Corpus Christi, June 6, 2021 – Exodus 24:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

There’s a teensy, tiny miracle at the beginning of today’s gospel story. Jesus somehow or other sees the sequence of events that are going to happen when the disciples go into Jerusalem looking for a place to host the Passover. Not a big deal as far as miracles go. What do you think is the greatest miracle of all? Was it the multiplication of the loaves and fishes? The early Christians were so enamored of that miracle, they told it six times in four gospels. Maybe it was turning water into wine. Wouldn’t that be nice? How about cleansing ten lepers all at the same time? Or calming the storm at sea, “Peace, be still?” Or its companion piece, walking on the water? How about that? That’s pretty nifty. Or maybe raising Lazarus from the dead? Maybe that one. If you’ve ever been to Lourdes or Fatima or have seen photographs of the shrines, walls of crutches and prosthesis left behind by people who were cured by praying to the Blessed Virgin Mary at her shrine. But it’s none of them. It’s none of them.

The greatest miracle is the one that we celebrate today. The Body and Blood of Christ. It’s a three part miracle. It begins with the second person of God’s Blessed Trinity becoming a human being. What an amazing miracle that is that the One who launched this great universe by the will of His word should decide to enter it, looking, sounding and acting like you and me. That’s the first part of the miracle. The second part of the miracle is that He was able to leave Himself here in physical form despite that He, as a human being, died, miraculously rose, and returned to the spiritual kingdom of His father. The third part of the miracle is you and me.

By the second part of the miracle, the mystery of the Eucharist which you and I receive, He made us into His body so that we can move through time and space doing and saying the things that He told us to say and do. The truth telling. The speaking truth to power. The healing. The forgiving that begins in the bosom of our family and spreads out to our community and to the whole world. It’s a three part miracle. And each of today’s readings helps us to understand an aspect of that miracle. And each one of them answers two questions. What does it mean? And what does it do?

The first story we heard was the giving of the Ten Commandments and the acceptance of a covenant by the sprinkling of blood, first on an altar made to represent the twelve tribes of Israel, and then on the people it represented. Sprinkling an altar with blood. We’re going to take a little detour here to blood brothers.

Blood brothers. I looked it up. No Native American tribe has ever practiced the making of blood brothers. None of this cutting thumbs and putting them together stuff. But it’s been in so many movies, especially the cheap westerns that were made when my generation and the generation just after me were growing up, that it became a common place. And many little boys, growing up in that culture with those kinds of movies, did do that. They stuck a pin in their thumbs and said, “Now we’re blood brothers. We’re friends forever.” Besties, we call it today. It didn’t happen, but it’s a good image to understand what the first reading is all about.

Blood represents life in all of its forms and so using blood in a ceremony gets to the very heart of the matter. So what does it mean? Well, the Hebrew word for covenant is berit. And, archeologists of language have discovered that ancient languages developed by taking words that were essential to understand, and then turning them into metaphors. So berit goes all the way back to an ancient, ancient word that simply means “to cut.” And they did that for all these words - eye, ear, nose, ground, sky, water, fire. They took those words - as they looked for words to describe more abstract ideas - they took those words and turned them into metaphors for something else. The simple word “cut” becomes the word for covenant. Why? Because covenants were made by cutting an animal. And so the “what” of this is that “covenant” is a metaphor for sealing something in blood. What does it do? What is it for? According to the story, it is to make a covenant between God and the people of Israel. Why a covenant? So that they would be His people, under His protection and they would worship Him and He would be their God. So, the reason for the metaphor is to create community. The first one.

Now the “what does it mean” and “what does it do” of the second story that we read. The writer of the book of Hebrews takes the story of the high priest going into the Holy of Holies? Now you have to picture this. There’s this huge beautiful temple. Outside is the courtyard of the Gentiles, where commerce takes place, where tourists can come. Then you walk up a flight of stairs, and is the place where Hebrew people can go to pray. Beyond that, screened by a curtain, is the Holy of Holies. Inside of it there is an altar. The altar of beseeching. And the high priest goes in there only once a year, with a bowl full of the blood of sacrificed lambs. He pours it across the altar, as though to say, “Here we are full of sin. We have, in effect, spilled blood. Forgive us on this day.” So, the Day of Atonement becomes another symbol. The symbol for healing. All forgiveness is a form of healing.

Then we get to the gospel, and Jesus takes that ceremony, the ceremony of Passover, which recalls the first story, and He turns it into another metaphor. They’re sitting, eating the Passover meal. He takes the unleavened bread, and He calls it His body. He takes the cup filled with the wine that they serve for a blessing to Yahweh God, He calls it His blood of the covenant, recalling the very first story. Now other gospel stories extend those words, “This is the new covenant in My blood, shed for the forgiveness of the many.” And there’s the “why.” What is it for? This new covenant is for forgiveness. Everything in the world requires forgiveness. We do. Our friends do. Our society does. Our leaders do. We require forgiveness because we cannot be the perfect human beings that we are called to be, or that we desire to be.

One of the commentaries I was reading for this Sunday’s liturgy likes to use three rhyming words. Revealed. Sealed. Healed. What is revealed to us by all these metaphoric images? What is revealed to us is the intense love that God has for us. What is sealed is our relationship with God that commits us to something. What are we committed to? We are committed to the work of healing. Not simply physical healing, but the emotional healing, that societal healing that we so desperately need. Revealed. Sealed. Healed. We are all, in effect, blood brothers and sisters.