Day 38: Blood and the EPA

Hosea 4:1-3 Hear the word of the Lord O people of Israel;
for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.
Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out;
Bloodshed follows bloodshed.

Therefore the land mourns,
and all who live in it languish;
together with the wild animals and the birds of the air,
even the fish of the sea are perishing.

A few of my other entries have mentioned the theme above, that somehow the land is actually polluted when it has to soak up innocent blood that is shed. One of the GameCube games that Steve had when he lived with us was called Super Mario Sunshine, which put Mario on a mission to spray a liquid all over it to clean it up from the pollution of graffiti. He was falsely accused for polluting the island because a villian disguised as Mario did it. As he cleans up the island spraying the liquid out of a high tech Flash Liquid Ultra Dousing Device, the Shine Sprites are able return to the island to bring their life energy and light so that the island can become a tropical resort destination again.

I liked the game because it seemed refreshing that a 8 year old gamer could shoot a cleansing liquid to fight pollution, rather than shooting a gun to spread more video blood on yet another violent universe.

This game recently came to mind because I am trying to make a case in my head that if there was a life principle built into the created order that the bloodshed of an innocent victim pollutes the world, and that the carrying out of blood-vengeance makes things better, then what if Jesus' blood is the liquid that the world needs to be freed from its mourning and languishing and perishing.

Lucy in the Narnia books was given a vial with a magic potion, she only needed to pour a few drops of blood on a wound and it would magically heal.

I'm guessing, imagining, hypothesizing this: the perfect obedience of Jesus did not by itself redeem the fallen world, the passion pain and suffering is not the part we focus on, not the moral example, not even his willingness to experience dangling in mid-air as rejected and forsaken by God and all the people. Maybe the power to redeem the world was actually in the blood. God's blood, innocent blood in reality, but pronounced to be the blood of a guilty faithless ignorant disloyal lying cheating adulterous murdering human, God's blood went into the ground.

And as it soaks into the ground, just like Lucy's cordial, it starts reversing the curse that the land was under since Genesis 3:17, and not only that, it starts undoing the infertility of the soil so radically that the earth enters its most fruitful and fertile stage ever: now it is able to accept the seed of a dead human body and in three days give birth to a resurrected human. First-fruits and more to come later! What if there is that kind of cleansing, fertilizing, healing potency in the blood of God-made-flesh?

What if that song is literally true: There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb?

And what if that blood streamed down Mount Golgotha in a little trickle and soaked down into that Valley where Exekiel had to preach the gospel to a pile of bones. Those bones that can only admit: 'We are dried up bones, our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.' What if the blood of Jesus is power to say this even to a pile of dried-up bones? "I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves, and bring you back from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act."




And here's a song those resurrected bones might sing on the land that eagerly produces food again:

Psalm 126
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them."
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.