From Abel to Zechariah

Is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it well? How do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, host this live Colin show focused on enchantment in creation, the union of the seen and unseen as made by God. and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

And on a very personal note,'cause this is a very special episode of the Lord of Spirits Podcast. That's true.

um that this will be the last show that I ever do from this room. So I'm feeling a little a little t bleary eyed. I know you don't have feelings, Father Stephen. So I don't expect you to feel anything.

But our episode tonight is about martyrdom. So I mean, uh you know, martyrdom, is it is it just getting killed for what you believe in? Or is or is there something deeper going on here? I mean, we all know that when you hear a rhetorical question like that, that the answer is always yes, of course there's something deeper Going on. But I think most people do treat it like it's just

Martyrdom is getting killed for what you believe in. And so sometimes people think, Oh, well, that's you know, uh uh Christianity regards that as sort of the quick and easy way to sainthood. Because yeah, obviously you made the ultimate sacrifice. Good for you. You know? But no, no. It's actually really It's really deeply embedded in the scriptures and it's it's quite a profound image that they give us. So that's what we're talking about tonight. So

Go deep. I think we've t I mean we've t I I don't think. I know we've talked about Cain before. So tonight we're not going deep on the the whys, but I I will say, in terms of summarizing what first John has to say about why Cain killed Abel to quote Roman Reigns after WrestleMania this past weekend Everybody wants you to do good, but not better than them. And so moving on from the why to the to what happened and the aftermath, of course, before Cain kills Abel.

God had approached Cain, knowing what he was thinking, knowing about the darkness and the resentment and the hatred that was in his heart toward his brother. warning him not to give in to it, that sin was trying to master him and he must master it. And of course we know that Cain Committed murder anyway. And so then God returns to him. And says to Kane

Um you see an icon there and you see Christ and then he's coming to Cain, who is the b the larger figure on the right. And then in between them is this little bitty guy who's naked and That is Abel's blood. It's Abel's blood crying out from the ground to God. So Pretty cool. It's kind of a weird icon. Um, but but uh it does exist in several forms in Orthodox tradition. And um so that's what it is. That's the blood of Abel.

That that little bitty naked guy often he's depicted as quite red in color, which kind of clues you in that it's blood.

Of the shedding of blood. But this language of Abel's blood crying out to God from the ground is going to become a thread that weaves through the entirety of the scripture. So this isn't just like a piece of imagery. This isn't just like a piece of poetry. Right. There is a a very real idea. uh that is being expressed here that innocent blood Cries out to God, right? Presents itself before God, comes to God's attention. Asking him for justice. For justice to be restored.

Part of that justice here is the consequence. That Kane face. Because it was the ground that had to receive his brother's blood, his innocent blood, the ground now, the earth itself, right, the soil now stands opposed to him. Kane is now completely not just broken, but the harmony of the order of creation that is justice. He has broken it so badly that he has effectively broken himself out of it. He has uh exiled himself from it. He has sort of detached himself from the rest of creation.

And therefore what God is saying here is that he literally cannot grow crops because the creation itself the soil, the rain, the right, all these things of creation will not cooperate with him to provide him with food.

Now, in order to sort of understand a little more of what's going on here, we have to go forward a little bit in Genesis. him to immediately after the flood. So in Genesis chapter nine, issues four through s or issues verses four through six. This is after Noah, his sons, Noah's wife, their wives, animals, et al. The Ark has come to rest. There is this new recreation that they are entering into to replenish it. And God gives this important direction about blood.

There there's not an this sort of immediate material transformation. There is not a material thing that leaves contra various attempts in the in the nineteenth century to weigh dying people to figure out how much a soul weighs. Materially, it's all the same cells. They've just all stopped functioning. Right. The life has just gone out of this being. And so this is what we say we say the soul, the life is is immaterial in and of itself.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't have something to which it corresponds in the material world. Different cultures have seen these things in different ways. They've seen we tend to modern folks tend to posit sort of the the locus of our self, of our consciousness in our brain. Yeah. Right, because we're looking out at the world through our eyes. And so we feel well okay, I the I, the egg ego, and cogito ergo sum.

The ego, the eye, is like behind my eyeballs in my brain somewhere, right? Looking out at the world through my eyes, like they're windows. That's where we think the center is. Other cultures it's the heart. Which is closer for what we're getting here in the Hebrew scriptures. But the Hebrew scriptures connect this specifically to the soul, the life of the being is connected to the blood. Now that connects it to the heart.

Because people understood that a heartbeat indicated that someone was alive, right? Yeah. And they had seen people be injured, not to get too graphic. But they have seen that blood pumps the rhythm of a heartbeat because they'd see people bleed to death. And so They had seen someone and they had seen animals and people, right? The blood pours out on the ground and they are no longer alive.

So that's the connection. So when it says the blood is the life, it's actually talking about an idea more like the soul. And so this is part of why Humans have never been allowed by God, ever, in the history of the world. To eat or drink. Animal blood. because that is doing that is not just you know, using the animal for food, it's consuming its life. Consuming its soul, consuming its very being. And there are shades of that understanding. Still with us today.

Ask anybody who lives or grew up on a farm, they will tell you you're not allowed to name animals, right? 'Cause if you name animals, you will not want to eat them.

At least a uh uh younger people, you know, like your kids will get mad if you feed them fluffy. So this idea is still kind of present with us. In this in this cultural way, that that uh God gives permission For humans to eat animals in Genesis nine after the flood, but puts this stop gap on humans becoming sort of truly predatory. But notice also that That God says he's gonna require for every human life. For the blood of every human, he is going to require a reckoning.

There will be a reckoning. Not just you'll require an answer. But a reckoning. And not only from fellow humans, but even from animals. And this is a thing that you find, a sort of argumentum ad bestium, uh in in uh the Old Testament a lot. Uh if you want to kind of take something to an extreme, you say, and even the animals, effectively. So if you want to think about another example of this. A well known example, the very end of the book of Jonah.

When God is chiding Jonah for not having any compassion on the people of Nineveh.

right, is the extreme value Of human life and therefore human blood and the nature of this innocent blood being shed calling out to God and requiring a reckoning. And the word reckoning here, the idea is there has to be some kind of resolution. So this is sort of the exemplary greatest possible injustice. And it requires a correction. It requires that justice be restored. That's what it's calling out for. And God is saying he is going to require that reckoning.

Which implies, by the way, that he's not a slave to it. Justice doesn't make demands of God.

Okay, and so that dishonor then In murder. You are effectively by murdering your fellow human uh attempting to murder God, which of course

That's not just Abel's blood, it's his soul. effectively calling out for for justice. Yeah. That's why it's a little naked. Uh right. Souls are frequently little naked people. In iconography. And just clip that out. Just that one line. Just clip that out. Send it to Bajo. He'll do a whole episode.

Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, no person among you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger who sojourns among you eat blood. Any one also of the people of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among them, who takes in hunting any beast or bird that may be eaten, shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth. For the life of every creature is its blood, its blood is its life.

Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, you shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood. Whoever eats it shall be cut off.

in terms of the life of a creature is its blood, etc. But Here in verse eleven, the the added piece here is we're told that the blood of an animal that is killed and sacrificed has a purpose. Right. It's not just oh you're not allowed to eat it, so dispose of it. But it has a purpose. The purpose of that sacrificial blood is to make atonement for For their souls. For their lives. So atonement for their life is made by

the life of this sacrificial animal that's being eaten. And so if you eat the blood, then that blood is not being used for its intended purpose. In addition to the other problems we already discussed. And we'll talk more about that purpose in our second half.

Then they sat down to eat, and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels bearing gum, balm, and myrrh on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? And then Genesis forty two twenty two. And Reuben answered them, Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.

Understands that principle from Genesis nine. Cause at this point he thinks Joseph is dead. They didn't kill him directly, but their actions resulted in his death.

Come up again when we get into Exodus. Uh the first place is the uh famous or infamous bridegroom of blood passage in Exodus four verses twenty five and twenty six.

And we're gonna trace this out, is more talking about the sort of guilt, the sort of liability to a reckoning. Because there is about to be a reckoning. And that reckoning would have cost the lives of Moses and her son. And so this you've be been a bridegroom of blood to me, you married me and you've brought death into my life. Right, is what she's saying. But she intervenes to stop that by performing this somewhat bloody act.

And there's there's this whole interplay that's going on. So first of all, we have to remember This plague happens in Exodus seven, by the way, but all the way back in Exodus chapter one, remember that Pharaoh had ordered the male children of the Israelites to be murdered. Yeah, true when the midwives wouldn't abort them, the word went out to any Egyptian who saw one to drown him in the Nile River. So a lot of innocent blood, innocent Israelite blood was shed in that river.

So on one level, the river turning to blood is sort of the revelation of The act. The guilty is the horror of what they had done. But you also have this inversion where the Nile is was the source of life in Egypt, quite literally. The Nile River flooding. And then receding is what brought silt down that allowed Egypt to grow crops. The Nile is where they got their water. So it's literally the source of their biological life.

And it gets turned into blood, blood being the life of a creature. But the result is that everything in the Nile dies. Mm. In Exodus chapter seven. And potentially if this isn't corrected, the The Egyptians would have died with no drinkable water. And so again, we see those ideas here in in symbolic form in the in the selection of that. that first plague. But then this connection between blood Blood that has been shed and guilt.

gets made explicit later on in the book of Exodus in the commandments of the Torah.

Right. Tell it about there are other things you could do and you just go kill the person, then that's murder. But the language there of blood guilt Which in the Hebrew is just blood in the plural.

There's blood on your hands, right? Um, that Even though they may have washed very thoroughly, since they shed someone's blood, that blood still sort of clings to them. And as we've already seen from earlier in the Torah, from Genesis, that blood that still clings to them is calling out for a reckoning, is calling out for justice. So when it's when when it's trying to say that something isn't murder, like this thief who ends up getting killed in the middle of the night in the dark.

What it says is there is no blood on him, on the homeowner who potentially accidentally killed the thief. There is no need for a some kind of reckoning. There is no need for a restoration of justice because he has not committed the act of murder. Interestingly, this gets extended beyond humans. So in Leviticus 17, this actually gets extended to animals.

Someone in the camp and this gets changed in Deuteronomy. What and and there are new rules in Deuteronomy for once they go and settle in the land. Because this is less possible. But while they're in the wilderness, in Leviticus 17, if anyone kills an animal to eat it and doesn't offer it as a sacrifice, Leviticus seventeen says that the blood of that animal is on them.

Even in just an animal, killing an animal purely to satisfy your gluttony, your desires, right, is seen as sinful in Leviticus seventeen. In Leviticus twenty, it lays out a bunch of offenses that call for the death penalty, other than murder.

Right, murder's already been pretty clearly laid out. A lot of it is various forms of sexual immorality and Leviticus twenty. But the reason we bring it up here is the language that's used is that When someone has has committed one of these offenses, when someone has has committed these acts, The language that's used is their blood is upon them.

Now we read that it's just their blood is upon them and it's like well what is what does that mean? Right? But their blood is upon them, meaning not on the person who, if they don't repent, carries out the execution. the the person who carries out the execution, if that ends up being what's required. Is not The one who has the blood on them that's calling out for a reckoning, the blood is upon the person who is executed because they committed the offense.

Therefore the blood is on them. And we gotta follow this through because there's a next step here that most people don't understand. Right. And In the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament. And this this is still around. Like in Second Temple Judaism and even some forms of later Judaism. Their blood is on them. It doesn't require a reckoning. Meaning it was understood that them suffering the death penalty meant that that sin was now sort of taken care of. Their death was the reckoning.

And this is one of the reasons why I've pointed out at various times and in various places that there is nothing about being condemned to eternal hell in the Torah. There is in the Bible. Yeah. Don't get me wrong. That's in the Bible. Yeah. But not in the Torah in terms of the commandments of the Torah. In fact, kind of the opposite. If a person dies for their their sins, then their death is seen as

Expiating their their sins. Clean slate. There's not like some further eternal punishment that's necessary for having violated the commandments of the Torah. Beyond death. Let alone someone steals something and they have to pay back five times. Oh, but also they're gonna go to hell for it. That is nowhere in the Torah. Right. That is nowhere in the Torah. So the the the Torah's not dealing with that. But this language of the blood is upon them.

Meaning no further reckoning required. This is the reckoning.

And David wouldn't want you to try to find a way to exonerate him, right? Because David, we see in the text, accepts full responsibility for what he did. That's part of his repentance. Right. But The whole story of him and Bathsheba is he gets a woman pregnant while her husband is away at war, tries to cover it up three different ways, and when they don't work, has the husband killed. That's what happens. And David understands.

Well he's asking God to deliver him from bloods, right? From blood guilt, from this blood, that that blood is on him. And that Uriah like Abel is calling out for justice. For a reckoning. And David is trying to work out that reckoning through repentance in his own life before God. That's the core of what's going on in the Psalm.

So we also now in terms of this reckoning, so we talked about all the way back in Genesis nine, he who spills man's blood, his blood shall be spilled by man. And we've talked about there the expression of the death penalty. So who is it?

Who carries this out? It is the person who's referred to in the Torah as the Avenger of Blood.

Which is just amazing to me because it shows you sort of the rhetorical quality of Deuteronomy that like Moses is just like here's an example. Let's say uh you're out cutting wood. But so that's a situation. Someone has died. Their death is the result of the actions of another person, but that's not murder.

