"the blood of the goat" and "the blood of the Lamb: on preaching for a transcultural occasion

On the occasion of our North American church visitors meeting some of our South African church partners at a rural homestead in the Transkei earlier this month, I found myself in the position of having to preach a message that both honored the transcultural dimension of the encounter and spoke to the spiritual realities of communities that still live on the boundary between Christianity and traditional religion.

I chose for the occasion a message that came to me much earlier but which heretofore I had not had the opportunity to preach.  While studying Revelation 7 last year, I began to ponder the significance of the white robes adorning the great throng from "every people, language, tribe, and nation" (Rev 7:9).  In an utterly paradoxical description, the robes of the faithful in John's vision were washed white "in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev 7:14).  Indeed, if it is blood that usually stains red, then the blood that cleanses white must point to a salvation for God's people beyond the physical, to a cleansing that transcends the flesh.  Along these lines, I began to ponder another biblical story of a robe--the robe of Joseph not cleansed but stained with the blood of a goat (Gen 37:31).  

The contrast between the robes washed white and the robe stained red was of far more than color; indeed their respective colors were just outward appearances of inward realities.  In the case of Joseph, the robe itself and the blood of the goat by which it was stained stood for division between the children of Israel, God's own people.  Since Israel had given Joseph a robe as a show of favoritism above his brothers, the robe aroused the brothers' jealousy toward Joseph.  At an opportune time, they stripped him of his robe, threw him in a pit, sold him into slavery, and covered up their crimes before their father through the blood of a goat: "They had the long robe with sleeves taken to their father, and they said, 'This we found; see now whether it is your son's robe or not" (Gen 37:32).  The blood of the goat, therefore, was as a seal to the robe of jealousy, marking a bitter separation between God's people which was to last many years until the time of forgiveness should come.

The robes of Revelation's faithful, by contrast, stood for the hard-won unity of God's people.  The robes of Revelation adorn not the one exalted by his father above his brothers but the many freed from their sins by the blood of God's own Lamb, Jesus Christ (Rev 1:5).  "These are they" who together--not one above another--have been made "to be a kingdom and priests serving [their] God and Father" (Rev 5:10; 1:6).  The robes of white stand for the peace of Christ, the genuine reconciliation of one human family which has come through the bitter discord of "the great ordeal" (Rev 7:14).  The robe of Joseph brought hostility, but the robe of Jesus Christ brings peace.  The blood of the goat brought separation, but the blood of the Lamb "speaks a better word" (Heb 12:24).

Thus it was that I tried to address, in one way subtle, in another way less so, what I perceived as the twofold demand of the occasion.  In terms of black and white meeting together for worship, the sermon pointed rather explicitly to the reconciliation between the races still laboring to be born years after the "great ordeal" of apartheid (literally, separate-ness) in South Africa.  And for a few hours on that day, black and white together praising our God and Father, the kingdom of God drew near.  In terms of the particular temptations of the traditionally-minded Africans with whom we worshiped, my intention was to point, in far less direct ways than to the issue of racial reconciliation, to the sacrifices which please God.  As a white person, for the cause of racial reconciliation, I am compelled to guard against being seen to be denigrating anything deemed by anyone to be a part of the cultures of black people.  And as one who preaches Christ crucified, I am also compelled, via the scriptures, to contrast the way of Christ to the ways of the world--black or white.  Thus, with what I believe was sufficient subtlety, I simply contrasted "the blood of the goat"--the most commonly sacrificed animal in Xhosa ancestral religion--with the "the blood of Jesus Christ" in the particular terms of the Genesis and Revelation texts.  By locating the contrast in terms of the texts, I believe that my chances of delivering a redemptive word are greatly increased.  Through Genesis 37's "blood of the goat" and Revelation 7's "blood of the Lamb" I can speak to issues of division and reconciliation between two groups of people even as the contrast between the sacrifices of "goats and bulls" (Heb 9:14) and the sacrifice of Christ need not be lost on anyone who has an ear to hear.  

