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
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