About how they have to be sort of evenly spaced because if the guy has to travel too long a distance, the Avenger of Blood might get out catch up to him and kill him before he gets a chance to have his hearing and all of this, right? But so the purpose is to have this hearing. And if it's i if you're just a murderer and you run there, you get your hearing and oh, it turns out you're a murderer. So you get sent back and and uh the reckoning happens. Uh but if you're not

A murderer. There are other circumstances then you get your hearing. And uh your life is preserved. So this may cause you to wonder well, what if somebody doesn't have a male relative who's able to go and, you know, take vengeance? Maybe the male relative's elderly. Maybe the guy who did the the killing is just particularly tough. Right? And like it's not gonna be easy to Well God repeatedly describes himself.

in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament as the avenger of the orphan and the widow and the stranger.

He's not even crypto anymore. What am I saying? This it this isn't just something uh about that that mean Old Testament God.'Cause this goes all the way to Revelation six verse ten.

which he he is repeatedly warned right by the more sensible people around him would be shedding innocent blood, he has no cause to kill David. But then Think also about David's refusal to respond in kind, even when he gets you know, he has this person chasing him across the countryside trying to murder him.

that we see here specifically with the literal shedding of innocent blood with m crimes of murder, right? This comes though and and the connection of that, of the the cry for justice from the souls, the life, the blood of the afflicted. This comes to be representative of sin and injustice in Israel among God's people, in the world as a whole.

So this isn't just an isolated thing about murder anymore by the time we get to the end of of the Old Testament tradition. And you see this, for example, in Proverbs one verses eleven through eighteen.

For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird, but these men lie in wait for their own blood, they set an ambush for their own lives.

Right. So this is it being used sort of archetypally like we said. But notice notice the imagery in at the end there in verses seventeen and eighteen that in fact they they They lie in wait for their own blood. They send an ambush for their own lives. Why? Because the innocent blood they shed is going to call out to God for this reckoning. Their victims are going to call out to God against them. for this reckoning and it's ultimately gonna be their lives that that is going to cost.

And you see this again, this is a very pithy one in Isaiah one verse fifteen, just describing the sinfulness of of Israel as a whole.

So that cheery note.

Consciously turned the Baal story on its head, depicting him as a failed and defeated rebel who nonetheless tries to steal the glory that belongs to Almighty God. From these scriptures, the figure of the devil emerged within Jewish and Christian tradition. Father Stephen Old and New Testament passages that refer to various Baal stories, and he surveys Baal worship through.

This is this is remember at the beginning of The covenant, well, we're about to talk about this again too, but at the at the beginning of the the covenant at Sinai Sacrificial blood was taken and sprinkled on the people. Yeah, right.

We wouldn't say, Oh, you're not ethnically Jewish anymore. You have to all become Greeks, right? Like or Arabs or some other group, right? They they would still be Jewish. But that Jewish identity would be reshaped in various ways. And all I've posited Is that I think a lot of the basis for that would be Jewish Christianity in the first century.

would sort of maybe clear things up, but then again, maybe people would just debate that. Um so your thoughts I've heard some explanations for this. None of them I have found sat satisfying. So I would I'd love to hear your thoughts.

But it wasn't written to clear up the debates of the 21st century. You know, that's not what it was written for. Certainly we can make reference to it, but like we're not the original context. You know? Um, so that's at least why I would one thing that I would suggest about why we can't have those expectations of the text. So so what do you think, father? Why why is it that we don't really have A full liturgical book there in Leviticus.

Which always it turns into an uruburos because their spontaneous prayers tend to have the same phrases repeated over and over every time. But um I don't want to go too far afield. But it's sort of like when people freestyle rap, you notice they keep coming anyway. Um So what you find is um even if you look at like Saint Justin Saint Justin Martyr or Saint Irenaeus when they talk about the administration of the Eucharist.

Right. Like they have the words of institution from Christ. They have the setting forth of the bread and wine. They give you all these rubrical details and then they're they're like and the bishop prays as he is able.

In the performance of them. Right. And so that was more the key. Certainly, I'm sure they were praying. Right. Um, and the Psalms are essentially written prayers. Monotonously, right? Um but uh That was in a secondary. By the by the time you get to the New Testament period, what you have in Jewish circles, Second Temple Jewish coming out of Second Temple Jewish circles, is uh prayer structures. Um where uh and and often there's like acrostics and this kind of thing in Hebrew.

That are used to remember them. Where it's not that you have the whole prayer written out, but you have a structure like um and this this isn't an actual one, but you know, uh Thanksgiving, praise, petitions, Repentance, right. You know what I mean? Like like subheadings, like topical headings, like a structure. Like think if you did one of those word documents not from scratch, right? Like here's the here's the structure.

for a prayer. And then the person doing the praying would pray as they were able within that structure. That's where what Saint Justin Martyr and uh St. Aridaus are coming from when they're talking about the bishops of the early church. They had a structure for celebrating the Eucharist, and then within that structure, they prayed as they were able. It is very likely uh And somebody's gonna get mad about this, so send your emails to Father Andrew at Ancient Faith.

Right, by repeating. Right. So it's actually a prayer structure within which we pray. Now what happens, right, as as you go forward in church history, and there's a parallel thing that actually happens in in uh Jewish history uh in synagogues is that you go from having a structure And the person leading worship then filling out that structure for themselves.

sort of in the act of doing it. Um and obviously, you know, the bishop isn't sort of freestyling every time an individual bishop was not freestyling every time he celebrated the Eucharist. Right? He had his set of prayers. He was saying basically the same things every time he celebrated the Eucharist. It just might be it'll be the same structure, but different words than the bishop, you know, in a city a hundred miles away. Right. Um What happens is you get particularly eloquent bishops.

And in the in the Jewish case, rabbis. And so you find other sort of less skilled orators uh adopting those prayers as being sort of a good form. Like so that's why we now do the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great. That's their anaphora prayer.

is this sort of this sort of later development. And so those kind of full-fledged adopted written prayers didn't exist at the time of the composition of the Torah. And I did the longest possible job of explaining of answering that.

So first of all, what is the distinction they're drawing between soul and spirit? I don't know if those are the right words to translate it because I know C case is pretty broad, like it can be translated many ways. And then after you have Harmon tekelon, it looks like they're putting those words in opposition to Harmon to Tsikes and Mielon to Pnevna Matos. And both of those seem to have something to do with sacrifice. What's the distinction and what is the connection back to sacrifice?

uh spirits like angels or even demons or whatever or patron saints. can animate people or groups of people as well. And so that's that's the that's the relationship between those terms. They're not exclusive of each other. Right. So what I would say, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, Father Stephen, but the correct what I would say a division of soul and spirit is basically making it so the soul is no longer functioning as a spirit. You know, that the soul is cut off from the body.

You know, so that it it's it's no longer acting in that way. Is is that am I tracking correctly on that?

