Blood in the Liturgy of the Eucharist

Blood and the Covenants

Each week in the Eucharist, we hear recited: This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins, or similar words. How did this statement arise as a psychological possibility in the mind of Jesus or of his near contemporary, Paul? What would a first century Jew have thought of such a statement?

While searching out the meaning of the blood of the covenant, and looking for answers to these questions, I have read several books by Jewish authors on Rabbinic thinking as written in the Mishnah and Talmuds. These documents took shape over the period of 70 CE to about 600 CE. I am astonished - yes that is not too strong a word - to see how close our symbolism is to theirs, and yet how different because of our faith in Christ. Here is a very brief summary of what I have learned. Bear with it - it is a bit of a raw read.

The sacrifice - Where does the blood come from?

For the Jew, there are several places in Torah that speak of significant blood: the sacrifice of the animals in the temple, the special sacrifice at Passover commemorating the Exodus, the blood associated with birth and menstruation, and the blood of circumcision, the sign in the flesh of the male which Jews observe as foundational to belonging within Judaism and which is also observed by Islam.

As with other aspects of human fertility, the blood of menstruation renders a person unclean for a period (see Leviticus chapter 15 - a gender-balanced chiastic structure around male-female issues). This uncleanness is natural and not sin, but nonetheless, for some reason, not considered holy in the Old Covenant tradition. The blood of sacrifice is spilled from the animal and thrown against the altar in some rituals, or touched to various parts of the altar or the body as a cleansing agent in others. As the letter to the Hebrews notes, almost everything has to be purified with blood (Hebrews 9:22). A major aspect of blood is that it represents the life of the body of the human or animal.

The key aspect of circumcision is the flow of blood. Even a male born circumcised must be cut, though the Mohel may draw only a drop of blood in this case. A verse in the pre-medieval circumcision liturgy (which has roots in the first century) is from Ezekiel 16:6.

I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood. I said to you, in your blood, live. I said to you, in your blood, live.

The Rabbis explain that the phrase was repeated because it refers to two different bloods: the blood of the Paschal Lamb, and the blood of circumcision. Each is considered effective for salvation.

After the circumcision, the Mohel says:

"Master of the universe, may it be your will that this be considered by you as if I had sacrificed him before your throne of glory."

We see here that the link between circumcision and the sacrificial system is made explicit. It also suggests that circumcision is a substitute for human sacrifice. The ultimate rejection of this is of course the story of Abraham and Isaac (or Ishmael if you are a Muslim). In this story, just as Abraham is about to follow the order of God to sacrifice his son, he is stopped by God and a ram is substituted in place of his only son. Christianity sees this as a type of the sacrifice of Jesus, for whom there was no substitute, but who substituted for our death once for all.

For the Christian. The blood of the covenant is the blood of the crucifixion. We see this represented in the wine of the Eucharist which we have traditionally seen as deriving from the wine at the Seder supper and as signifying the blood of the Passover lamb. The institution of the Eucharistic meal is recorded by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11. This letter was written from Ephesus on the west coast of Turkey to a fractious congregation in Achaia just south and west of the Isthmus of Corinth. (See Map) The institution, with significant variations, is in each of the Synoptic Gospels (see the parallels link below). A most memorable statement about blood is in John's gospel in chapter 6 (see also The Communion Hymn from last week).

So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever."

When we eat the flesh of the Son of Man, we have life because of him, just as he lives because of the Father. While flesh and blood can mean teaching (an Aramaic idiom), the true teaching here is a teaching which leads us into the Life of the Spirit through the death of Jesus. So he says - we live in him and he in us. This is possible because of that "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction" which we remember each week. And of course, because it really happens that we live in him, we believe in his resurrection, for we know his life in us by faith through the Holy Spirit, and we continue in our hope. The remembering, anamnesis in the Greek, is exactly akin to another Hebrew word, zehker, which Jews use to describe their major liturgies also. The word means a 'making present' of the reality that is symbolized in the Liturgy. Rosh Hoshana, for example, commemorates the conception of the world, but particularly asks God to remember his covenant, thus 'making present' the act of creation, the exodus, and the covenant reality (circumcision passed from father to son) from Abraham to the present.

Blood as Wine in the Rite of Circumcision

The Tanakh explicitly forbids the drinking of blood. This is repeated several times in the books of Moses beginning with the commandments to Noah and continuing through the Levitical system. These books were probably given their final editing in Babylon at the time of Ezekiel after the destruction of the first temple. In this priestly system, circumcision and the centrality of the Jerusalem temple sacrificial system become the mortar for the final edition of the first nine or ten books of the Bible. (At least that is a current theory according to the Canadian scholar, Donald Akenson, in a very few words).

But here is the most remarkable thing. The Mohel, the one who performs the circumcision (who may be the father), cauterizes the wound by sucking the blood from the wound with his mouth. At this point in the ceremony, he also places a drop of wine on the child's lips. In the Babylonian rite, some of the blood is mixed with water, and each person present, young men and old, puts his hand into the water and touches it to his mouth, symbolically drinking the blood of the covenant. (This practice of the Mohel is preserved staunchly even as late as modern times. The Babylonian rite is documented in the ninth century in a midrash known as Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer. See pp 92 and 100-103 of Hoffman.)

The Cup of the Lord - the Replacement of Circumcision.

These ancient Jewish rites use symbolism in a way that is exactly parallel to the New Testament. One would expect an author to use language that had meaning for him or her when describing an important part of the story. The New Testament authors used images to explain the death of Jesus one for one with the symbols we have just briefly described. These are images that they might well have grown up with.

The creation of the world	If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) - Paul Behold I make all things new - it is done (Revelation 21:5-6) - John the Theologian
The exodus	Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7) - Paul He spoke of the exodus he was to accomplish in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31 Gk) - Luke
Circumcision	Colossians 2:11 seems a unique use of the image of Circumcision. I continue to look for hints of the same in other authors (Colossians is considered deutero-Pauline by some - i.e. it was written in his name by one of his disciples, perhaps even under his direction).

So Paul in his letters to Corinth names Christ as our Passover and shows us that in him we are a new creation. The author of Luke is likely influenced by Paul. He is the only one of the synoptics to indicate the content of Jesus conversation with Moses and Elijah which was about his passing (Greek: exodus) that he was to accomplish in Jerusalem. And the author of Colossians calls the death of Jesus a circumcision:

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.

In the Eucharist, then, we are performing a rite similar to the solemn festivals and the holy days of Judaism, for in remembering the Lord's death, we make present a new creation, our own exodus, and our covenant of blood in him.

When we read in the Tanakh that "The life of the body is in the blood" (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:11, 14 Deuteronomy 12:23), we can reinterpret it as follows: the Spirit gives the life of Jesus' body to us, to each one who "believes and is baptized" (Acts 2:38). Therefore the blood is no longer forbidden to drink but essential. The life of the Body of Christ is in the blood of the covenant.

For these concepts as seen from Judaism, see Lawrence A. Hoffman, Covenant of Blood, Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism - University of Chicago Press 1996.

Note also the following entry in the Talmud: Mishna Nedarim 3:11 (Neusner translation): "Great is circumcision, for if it were not for that, the Holy One, blessed be he, would not have created the world, since it says, 'Thus says the Lord: But for my covenant day and night, I should not have set forth the ordinances of heaven and earth' (Jeremiah 33:25)."

Compare: the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. (Revelation 13:8)