clean ourselves up. It is only the blood of Christ that purifies us, enabling us to enter into God's holy presence.

The blood of Jesus Christ gives us a clean conscience. His blood takes on all the sin that poisons our lives, just as human blood cells carry away the toxins that would poison our bodies. The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ cleanses us from the sins which we have committed and it cleanses us from the sins which have been committed against us. We come to church on this Ash Wednesday night because we need cleansing. To hold onto sin is to be polluted by it and this pollution is lethal. This is true both for the sins you have committed and the sins which have been committed against you which you refuse to forgive. Without the forgiveness of sins, victims will simply victimize others. The blood of Jesus Christ is the only remedy for our sin. Nothing else can wipe away the stains from our conscience and give us peace.

God provides the cleansing. In our text from the Book of Hebrews, the sacred writer describes how the Old Testament foreshadowed and pointed to the cleansing that the blood of Jesus would bring. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the high priest would go into Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could go into this inner sanctum, and he but once a year. Unlawful entry carried the penalty of death, so a rope was tied around the ankle of the high priest in the event that if he would die while performing his priestly duties, his body could be retrieved without violating the holy space. Clothed in his sacred vestments, the high priest entered behind the curtain with blood which he offered both for his own sins and the sins of the people. This ritual was repeated year after year. Hebrews tells us that this was done for the purifying of the flesh.

The blood, the high priest, and tabernacle all pointed to Jesus Christ. But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. Jesus is the Highest Priest who offered His own body and blood on the cross for our salvation. The sacrifice which He made at Calvary was done once and for all. It need not be repeated year after year. In fact, it cannot be repeated.

We do not come together to offer God a sacrifice tonight. Instead we are gathered here in the Lord's name to receive from Him the fruits of that sacrifice which our High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, made for us when He gave Himself over to death. He gives us His body to eat and He gives us the cup of the New Testament in His blood to drink. In His body He carried our sins to the cross and now He gives His body to eat as His own unbreakable pledge that our sins are indeed forgiven. He gives us His blood to drink. The blood that cleanses us from all sin is given us to drink as God's own testament which bestows life and salvation. This is not the blood of goats and bulls, but the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God. This is the blood that cleanses our consciences from dead works to serve the living God.

And now To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord to life everlasting.