Right. Restoring the correct created order. And so The idea of this keenness of being able to separate things, right? So the idea of s separating your soul from your spirit, right? This is supposed to be an example of Be able to divide between two things that have a nebulous at best border. Right. It's like saying, you know, uh th that sort is so sharp it could, you know, uh Cut the blonde off of your hair. Right. It could

Uh you've gotta understand that the word the word that's used for bone and that's especially used for bone marrow in Hebrew is also the word that means essence in Hebrew. Uh so sort of the marrow, the in the bones of a thing is where you find its essence. Right. And we have some idioms that are kind of that way. Right, like He feels it in his bones, right? Or, you know, he's whatever, down to the bone. Right. Um that sort of central part.

And so the idea there with the the what's translated as joints and marrow, the idea is that he cuts right to the essence. Of a thing, right? To the core to the essence of the of a thing in his judgment. Yeah. Um, so I I think that's more what it's going for. And I I don't know.

that it's I mean, I see where you're going with the sacrificial and the idea of the sort of butchering of the animal to divide it for for the offering. Right. So I I s I s see what you're doing there, but I don't think that's necessarily in view there. in that part of Hebrews. That said, later on in this episode, we're going to talk about some other parts of Hebrew.

Yeah. And obviously all of Hebrews is one thing, right? So there's not no relation, right? But I don't think that's what's specifically in view in that in that passage necessarily.

That doesn't make any sense. Okay. So but so it's being eaten. The blood is drained because we don't eat blood, right? Um but that blood is used for a particular purpose on Paso. Right. And that's what we're holding in on. Uh the blood is put on the doorpost. Right. And we're told in the text explicitly sort of the main thrust of what this is about, because when God is giving these instructions to Moses, he says, Tonight, I will make a distinction.

Right, so this is this blood is being used to sort of draw the boundary marker, who is an Israelite and who is an Egyptian. As we've talked about before on this show a bunch. Our modern concept of ethnicity. It was not based on who your daddy and granddaddy were, uh, or mom and grandma. Uh it was based on your obedience to this commandment.

to eating the Passover and marking your doorpost with the blood. If you did that, you're now an Israelite. If you didn't do that, you're now an Egyptian. It nothing else matters. Uh this makes this distinction, it marks out who the people of God are. But functionally, on that night, right? So it continues to serve that purpose going forward.

To continue to be an Israelite, you had to eat the Passover every year. If you did not eat the Passover, you are no longer an Israelite. You are no longer one of God's people. Right, if you didn't eat the Passover for a year. But that specific night, the first one, the first Passover, when the tenth plague comes upon Egypt, right, there is this other element.

Which is that the destroyer who comes through Egypt To take the lives of the firstborn of the Egyptians, right, as the reckoning for the deaths of the sons of Israel in the Nile. At Pharaoh's command. When the destroyer, the avenger of that innocent Israelite blood, shall we say, sees the blood on the doorpost. It turns aside and does not enter the

Because and and first we're going to look at sacrificial blood in general. Right. So in Exodus chapter twenty-four, we just referred to this, um to one of one of the callers, uh we have the covenant being made at Mount Sinai. So at the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses constructs an altar. He then they they have the sacrificial animals, they're killed, the blood is drained, he takes the altar and splashes the blood on the side of this altar to consecrate that altar. And then in verse eight.

Then he shall take part of the blood that is on the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments, and on his sons and his sons' garments with him. He and his garments shall be holy and his sons and his sons' garments with him. So it's an ordination uh.

Right. This seems completely backwards to us. Right if we had blood splattered all over something, we would not say, ah, now it is clean.

Pretty much every time a sacrifice is offered. So you can look at Leviticus chapter one, chapter three, chapter four, chapter seven, where these different sacrifices are being described, and in every one of them some of the blood is taken and used. It's put on the horns of the altar. Right, to purify and consecrate the altar, the rest is poured out at the at the base of the altar. That brings us to the Day of Atonement.

We talked about the the blood of the Posco lamb. We've got the blood of so the one the one goat isn't killed. The goat for Azazel sent out into the wilderness. Its blood is still in the goat, right? Um but the goat for Yahweh, the goat that is sacrificed, uh that doesn't have sins put on it, um that blood is drained and that blood is used for a particular purpose, that blood is brought into the sanctuary.

and used to make atonement for the physical objects, to make atonement for the altar. That's the language that's used. To make atonement for the Ark of the Covenant. Right. And remember, as we've talked about the show before, when we've talked about atonement, the word that we're translated as atonement comes from a series of of kiffir verbs. in uh Hebrew and other Semitic languages that mean to cover or to wipe or to smear. So this blood is covering these things.

It is being wiped across these things to remove something. Right. The blood is purifying. It is purging and purifying these physical objects and spaces, the sacrificial blood. It is covering something up. Now we talked about May not be obvious how this is related immediately, but stick with us.

We talked about how in uh Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, there's this thread, right, of the Avenger, and that God in particular is the Avenger of those who do not have Any human help to represent them, the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the poor. The fatherless, right, etc, right? That various language. There's also another thread though about the Avenger, and we have another Psalm verse upon the That's Psalm eight verse two.

And so the idea we have here with atonement in particular, blood being used to atone to cover, blood being used to cover, is that you have blood blood. Covering other blood. You have innocent blood, is this image, that cries out for justice, that cries out for a reckoning, for judgment, for things to be restored to their proper order. And you have other blood that covers that blood, that silences those cries in that blood. Right. And this is where the language of ransom connected to blood.

is sort of the ransom. It is it is the reckoning. It is the resolution. that avoids the the reckoning having to happen. that removes the liability by by covering it, by silencing it.

But a couple of things are important to remember here is that blood here Is is referring to actual blood.

reckoning. Uh also remember, blood here is not a symbol of death. The exact opposite. Blood is a symbol of life. Either a life that was cut short unjustly Right? Or life that comes in to cover, to take care of, to remediate. that death, that cutting short, that unjust cutting short of life.

And that's counterintuitive, right? How does Blood solve the problem of blood. And that's what we're gonna talk about in our third half.

But um I've always I've always seen that passage as um oh that's is s a symbolism of Christ's humanity and divinity. Um and then kinda just oh okay, and that's what it means. So next and it seems like there's layers to this uh symbolism that um I haven't thought of before that are kinda deeply rooted in the Old Testament and um Wanted to get your take on that. Is that a uh like a type anti type within uh Christ's um uh death and sacrifice or is it a

uh kind of a symbolism of his humanity and divinity? Is it a com is it uh layers of both those things?

What's going on with the water and the blood?

He's not trying to make it ambiguous which one he means. He means all of them. Right. Um probably the most famous one of those is when Christ is talking to to Saint Nicodemus and says, uh Well, it's interesting. What does he say? He says you must be born Anothen, which can mean again or from above, right? And Saint John means both. Right. You have to be born again and you have to be born from above this time. Right. Um Water and blood.

