Chris Kuntz, our former worship leader who now leads worship at another United Brethren church here in Fort Wayne, wrote on his blog about the hymn "There is Power in the Blood." As I voiced in a comment, I tend to shy away from the "blood" hymns as a bit morbid. Consider these:
- "There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flow lose all their guilty stain."
- "What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus."
- "Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my sovereign die."
- "For Jesus shed His precious blood, rich blessings to bestow. Plunge now into the crimson flood, that washes white as snow."
- "Down at the cross where my Saviour died, down where for cleansing from sin I cried. There to my heart was the blood applied...."
- "See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down...."
- "Are you washed in the bood, in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?"
- "What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus....Oh precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow."
Pretty gruesome, huh?
Today's contemporary Christian songs talk about how much Christ loves us, and talk about the cross in sort of a shiny symbolic way, but avoid talking about what Jesus actually suffered on our behalf (which the film "The Passion of the Christ" portrays with morbid power).
Chris distilled the simple message of this old hymn with the questions asked at the beginning of each verse:
- Do you want to be free from the burden or bondage of sin?
- Do you want to win over evil?
- Do you want to be so pure that you are whiter than snow?
- Do you want to serve Jesus by doing His work here on earth?
- Do you want to live every day praising God and singing to Him?
I wonder if, by sheltering our pew-sitters from the reality of what Christ suffered for us, we unintentionally promote a sort of wimpy Gospel. That the Christian life is all about love and hope and peace, not about (potentially) tremendous sacrifice and suffering. We certainly don't advertise, "If you become a Christian, you may be called to suffer more than you can imagine." No, we don't want to scare people away. So we promote the Christian life as happiness and having your needs (and wants) met. And as a result, we get wimpy Christians who buy into the American-dream consumeristic lifestyle, thinking that that's what Christ intended for us. "I have lots of things. Therefore, God is doing what I signed up for."
I'm still not anxious to inflict "blood" hymns on Sunday worshipers. But if people want "Yes" answers to those questions posed in "There is Power in the Blood," I guess we need to point them to the reason they can have "yes" answers.
Career-wise, I've been hanging around and writing about and cheering on churches and pastors for the past 25 years as my denomination's Communications Director.
Oh, Steve, don't shy away from "blood" hymns. For those who have been saved most of their lives, we understand how important the blood is. I am afraid of exactly what you were writing about; that new Christians won't take seriously what Christ sacrificed for us. For someone to truly be a Christian they have to know that, before Christ, there had to be a blood sacrifice to forgive sins. Then Christ became the last, perfect blood sacrifice. Without the blood, we are nothing. When I sing a hymn about the blood of Jesus, it humbles me to my core and I am awestruck by God's grace to me. I fear that churches afraid of singing about the blood of Jesus for fear of making people uncomfortable may also be afraid of talking about His blood over the pulpit, and then where are we?
Blood is only morbid in horror movies and cop shows. In real life and in scripture, there is life in the blood. Ask the Red Cross or anyone who has needed a transfusion.
The Jews were forbidden to eat blood because the life is in it and they were not to enrich their life at the cost of another. For the same reason, we are told to drink the blood of Christ because there is life in the blood.
The sacrament of communion is the process of making the life of Christ part of us.
No doubt, there is power in the blood, but more importantly, that's where the life is.