The Blood of the Cross

A week unlike any other week on the Christian calendar has come.  The very name by which it is called speaks of it being a unique  moment in the life of the church.  Holy Week.  Holy Week is the time which the church remembers the final days of Jesus.  It is a time when the church encounters the suffering servant who fleshed out what it meant to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  It is a moment which draws forth memories of the night of deliverance in Egypt when the Hebrews were instructed to mark their doors with the blood of a slain lamb.  It was that blood which meant that the first born of that household would be spared a terrible night of death.    

It is hard for the practical and logical minded folks of this generation too comprehend how the shed blood of Christ on the cross could be an act of deliverance and salvation for each one of us.  Sin is such an uncomfortable word.  It is a word which even the church finds to be uncomfortable.  No one wants to talk about it.  No one wants to acknowledge that the image of God in which we were born has become so layered with the wrong choices of sin that we have lost sight of the fact that we were conceived and born to reflect that holy image from the deepest part of our being.  Our sin has served to disconnect us from our Creator.  It is not His choice, but ours.  

In some mysterious and divine way the blood of Christ is like a cleansing ointment that wipes away our sin and enables us to see once again that we belong not to our wrong choices, or our sin, but to God our Creator.  Through Christ something is done that we cannot do for ourselves.  The task is too great.  The stain is too deep.  Without the blood of Christ touching our lives, it is impossible for us to know to Whom we really belong.  The peace we see in our inner being will never be found in the pursuit of success, or the accumulation of stuff, but only as our inner being is touched with this holy blood shed on the cross.  The cross is our way home.  It is the door to knowing once again that we are forgiven and seen not as someone who has made wrong choices, but as someone who is called son and daughter, child of the Creator.