Um you can get to and and I'm sure some of the fathers do get to divinity and humanity from that. Um because uh that language of being born of water and flesh and blood, that language is used not just at in the early parts of St. John's Gospel, but in uh first John to talk about um New birth and to talk about Christ being uh not only from right, r like he doesn't come from uh blood from the will of man, right, but from from heaven.

In first John you have the spirit and the water and the blood that testify, right? Um So that's there. I think the primary element though Uh and we touched on this just briefly in the last episode, actually, but um within St. John's account of Christ's death, he pulls all of this stuff from Genesis. Uh we mentioned last time that throughout Saint John's Gospel he's he frequently refers to the Theotokos as woman.

And then uh at the cross says to her woman and then says to Saint John, Behold your mother so sort of changes her name from woman to mother, which is what happens to Eve in in Genesis. But also and I don't think we mentioned this in particular last time. Um there's this other thread of one o one of the countless uh times that uh the Pharisees come and bother Christ and his disciples about the Sabbath.

Uh Christ has an interesting response in St. John's Gospel where they come and and the uh disciples are picking heads of grain as they walk through a field and they're like, Oh, that's work, that's harvesting, how dare you on the Sabbath. Right. Um But Christ's response says that he is working and his father is working even to that very day. Which implies in terms of Genesis that the Sabbath proper hasn't come yet.

And then in Saint John's Gospel and only in Saint John's Gospel, Christ's last word is the word in Greek that is translated it is finished. Which is the exact same Greek word that's used in the Greek Genesis at the beginning of chapter two, when it says that on the seventh day God completed, finished all of his work. And then rest it on the sap.

And in Saint John's account of Christ's death, Christ says to Telesai, right, uh it is finished, it is completed, and then what? He rests in the tomb on the Sabbath day. So that is the place where the work of creation is completed is on the cross.

uh in Saint John's Gospel. So there's a ton of this. And so because of that Because of that framing that we have all of this Genesis language, the way I primarily understand, and again, not exclusively, just primarily, understand the blood and water is that Christ at that point has died. Right. And now his side is opened. Think back to Genesis two. Adam is put in to this sleep like death and then is split. Right. His side is opened and his bride. Right.

The woman comes from him, and so I take this to be the genesis, pardon the pun, of the church. And that the church that water the water and the blood here represent baptism and the Eucharist, and those constitute the church, which is the bride of Christ.

Okay, we're gonna take a couple more c Yeah, yeah. We're gonna take a couple more callers. We have Rachel calling from another Californian from Walnut Creek, California. Rachel, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

I don't know, I'm probably just being too logical about it, but if he could die, you know, why did he have to go through all that? Like couldn't he have just bowed his head and not been crucified, you know?

Right. And so my understanding of it I don't think this isn't the only way of understanding this, but my understanding of it is that Christ's suffering is a participation in our human suffering in order that we can be saved because we because we suffer.

right, and um that our suffering becomes for us purifying and and deifying in Christ because he suffered. He didn't just simply you know, give a precept about death or just snap his fingers or just say a word, but actually went through it himself. in the worst possible way. So that's that's my understanding of it. I mean, Father Father, what what what is the answer to the question of why did Christ suffer? Why didn't he just simply die?

Who creates their own. Um, but uh one thing that most of them have in common is that they when they talk about atonement, they they sort of limit it to the cross. That's not how the church, that's not how the fathers look at it. Right. So when they're talking about Christ's suffering, they're talking about his his whole life. Like right, earthly life, the the incarnation. Uh the time from his conception to his his uh resurrection.

Right. There is he voluntarily suffers in the full sense of the word. Suffering is not just having pain inflicted on you, it's being passive, it's being acted upon. The incarnation, when he takes upon himself our humanity, he is voluntarily accepting what get called by like Saint Maximus the blameless passions, meaning Passivities, right? That you become physically weak, you get tired, you need to eat, you get hungry, you get thirsty. Right. Um The to sleep.

These things, right? They're not sinful passions. There's nothing sinful about getting tired, right? Or and needing to sleep or getting hungry and needing to eat. um needing to drink water, but Christ voluntarily takes these on. Right throughout his life. And then beyond that, by entering into our world. Right, our world which is full of sin and wickedness. Right. And so he voluntarily submits himself to things like rejection.

The jealousies and bitterness and hatred of others, right? Their misunderstandings, their slander. Right. And and it's it it is indeed voluntary because at any point Christ could have done what he did on Mount Tabor. In front of the whole village of Nazareth, if he wanted to do it. And that would have been an end to that, right? They would have seen his divine glory. Wouldn't have been any more, you know, remarks. Right. Um Well these rejection, betrayal by friends.

Right. All of these things through his whole life. And then, you know, the ultimate example of that is is not just his death, right? But that in his death he suffered the sort of the worst evils that humanity had thus far concocted to inflict upon each other. Right. Crucifixion was the most horrible way to kill a person that humanity had come up with. Quite literally.

Right. And and you know, Cain goes and founds the first city, and the through line and denouement of that, according to the book of Revelation, is the Roman Empire. The pagan Roman Empire. Which is who killed Jesus?

Okay. It's he was tested in all the ways that we're tested. As we try to live a life faithful to God, all of these things test us. And Christ was tested by all these things, had all of these things thrown at him. Right, and did not sin in response. Whereas we do. In response. Yeah. That's how we get to what Father Andrew said, right? That's how we get to therefore by by suffering all of these things. Christ purifies them, he sanctifies them, he makes them a means of salvation.

Right, so think about what we sing at Theophany. Christ is baptized. Christ doesn't need to be purified by the water. Christ by being baptized purifies the water. And in purifying the water he makes the water salvific for us. In baptism. Right. So in the same way, by suffering all these things, by facet facing all of this testing, right, Christ makes that suffering that we share. He makes it salvific for us. He gives it a purpose.

If not for Christ, this is this is why atheism is the stupidest possible response to the problem of evil. The problem of evil is supposedly there's this good God. There's all this evil and horror and suffering in the world. I know how to solve this. We'll get rid of God. So all we have is evil and suffering. That is that is the worst possible answer, right? Without Christ, that's what we have.

We have what Albert Camus says in Caligula men die and they are not happy while they're alive. That's what you got without Christ. But because of Christ, And Christ coming to share our humanity in all of its facets, including our suffering. Including the the consequences of our sinfulness, not his. Right. Him coming to Sharon and all that. All of the sufferings, all of the trials we go through in this life, rather than just being one a long horror show of meaningless suffering and pain.

Right, and a veil of tears. See a lot of other religions. It becomes the means by which we are purified, we are sanctified, we are made ready for eternal life. Right, sharing in the life of God forever. Right. So that's that's a he he transforms suffering. Right. By voluntarily taking it upon himself. And in and through his whole life, not just at the cross.

