There will be blood

 

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means God with us.  --Matthew 1: 22, 23

 I was not raised on a farm.  My parents both spent more time on a farm as they were growing up than I ever did.  I have been to a rodeo a few times.  I remember touring the barns in the stockyard, and my Dad warning me to watch where I stepped.  He didn't want me to have to clean the cow manure off my sneakers.  I also remember moving into a new house with my parents.  It was in a more rural area than some of the suburbs we had lived in before, and across the road was a dairy.  When the wind was just right, the smell was awful.

In our modern world, if we need milk or cream or cheese, we merely go to our local supermarket in the dairy aisle.  We do not give much thought to the dairy that the milk products all come from.  We do not think about the cows, or the people who milk them, so that we can pour some 2% over our breakfast cereal, or some half-and-half in our morning coffee.  Sure, we all have that part of our education where we once learned where milk comes from, but we don't talk about it.  We focus on the end product rather than the somewhat smelly process.

We do that when we think about Jesus, as well.  We don't read the gospel account of His life and think, "I wonder how often Jesus bathed, or what He did to control body odor?"  We don't watch the most recent episode of The Chosen and stop to consider where and how Jesus and the disciples went to the bathroom.  We follow the Christmas narrative, and it's almost like Jesus magically appeared in Mary's arms when she laid Him in a manger.

I think it is important for us to stop and think about these things once in awhile.  We know that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  We gloss over those words and forget that He was one of us.  He spent nine months in utero.  We read in Luke 2:6, "And it came to pass, while they were there, the days were fulfilled that she should be delivered."  We don't stop to think that her water broke, the labor pains were intense, and her firstborn Son had to be cleaned before "she wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn."  Yes, there was no room in the inn, and that's why He was laid in a manger, but before that, before He was wrapped in swaddling cloths, He was naked, covered in water and blood.  Was this a foreshadowing of the way He was to die, hanging naked on a cross, covered in blood?  When the soldier thrust a spear into His side and found water and blood separately coming from the wound, did His mother see it and recall His birth?

Too often we forget what it means to say, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  We know that God is spiritual in nature, but that Jesus "emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (Philippians 2:7).  The One who made us in His image allowed Himself to put on mortal flesh.  "And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8).  We are glad that He did, for without this sacrifice we would all be lost.  I don't think we fully realize what a sacrifice it was for Him to put on flesh and blood in the first place.

Leviticus 17:11 says, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life."  In context, God was telling His people about animal sacrifices.  He gave particular instructions on the handling of the blood of the sacrifice: they were not to drink it, as did their pagan neighbors.  The blood was not to be poured out in sacrifice to false gods.  "Rather," says Chad Bird in his book Your God is Too Glorious, "blood was God's sole property to be used by His people only in ways He Himself had ordained."

Notice four truths in verse 11: (1) Life was not some invisible force but a tangible element: "The life of the flesh is in the blood."  (2) This liquid life was God's gift: "I have given it to you."  (3) He located this life at a specific place: "on the altar."  And (4) He gave it for a specific reason: "to make atonement for your souls."  All of this is God' gift.  He give the life, He gives the altar, He gives the atonement.  Sinners don't slice open their own veins to pay for their wrongdoing.  Self-atonement is as impossible as self-birth or self-resurrection.  A substitute must pay the price.  The blood of another must be shed.  And when it touches God's altar, the sacrificial blood cover's God's people as a free gift to them.  --Chad Bird Your God is Too Glorious 162

This is what we see at Christmas.  "The Lord's ultimate stamp of approval on creation [is] His own corporality in Bethlehem.  The Creator become creature.  Is it such a great leap from God dwelling in the holy of holies to the God tabernacling in Mary's womb?  From a tented Emmanuel to an embodied Emmanuel?  The whole Old Testament prepares us for the Word becoming flesh." (Bird, 163)

Because the Son of God irrevocably united Himself not just with His creation but with our very bodies, His acquaintance with our sufferings is not merely academic.  He doesn't know our pains like one knows a chemistry formula.  He knows what it's like to be one of us like Adam knew his wife.  Intimately.  Experientially.  As one flesh.  Knowing that encompasses the brain, the skin, the bowels, and the heart.  God knows what it means to be loved and hated.  Caressed and slapped.  To fear for your life, be rejected by your family, mocked and laughed at.  He is able to sympathize with our weaknesses because His muscles have been sore, His heart broken, His skin sweating blood (Heb. 4:15).  He understands temptations because the devil's siren songs have reached His ears.  --Bird, 164

The Bible doesn't shy away from human emotions or even human bodily functions.  In 1 Samuel 20, Saul was yelling at his son Jonathan, angry with him that he had befriended David.  In verse 30 he called Jonathan a "son of a whore." (The Living Bible uses the more modern phrase "S.O.B.")  Six times in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 25:22; 25:34; 1 Kings 14:10; 16:11; 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8) men swore to annihilate their enemies using the colloquial phrase, "[I will kill] all who pee against the wall." (The King James version uses the literal translation "pisseth against the wall." Later, more modern version dial back the rhetoric, not wanting to offend, saying "every man among you."  The Hebrew text, however, actually uses the term for urination.)

We prefer to sanitize the scriptures, especially in public reading behind a pulpit, so as not to offend.  We must not forget that the Bible addresses the whole person.  We can't gloss over the blood and water involved in the birth process and focus on a creche void of humanity.  God came down.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  When we understand this, we can better realize the true sacrifice that God provided for us.  A spirit cannot shed blood, but blood was necessary to cover sin.  

When He addressed the woman at the well, Jesus said, "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."  Unlike Pilate, who would later ask, "What is truth?", the woman said she was looking forward to the Messiah, who will "tell us all things."  Jesus was being esoteric when speaking of truth, but the woman at the well got it; she understood.  That's when Jesus revealed Himself to her, say, "I who speak to you am He."  Jesus bridged the gap between the spiritual and the physical, because He came as a flesh and blood man.  Someone who speaks our language, but more than that knows what it is like to be us because He became one of us.  He bled like us.  He would bleed for us.  Let's not jump to the end without appreciating the smelly process, that began in a stable filled with manure.