Day 13: There Will Be Blood

Of course I had to see the recent movie with blood in the title. It really wasn't obvious to me why the title was chosen for this film, which was about an oil prospector in the early 20th century who persuades communities to let him drill their land. But there was a scene that is relevant to my musings on the topic of blood. And that is Daniel’s initiation into the community’s church. The congregation’s pastor is very dramatic, and usually does some form of exorcism of evil spirits during worship. So when Daniel comes forward to pretend repentance and conversion in order to get land rights for a pipeline from a member of the church, the minister tells Daniel to kneel and beg Jesus for the blood. Daniel begs for the blood, gets baptized, and the congregation starts singing the revival hymn: “There’s Power in the Blood of the Lamb.” Meanwhile Daniel smirks, “There’s the pipeline!”

The whole scene mocks a revival style confession and baptism ritual with the shouting and the kneeling and the water splashing and the people swooning and all the singing about blood. The movie as a whole, however, is more serious in its attempt to set the oil prospector and his crew in juxtaposition with this young minister and his flock of believers. Is the power in the blood or is the power in the oil?

I’m sure many Christians who watch this movie smirk a bit with Daniel while the preacher Eli Sunday is jumping around and smacking evil spirits out of the “wayward but repentant sinner.” We’re nothing like this crazy group of believers, we assure ourselves. We’re much more classy and assimilated to the world around us.

How many of us like to distinguish ourselves from charismatic, or fundamentalist, or old-time religious folks like this Church of the Third Revelation who talk and sing about blood a lot? It seems too old-school, or rural, or yucky, all this blood talk. Let’s be more proper and tasteful about our faith, deal in symbols, values and ideals. We’ll sing and talk about the atoning work of Christ using abstract “-tion” words like propitiation or justification or sanctification. But “washed in the Blood?” “nothing but the Blood?” “there’s power in the Blood?” We’re too sophisticated and civilized for that now. It will just make us look unschooled, undignified, superstitious. Let’s lay off the blood talk. It is sort of a turn-off to the uninitiated. They might think we do sacrifices, or drink blood, or other strange things.

Here’s a musical weblink: you can imagine you are at a camp revival in 1905 and sing along: There’s power, power, wonder-working power, in the blood of the Lamb!