We're gonna take one more call and this caller apparently called in because I dared him to on YouTube. So Adrian from Arizona.

in pagan cultures from the ancient Near East, including ancient Greek. Right. Um we've talked about that before, like with the the the Nephilim and the uh and the Titans and the right and uh The Apkalu and and and that kind of stuff. Right. And the different flood stories. Um

But so we have this what we were talking about, especially in the in the first half tonight, with the idea of the connection between blood and life, right? Blood being the life force, right, the soul of the thing, and that's why you don't eat it. Right. And what you find in pagan practice, for example, in Greek pagan practice, is uh that the shades of the dead drink blood, specifically the blood of sacrificial animals.

Right. The the blood was poured out in the graves of of heroes in order to give their shades this sort of undead spirit. To allow it to continue to exist, right? Where it this this dead Spirit is now sort of this parasitic. Nave Empiric.

What is the what what what what's going on with all the blood now? Like let's bring it all together here in Act three.

Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers. How are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog and kill.

Your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will call up come upon this generation.

has built up to this point, this fever pitch, right? We read in Isaiah, right, God couldn't hear their prayers over because of the blood, right? Over over the sound of the blood. Um

And, you know, Christ says it it starting with Abel, right, where we started tonight, all the way up to Zechariah the son of Barekiah. We talked about this in our episode on St. John the Forerunner, uh The fact that that seems to be and the tradition of the church has always held, but it also seems to just be the case.

Objectively even setting that aside, that this Zechariah the son of Barekiah is referring to uh St. John the Forerunner's father, Zechariah. So this is not from A to Z. Because A the first letter in Abel's name in Hebrew and the first letter in Zechariah's name in Hebrew are not the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Or in the Greek alphabet. Although it's closer. At least you got an alpha at the beginning of Able.

Um or you know, hey, you could make a bunch of work for yourself, a journal article on why, you know, it's not contradictory and it's the same guy. Uh we talked about in that episode too that one of the problems with determining exactly who this is if you set church tradition aside is There are literally three other Zecharias who were murdered in the temple complex in between.

Because uh the Sadducees ran the temple and the high priesthood a lot like a Klingon ship. You became captain by assassinating the previous captain.

is that the blood of bulls and goats didn't suffice to cover this other blood.

What kind of blood, what kind of sacrificial blood is it going to take? To cover this, to purify this, to purge this, this other blood, this blood that cries out for a reckoning. What's it gonna take? And here we have our third threat.

And our third thread is a culmination of a lot of the things we were already talking about. There's a very clear expression of it though. It's in the book of Second Maccabees. I know there's a lot of folks out there in our audience. Who have not read Second Maccabees? Be honest.

Jewish people did in the first century. Uh that was eventually taken over and became a Christian shrine and pilgrimage site in Antioch. Um and that is why you will find icons of the uh Maccabean martyrs. Fairly commonly in the Orthodox Church of the Al although interestingly, usually quite anachronistically, uh they're holding crosses. Um

the blood of the martyrs, give us the sort of understanding of that as we enter into the time of Christ's earthly minutes. Okay.

Those who were in charge of that unlawful sacrifice took the man aside because of their long acquaintance with him, and privately urged him to eat meat of his own providing, proper for him to use and pretend that he was eating the flesh of the sacrificial meal which had been commanded by the king. So that by doing this he might be saved from death and be treated kindly on account of his old friendship with them.

but making a high resolve, worthy of his years, and the dignity of his old age, and the grey hairs which he had reached with distinction and his excellent life even from childhood. And moreover, according to the holy God given law, he declared himself quickly, telling them to send him

Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age, and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws. When he had said this, he went at once to the rack, and those who a little before had acted toward him with good will now change it to ill will, because the words he had uttered were in their opinion sheer madness.

When he was about to die under the blows, he groaned aloud and said, It is clear to the Lord in his holy knowledge that though I might have been saved from death, I am enduring terrible sufferings in my body under this beating, but in my soul I I am glad to suffer these things, because I fear him. So in this way he died, leaving in his death an example of nobility and a memorial of courage, not only to the young, but to the great body of his nation. And now we're moving on to chapter seven.

It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king under torture with whips and cords to partake of unlawful swine's flesh. One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our fathers.

The king fell into a rage and gave orders that pans and cauldrons be heated. These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their spokesmen be cut out, and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of the brothers and their mother looked on. When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still breathing, and to fry him in a pan.

The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, The Lord God is watching over us, and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song, which bore witness against the people to their faces. When he said, And he will have compassion on his servants.

After the first brother had died in this way, they brought forward the second for their sport. They tore off the skin of his head with the hair and asked him, Will you eat rather than have your body punished limb by limb? He replied in the language of his fathers and said to them No. Therefore he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done.

And when he was at his last breath, he said, You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the king of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws. After him, the third was the victim of their sport. When it was demanded he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands and said nobly, I got these from heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again.

As a result, the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man's spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing. When he too had died, they maltreated and tortured the fourth in the same way. And when he was near death he said, One cannot but choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the hope that God gives of being raised again by him. But for you, there will be no resurrection to life.

Next they brought forward the fifth and maltreated him. But he looked at the king and said, Because you have authority among men, mortal though you are, you do what you please, but do not think that God has forsaken our people. Keep on and see how his mighty power will torture you and your descendants. After they brought him forward, the sixth

And when he was about to die, he said, Do not deceive yourself in vain, for we are suffering these things on our own account, because of our sins against our own God, therefore astounding things have happened. But do not think that you will go unpunished for having tried to fight against God. The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Though she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord.

She encouraged each of them in the language of their fathers, filled with a noble spirit. She fired her woman's reasoning with a man's courage and said to them, I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you.

Therefore the creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws. Antiochus felt that he was being treated with contempt, and he was suspicious of her reproachful tone.

The youngest brother being still alive, Antiochus not only appealed to him in words, but But promised with oaths that he would make him rich and enviable if he would turn from the ways of his fathers, and that he would take him for his friend and entrust him with public affairs. Since the young man would not listen to him at all, the king called the mother to him and urged her to advise the youth to save himself. After much urging on his part. She undertook to persuade her son, but

Leaning close to him, she spoke in their native tongue as follows, deriding the cruel tyrant. My son, have pity on me. I carried you nine months in my womb, and nursed you for three years, and have reared you and brought you up to this point in your life, and have taken care of you. I beseech you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth, and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being.

Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers, accept death, so that in God's mercy I may get you back again with your brothers. While she was still speaking, the young man said, What are you waiting for? I will not obey the king's command, but I obey the command of the law that was given to our fathers through Moses.

But you who have contrived all sorts of evil against the Hebrews will certainly not escape the hands of God, for we are suffering because of our own sins. And if our living Lord is angry for a little while to rebuke and discipline us, He will again be reconciled w reconciled with his own servants. But you unholy wretch, you most defiled of all men, do not be elated in vain and puffed up by uncertain hopes when you raise your hand against the children of heaven.

