Exodus 7:20-21: All the water that was in the Nile was turned to blood.  And the fish that were in the Nile died, and the Nile became foul, so that the Egyptians could not drink from the Nile.

As Pastor Sumpter has pointed out, when Moses turns the Nile to blood, it only makes visible what was already true.  Decades before Moses confronts Pharaoh, the Nile was heaped with corpses, the corpses of Hebrew infants.  It was already a river of blood.  The Egyptians cannot drink from the Nile now because they have been drinking Hebrew blood for a generation.

Throughout Scripture, God’s people are prohibited from “eating” or drinking blood.  Yahweh permits Noah to eat meat, but prohibits blood.  In Leviticus, we learn that the life of the flesh is in the blood, and that life-blood must be poured out on Yahweh’s altar.  When the early church considers the issue at the Council of Jerusalem, they conclude that the prohibition is still in place: Abstain from blood, they instruct converted Gentiles.

But here at the Lord’s table, that prohibition seems to be reversed.

Jesus gives us a cup of His wine-blood and commands us to drink.  When Jesus speaks this way during His ministry, the Jews are appalled.  How can this man give His blood to drink? they ask, and many followers abandon Jesus as a result.

What’s going on here?  The first reference to blood in Scripture provides a clue.  When Cain slew Abel, the earth opened its mouth to receive the blood of righteous Abel.  Having drunk innocent blood, the earth raised its voice in a cry for vengeance, just as the blood of Hebrew babies cries out against Egypt, just as the blood of the martyrs cries out against the harlot in the book of Revelation.

We are made of dust, and as God’s new “adamah,” the new land and ground and garden of God, we open our mouths to receive the blood of Jesus, the new Abel.  We receive Jesus’ blood so that we can cry with unutterable groanings for God to judge the earth.  As the blood of innocent Jesus soaks into us, we cry out for the Lord to avenge the blood of the innocent.  And He hears.

But that’s not the end of the story, because Jesus is not Abel and His blood is not merely a cry for vengeance.  His blood also cleanses and justifies; it is a cry for mercy and a seal of all the promises of God.  As we open our mouths to receive the blood of Jesus, we also become ground crying out for mercy and compassion, for a saving righteousness, for judgment unto life.

We drink blood at this table as a sign that we have come not to Sinai but to the heavenly Zion, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to sprinkled blood, which speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.