Washed in the Blood: A Sermon for Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

It never fails that when the time comes for me to wear this red chasuble, somebody will tell me how pretty it looks. Whether or not we think that it looks pretty, we must remember why we adorn our clergy, altar, and pulpit in red during Holy Week. The red symbolizes blood - the salvific blood of Jesus that he shared with his disciples at the Last Supper and the salvific blood that he shed the next day on the cross. 

In our rather sanitized, dignified Episcopal world, we don’t talk a lot about blood. We are certainly more apt to focus on the blood of the Eucharist - the wine that we drink -  than we are the blood of the Cross, which the wine points to. And you will not find “Washed in the Blood of the Lamb” in our hymnal. 

I’ll never forget the time when I had just arrived to serve as the Associate Rector at St. Mark’s in Jacksonville, a parishioner asked me if she could make an appointment to come pray with me. When she arrived, she said that rather than having me pray for her, God had put it on her heart for her to pray for me. I gladly accepted the opportunity to be prayed for, but what came next startled me. She prayed something along the lines of this: 

Dear Jesus - Cover your servant Richard in your blood. Soak him in your blood. Wash him in your blood. Feed him with your blood. Pour out your blood all over him so that he may faithfully live into his call as a priest in this parish. May his ministry be a blood-soaked ministry. And may his flock be covered in your blood as well. Amen.

I must say that I was terribly uncomfortable during this prayer. I had never heard such a prayer as this. Had I not known the very loving, faithful, pillar of that church who prayed this prayer over me, I definitely would have been praying with one eye open, looking for the exit.

When I reflect back on the visceral discomfort I felt during that prayer, I can think of at least two reasons why I felt that way. First - that is not typically how we pray in the Anglican tradition. It felt foreign to me - like it was almost a totally different language. Perhaps it’s similar to why you wouldn’t hire a Mariachi band for an Irish wedding reception. But sometimes an unfamiliar genre is what we need to shake us loose from our comfortable habits, routines, and world views.

The second reason I think I felt uncomfortable was because, as I said before, I have almost always lived in a rather privileged, safe, sanitized, non-violent bubble. I’m not accustomed to witnessing violence. I see it on the news. I see it in movies. But not in my home, my neighborhood, or even my community. Not only do I not see a lot of blood in my everyday life, it actually makes me queasy.

Ironically, I’ll never forget our son Julian’s first introduction to violence was in his children’s Bible. The story of David and Goliath captivated him, and it still does to this day. His next favorite story? The Exodus narrative where Moses defeats Pharaoh. It was the Bible that introduced our children to violence. So while we may do our best to sanitize the Bible for our children and even for ourselves - the weekly Lectionary does it all the time - the fact remains that if we read the Bible, we will encounter violence and death. We will encounter blood.

This harrowing truth comes into full focus every year during Holy Week - the week when we adorn our church and clergy in red to remind us of the blood that was shed for us. So if we plug our ears or stare out the windows during the gospel lesson, we still have to see the blood of Holy Week.

The reason we are given the entire Passion narrative prior to Good Friday is because of the reality that this day and age, most people skip Good Friday services. So the Church decided that folks who only attend worship on Sundays shouldn’t be able to avoid the horror of the cross. So we are assigned the crucifixion narrative on the Sunday before Easter. We are being invited to grapple with the mysterious truth that our salvation was won by the violent, bloody death of Jesus Christ. 

In the Passion narrative, we are reminded that even the Messiah experienced the horror of a violent death.  And our gospel readings today - both the Palm and Passion narratives - address the issue of violence in a way that invites us to rethink how we might choose to deal with conflict.  

When the bystanders waved their palm branches and laid their cloaks on the dusty road for Jesus as he was entering into Jerusalem, they shouted “Hosanna! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” The Jews who were shouting this had had enough of being oppressed by their Roman occupiers. Caesar had had his way long enough. Caesar used military, political, and economic power to keep things orderly in the Roman Empire. As long as the Jews and other occupied people paid their taxes and remained obedient to the emperor, everything would be ok.  