You have not yet escaped the judgment of the Almighty, all seeing God. For our brothers, after enduring a brief suffering, have drunk of ever flowing life under God's covenant. But you, by the judgment of God, will receive just punishment for your arrogance. I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our fathers, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation, and by afflictions and plagues to make you confess that he alone is God, and through me and my brothers.

To bring to an end the wrath of the almighty, which has justly fallen on our whole nation. the king fell into a rage, and handled him worse than the others, being exasperated at his scorn. So he died in his integrity, putting his whole trust in the Lord. Last of all the mother died after her son. Let this be enough then about the eating of sacrifices and the extreme torture. So there we go.

That yes, technically, right, they came back some of the Jewish people came back from exile. Um but now they're under obviously oppression by the Greek Seleucids. Um their being tortured. They're trying w they're tr the the Greeks are trying to de Judify the the region. Um they aren't gonna be successful, we know, because of the Maccabean revolts. But the Romans will be pretty successful at it l at the same thing later. But so they understand their situation.

Not as uh this is all happening to us. We're under this oppression. the the temple has been desecrated. All this has happened uh not because these Greeks and their gods are more powerful than than our god. No, it's because we as a people have been sinful. And this is the consequence of that sin. Right. That's what they're describing as the wrath of God against their people, is that God has allowed all of this to happen.

Right. It's allowed all this to happen. But notice notice what they say. This thread runs and and and the denouement uh is actually in verse thirty seven to chapter seven. Right. Through me that God threw he and his brothers. would bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty.

Hm. Right. So what is it? According to the prophets at the time of the exile. What was it that brought about the exile? What was it that brought about that judgment? Sin and specifically the cries of the victims of that sin.

They're being tortured to death and murdered. That's w that's what's objectively happening here. As part of the ethnic cleansing of an area by an imperial power, okay?

Now we know from that passage in St. Matthew's Gospel. That even this didn't do it. Right. Didn't do it in the sense that in the sense that not that, you know, these aren't martyrs, because they are, because we saw all through there. They were dying in the hope of the resurrection. Right? Dying in the hope of the resurrection. as people, right? But didn't work for the people. Didn't work for the nation. Didn't work for the people of God as a whole. Didn't work for the world as a whole. Right?

As much as they offered.

But so now we come back to Christ. Right and we start with not with his actual death, but before his death. as he's instituting the Eucharist. He says That what is in the cup is his blood. And what does he say about his blood? He says two things. Says it is the blood of the new covenant. Remember Moses when he was throwing that blood, that sacrificial blood on the people to consecrate them. To purify that.

To connect them to the sacrifice of the altar, he said, This is the blood of the covenant. Christ says, This is my blood of the new covenant. Secondly, He tells them to drink it for the remission of sins. Purification from sin. So there's two functions there. One, the people who receive the cup. Right, are purified by it, sanctified by it, and two, they're connected to Christ and to Christ's sacrifice. By the blood.

Shouldn't be lost on you though that we're talking about drinking blood. Which they expressly were not. Allowed to do.

of Second Maccabe seven, in which the seventh son said, For our brothers after enduring a brief suffering, have drunk of ever flowing life under God's covenant. That's the cup that Christ offers to his disciples. And he had already prepared them for this with what he told them in John chapter six. We've talked about this before. I'm not gonna go down this rabbit trail now, but Come on, Protestant friends. This is about the Eucharist.

Special pleading insane levels, right? But what he already said in in John chapter six about his blood. Father Andrew may be muted again.

Right. Um but then we we see this understanding of what Christ's blood is doing. play out in how it is reflected upon in the rest of the New Testament. So starting already in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter twenty, Saint Paul is talking to the Ephesian elders. He's giving them sort of his farewell address because he knows he's going to be arrested uh and put on trial and will probably not see them again. Right, and he says this.

That cries out uh for justice. Saint Paul, we're gonna read some more Saint Paul. So Saint Paul in Romans three verse twenty five.

Okay, God didn't do it. And it's not because God was unjust. It's not because he didn't care about justice. It's not because he was now turning a deaf ear to the cries of those who suffer, contrary to what we read in Psalms. No, it was because Christ was coming to offer himself as a sacrifice. Right, Christ's death is this kind of self offering. Of himself is a sacrifice which makes his blood sacrificial blood. Right. Blood which covered over that other blood.

Right, which silenced that other blood, so that that reckoning was no longer necessary. And so Christ's death here, Saint Paul is presenting it as the fulfillment of that idea of martyrdom that we saw expressed in 2 Maccabees. Fulfillment in filling full to overflowing. Because Christ's death does accomplish what they wanted their deaths to accomplish as a sacrifice, not only for himself, not even for himself, because he didn't need it, right? But for all of his people. And for the whole world.

Because they were unclean, because in their sins and uncleanness they could not approach God. But now they've been brought near by the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ has purified them. From sin and uncleanness, and now they can draw near to God because of the purification that comes from Christ's blood. Notice.

Not his blood it's his blood, not his suffering. It's his blood, not some kind of punishment. Blood here is purifying people. It is cleansing. It is covering. Right. Um Probably the most famous.

We've already referenced it earlier with a collar. The most famous place in the New Testament that talks about sacrificial blood, right, is the Book of Hebrews. Right. And so a place that talks about it more directly is in chapter nine, starting with verse eleven.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant.

So that those who are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkl both the book itself and all the people saying This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.

And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. People I feel like people like to quote that last phrase that last, you know, clause and then kind of skip everything before it.

In the case of the blood in bulls and goats, it's the body. It's the flesh. Right. It's limited. In the case of Christ, it's our whole being.

And then says in verse twenty two, just taking all of verse twenty-two, indeed, under the law, under the Torah, almost everything is what? Purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. So what is the forgiveness of sins, according to that verse? It is purification.

And now let's let's be really on the nose. First John one verse seven.

Right. Toward our glorification. Right. That that's what St. Paul says. Right. And so

Where does all this pan out? So the here well, here's a neat biblical theology exercise we just did, right? Well, here's where the rubber meets the road of this, right? What we see here in Christ and the blood of Christ. Purifying us from sin. Of course, the most obvious place where this plays out are the martyrs. who come after Christ, right? The Maccabean martyrs were before uh the birth of Christ, right? But the martyrs from St. Stephen on.

Right? Including Saint George, whose memory we were celebrating until sundown. At the beginning of this episode, it was still St. George's Day. Right? All of those martyrs who, in the likeness of Christ, what? Laid down their lives. offered their lives as they were being murdered, offered their lives as sacrifices to God. In the likeness of Christ. Right. Another place where the spirit is out is actually the act of tonsuring.

And a lot of folks don't know this, okay? But in a Roman sacrificial ritual, the last thing you did before you slit the bull's throat or the other animal, the other sacrificial animal before you slit its throat Uh the last thing you did was grab a big tuft of its hair and cut it off and then throw it into an incense ball. And what you did that because that was supposed to signify the animal offering itself. But the animal was not being forced, but the animal itself was sort of honoring

the the the deity or the spirit that was being worshipped uh in Roman religion. So this practice gets symbolically adopted in the early church. When do we do tonsures? We do tonsures with baptism.