-Joe

"What they said pleased the whole community"

We just had the privilege of having Hlobisile Nxumalo, director of Acts of Faith, a youth program in Swaziland, lead our workshop March 1-2 at Bethany Bible School.  Hlobi is trained as an accountant, but her broader passion seems to be management and, in particular, management as it pertains to the church.  She led the students of BBS in thinking about how they lead and participate in meetings in their churches.  She emphasized processes of communal decision making and building consensus in the church on divisive issues.

In her presentation on Saturday, Hlobi drew our attention to Acts 6:1-7, the text which tells of the choosing of the first deacons in the early church.  Hlobi stressed verse 5a: "What they said pleased the whole community."  Within the text, verse 5a might be quickly overlooked, a throwaway comment on the way toward a greater point.  I suspected, nevertheless, that in fact Hlobi had directed our eyes toward the very structural heart of the text--and thus the interpretive key to its message as a unit.

As I investigated the structure of Acts 6:1-7, I found an unmistakable inclusio, a two-part frame marking off the text as a distinct unit of thought.  The text begins by emphasizing that, "during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number" (6:1); it ends with a similar thought: "the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem" (6:7).  In other words, the inclusio in the text pertains to the growth of the church; the church moves from growth to growth.  Growth is the frame of the text.

This is not to say, however, that the growth of the church is something to be taken for granted, an inexorable harvest of increase until disciples of Jesus cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.  On the contrary, the growth of the church passes through many troubles and trials, progressions and recessions more akin to the tides crashing on the beach during the course of a day.  Thus we read that, "during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food" (6:1).  With an initial burst of growth comes conflict.  Precisely on the heels of triumph comes frustration.  The sailing of the church is not smooth.  As the disciples were increasing, the Hellenists were arguing against the Hebrews over the equality of care for widows.  The church increased; the church was dividing.

The conflict over equal care, a matter of justice, might have destroyed the church, fractured the hard-won work of Christ's cross which had broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Hebrew and Hellenist.  Instead, however, the conflict was an extension within the life of the church of the cross of its Lord, an opportunity to confront the powers of injustice and dispel them through perseverance in love for others.  So it was that "the twelve", the acknowledged leaders of the church, "called together the whole community of disciples" and proposed a distinct course of action toward justice (6:2, 3-4).  Their proposal--the appointment of deacons (servant leaders) to be responsible for the distribution of food to Hellenist and Hebrew alike--"pleased the whole community" (6:5a).  The community which the twelve had "called together" to discuss the problem of injustice was the same community which was "pleased" by the appointment of deacons.

One of Hlobi's main points, therefore, was that the transformation of the conflict, signaled in the story by the satisfaction of the "whole community" (v. 5a), was the involvement of the "whole community" in the decision-making process.  Because the twelve had "called together the whole community", the "whole community" was "pleased".  The solution to the problem belonged to the whole community as much as it belonged to the twelve.

In addition, we might add the following lessons from this text:

1. Don't rest on your laurels.  Times of frustration are bound to follow times of triumph.  Frustration need not have the final word, but the church will need to work through conflict.  In the positive, this might be expressed, in the parlance of the New Testament's apocalyptic texts, as the injunction to "Keep awake" or "Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints" (Mk 13:35, 37; Rev 13:10).

2. Growth is dependent upon maintenance.  The increase of the community is related to the health of the community.  The church's inner life affects its outer witness.  The life and processes of the community have a direct affect upon its capacity for attracting outsiders.  The church must thus attend to its inner life, to the maintaining of justice among its members, and to the spiritual practices that enable it to attend to the needs of members.  Thus the twelve were wise in not forsaking "the word of God in order to wait on tables" even as the "waiting on tables" through the appointment of deacons was the solution to the needs of its members.  Spirituality and justice are the requirements for lasting growth.

-Joe