But the Jews were growing tired of paying their taxes to Caesar, and they were growing tired of being ruled by the pagans from afar. So they began to hope and pray for deliverance. They began to hope and pray for a new King David to pick up his slingshot and slay the Goliath they knew as the Roman Empire.  

So when word got out that this Jesus of Nazareth was performing miracles, healing the sick, raising the dead, and announcing that the Kingdom of Heaven was near, they were sure that this was the moment that they had been praying for. Now was the time for a revolution, and Jesus was their leader. He was coming to Jerusalem not only to celebrate the Passover, but also to take Jerusalem back from the bad guys. 

So imagine not just the letdown, but also the sheer horror when what started as Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem ended with Jesus hanging dead on the cross five days later. The bad guys had won again. Apparently Jesus wasn’t the savior that they had hoped for. 

Of course, we now have the hindsight to know that the story doesn’t end on the cross, but let’s not jump ahead to Easter just yet. Let’s live for a moment in this awful tension between what we think will solve our problems and what God believes to be true. Because if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re just like the Jews who were shouting “Hosanna” when Jesus came to town. The Jews believed that the only way to defeat Caesar was to beat him at his own game – to finally give the bully a dose of his own medicine and punch him right in the mouth, just like David did to Goliath. 

If you think about it, it’s easy to read our own nation’s story through the lens of the David and Goliath narrative. We have read this story every Palm Sunday since the founding of this great nation of ours – this great nation that had had enough of paying taxes to the Caesar we knew as the King of England. Yet the ironic thing is that one attribute of oppressed people is oftentimes if they ever land in a position of power, they simply imitate the very people who oppressed them. In other words, they end up using the same means for wielding power that were used on them. This is what the Jews were hoping to do to the Romans. And is this not what we are doing today? 

As Christians, what are we to make of the biblical witness of Jesus Christ, who subverted the “eye for an eye” means of achieving justice and peace. Jesus shows us a different way, but if you’re like me, it’s a hard pill to swallow. Because if you’re like me, you don’t feel safe unless you know that the good guys have more power and might than the bad guys. And if you’re like me, you think that we just happen to be the good guys. If you’re like me, you feel safer knowing that our military is the most powerful, sophisticated, and well-funded military in the world. If you’re like me, you can’t for the life of you figure out why Jesus would allow himself to be nailed to a cross and suffer the most horrific death imaginable rather than fight back, even though he had the power and might to do so. 

And if you’re like me, you struggle at times to feel joyful when it seems like violence is having its way in the world around us. Once again we have had a senseless, unexplainable, tragic mass shooting in our country. This time in a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. Once again, we read about blood being shed not on the battlefield, but in a neighborhood. And once again, once the carnage is cleaned up, the divisive rhetoric begins to fly - whose fault was it? What legislation should we pass to prevent folks from being able to buy assault weapons so things like this won’t happen in the future? What legislation should we pass to allow folks to arm themselves so they can feel safer when they go to the store to pick up a gallon of milk?

While I am all for sensible legislation that will make our neighborhoods and communities safer, I also recognize that violence is as old a humankind. Even Julian’s children’s story Bible doesn’t avoid that difficult truth. There is not an elected official, political party, political action committee, or weapon on this planet that can save us from the real enemy, which is that human beings are infected with sin. We have been infected with and affected by sin since the beginning of time. Our disobedience - our lust for power - got us in trouble in the Garden of Eden and it’s still got a hold of us today. And the only thing that can save us from sin, death, and evil is not the power of this world, but the saving grace, power, and dare I say, blood, of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  

As we begin our Holy Week journey today, and we see the beautiful red vestments and altar appointments, let us ponder the harrowing, ironic, mysterious beauty of Christ’s blood. Let us ponder Christ’s saving blood that was shed for you and for me and for the entire world as we listen to the words of a hymn that may or may not be familiar to you:

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing pow’r?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you walking daily by the Savior’s side?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Do you rest each moment in the Crucified?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb;
There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean,
Oh, be washed in the blood of the Lamb!

Refrain:
Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?