Uh most of us will not be martyred. Uh slightly more of us, but not that many will be tauntured, right? Other than at baptism. Uh but all of us Right. Uh participate at every liturgy in the offering of the Eucharist. And if you pay close attention to the prayers of the Eucharist, The end of every litany, for example, but threaded all through the other prayers as well, is the idea that we are offering ourselves and each other and our whole life.

Everything we have, everything we are to God as a sacrifice. When we eat Christ's flesh and drink his blood, we're participating in his sacrifice, in his self-offering. And we're also offering ourselves to God along with it. Right, along with him. That's what we're called to do in every literature.

And so this plays out very much on the ground in our actual Christian lives in the church. Uh this is this is the cornerstone, this cornerstone understanding to everything that goes on. And of course what's happening when we receive the Eucharist. Right. When we receive the body and blood of Christ, what is the blood of Christ doing? What do we ask it to do in the post-communion prayers? to pass through and purify every part of our body. Right.

So this this wasn't just a biblical theology exercise. Uh this is this is biblical theology that undergirds a lot of who we are and what we do uh in the church.

You know, one of the things that we like to talk about a lot on this show is the historical context, the the stories that are current through the ritual participation. In the surrounding pagan nations around Israel and around the first Christians. And um One story you do not find. in any of them is is this one, or and especially this part of it, which is at the very core of Faith community is in a real sense it is the martyrdom of God Himself. that God sheds his own blood.

Right. And that's just not a thing in any pagan uh religions. It's it's just not. You know? Um there are certainly some uh later religious traditions and um some some pagan traditions that were clearly influenced by Christianity, such as such as Norse religion. Um that have some echoes of this. But the idea that God would become man and would shed his own blood would sacrifice himself voluntarily. In order to purify the whole cosmos, in order to forgive us all of our sins, the

In order to make us participants in his altar so that we might be deified. That's just not in pagan religion. And even in the stuff that is kind of drawn on that and imitated Christianity that came later, just doesn't do it very well, honestly. You know? It's like bad fanfic in some ways. And and this is part of why, by the way, I mean, I know that this might be a little esoteric for some people, punfully intended here, but this is part of why perennialism is just garbage.

Because perennialism assumes that there's this kind of esoteric core that all r religions share, and that that's the important part, and all the rest is kind of details. Christianity says, no, no, no. The core of what it is that we believe and do are these specific. story elements about God sacrificing himself. Becoming man, truly suffering, truly dying, truly conquering death, truly rising on the third day.

That's core. If you do not have that, you don't have Christianity. If you try to try to extract some kind of esoteric core and you leave that stuff behind, you're not Christian, you're something else. You're something else. That's the problem with perennialism. It always does violence to the things that these religions say they actually hold the most dear. You know? And Christianity is unique in a lot of different ways.

And this is absolutely one of the most important of them, that God sacrificed himself. that God became man and he sacrificed himself, he shed his own blood to purify the world. to forgive us of our sins. That's not a story you find in any pagan tradition. And it's it's not even a story that you find in the later religions that historically follow the rise of Christianity. And so especially as we're continuing to celebrate Posca and continuing to

try to absorb as as much as we can the different aspects of what Christ's suffering and death and resurrection mean for us, particularly in this this beautiful time of celebration that we're in now. Um I think this is such a a a powerful, powerful thing to focus on and to remind us that that uh this is worth embracing, this is worth giving our lives for, this is worth becoming martyrs for.

Whether in the most literal sense or in the daily martyrdom of saying no to our own desires and yes to who God is and to what he expects of us and to serving those around us. And if not literally shedding our own lifeblood for these things to give our life to give our life.

bring others closer to Christ and to to make right what has been made wrong, especially the wrongs that we have made ourselves. So I I think this is such a a wonderful and powerful and and um Excellent thing for us to discuss at this time.

And I know there's a certain group of people, and that's who I'm really talking to now, who when they hear me say that and think about it will get really scared. Right? Because they'll think about oh Is that the same now? asked. 'Cause, you know, I try to go to church and I I go to liturgy and I go to confession and I go and I receive the Eucharist, but like, am I really repenting? Like I know I'm not repenting as much as I should, even as much as I could. My attempts are always half hearted.

I kind of mean it in confession when I say I'm gonna struggle not to do it anymore, but A lot of times I don't really struggle that hard and I go and do the same things again, if I'm honest. And I I've resolved a hundred times that I was gonna change and I was gonna be different and This was gonna be the moment and I was gonna do better. I was gonna stop doing those things, and I was gonna start doing these good things I know I should be doing, and that resolution.

Ends up like a New Year's resolution on January fourth and it's gone pretty quick. And when you're when you're thinking that and you hear what I said about the old covenant, you might think, Oh, does that mean None of this is gonna do me any good. Divine liturgy isn't gonna do me any good. Confession isn't gonna do me any good, because I'm not sincere. No, that's not what I'm saying. Uh get that out of your head. Uh this is a point of discontinuity.

This is part of the promise of the new covenant. When you read those new covenant passages we talked about earlier in Jeremiah in Ezekiel and these things, it's not just like, okay, we're gonna start again, try and do better this time. Christ is superior to Moses. The new covenant, the renewed covenant, what Christ does, fulfills what Moses did and what was received through Moses. Most importantly Christ offered himself as the perfect, blameless sacrifice.

God doesn't require any more perfect, blameless sacrifices, which is good because I'm not perfect and I'm not blameless. What we're called to do in every liturgy by the prayers I mentioned, it's at the end of every litany, like I said. And other places too, is to offer ourselves not to offer some kind of idealized perfect version of ourselves and each other and our whole life to God. Uh not to wait until we've got everything sorted out and then offer that to God.

But to offer ourselves to The way we are right now. Mess and all, brokenness and all Struggles and all, doubts and all Offer that to God. Along with Christ's sacrifice. Not an idealized version of each other. Not a version of each other where we've actually gotten past and don't remember all our differences because we still kind of remember them, even though we're trying not to think about it right now because we're in liturgy. And to offer our whole life

Not the life we think we should be living. Not the life we actually should be living. Not some idealized life, not some monastic life when we're not a monastic. But our actual life. With all its problems, all its deficiencies, All its trials. Hot struggles, Offer that to God. That's the kind of repentance. that God requires of us in the new covenant. And the incredible blessing is that that's a kind of repentance we're capable of. Not perfect repentance, not pure repentance.

Not unerring repentance, but But an offering of who we are and what we are and what we have, all of it to God. So that God can use it, can transform it, can heal it, can purify it, can cleanse it. And as we we try to do what Christ did and offer ourselves to him as a sacrifice. we can become more like Christ in the process. So those are my closing thoughts.