Talking today with a friend.
He said:
“The blood of Jesus doesn’t save us.
Yes, it’s a sign that points to God’s life-force,
yes, the cross means that God loves and forgives all completely,
but all I need is the theology, not the symbol.”

(Freely I admit that my memory may be faulty, but
this is how I remember it. I remember
we were trying to agree about what a sacrament is and does
about Real Presence.
As he said: “In the Eucharist, everything God is is available to us. It’s really Him.” Yes.)

The Blood of Jesus is precious to me.
If I don’t have the Story
of a first-century Jewish boy who believed with his people,
“The life is in the blood,”
who was crucified because he stirred up people to believe
that God’s Kingdom was better than oppression,
better than violence,
better than Empire–
if I don’t have that Story,
the happened-ness of that Story–
never mind the theology.

But that Jewish boy did die.
And in the Story, he is God-as-finally-faithful-human-being,
dying and being raised bodily from death.
On Cross, that Jewish God give his life–his blood–
because he loved, because he hoped, because he forgave.
If humankind is liberated by God’s life-force,
and if God is a first-century Jewish boy hung up to die,
than let this scandalous statement be our greatest joy:

“God has reconciled us by the blood of His cross.”

(This, my dear friend,
is why the Blood of Jesus is so precious to me.)