We continue with Part Six in this series, written by May Tripp, founder of Animal Christian Concern, or ACC. If you have not read the previous posts you can find them here: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five. This article is included in the book, “Animal Welfare: Through The Cross, A Collection Of Animal Christian Concern Articles” by Roslyne Smith, and can be purchased here.
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PART SIX
Those who are servants of God have, “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” (Rev 7 v 14). The “blood of the Lamb”: shuddering, terrible words to a non-Christian vegetarian who does not understand their significance – they used to appal me. So, too, the words at the Eucharist: “We thank you for feeding us with the body and blood of your Son, Jesus Christ”. Even after I had returned to the Church, after much wandering through other faiths and philosophies, and once again called myself a Christian, for a long time I could not say these words. Not until I really knew Jesus could I say them, and love them. How difficult it is for ACC and for all of us here to take Christ to animal welfarists using such terminology. And yet the truth of these pictures is fundamental, totally essential to Christianity, for there can be no faith in Christ Jesus without the faith that His Cross has saved us from the consequences of the Fall, that He has saved the whole creation from eternal death and raised us into the eternal life of Redemption.
Christianity is not an ethic, not a philosophy of life, and Jesus was not and is not, a “good teacher”. He is a Saviour and Redeemer – or just a religious man who was deluded and eventually faced execution. The Gospels present us with no other option.
Contemporary rationalism, of course, would try to tell us otherwise, which is why rationalism is, and always has been, an enemy of the Gospel (1 Timothy 6 v 20). Of course it is not easy to believe all these supernatural and wonderful things about God sending His only Son to earth to reconcile us to Himself, for we all have feet of clay firmly planted in the world. Most of us have to take stock of our faith from time to time and say, “Is this really what I believe?” It is hard to keep faith and we cannot do it unless we remain, “on the vine”. (John 15 v 4) This is why we must be, “born again”, with new eyes to see the Kingdom of God, with new ears to hear God’s word, and then to open our hearts to Christ Jesus, so that He may make His home within us. (Rev 3 v 20). No, we do not easily hold fast to our faith and most of us need His encouragement and promptings as we stumble along, clutching our crosses with one hand and trailing our vines in the other.
All of us here, as individuals, are taking our walks with God and yet, even as animal welfarists, we all have our own different ideas. Take, for instance, the very basic argument as to whether or not we should keep companion animals. Some, like me, believe that these animals are life-savers for the lonely, as well as a bonus for children, and that they fulfil a happy and worthy role as companions. Also that, without them, city dwellers especially would lose touch with the animal world altogether and would be even less likely to think about animal suffering. But I have colleagues who would disagree and who would consider companion animals to be exploited and point to massive neglect. Even amongst ourselves we have to respect each other’s points of view. This is so with our Christian beliefs. And sometimes in our walk with Christ we are even called upon to make dramatic U-turns, and we see around us Roman Catholics becoming Pentecostalists, Anglicans becoming Roman Catholics; meat eaters becoming vegetarians and vegetarians having to become meat eaters; opponents of the ordination of women preparing to work and worship with women priests, and so on. Remember the Roman Catholics of old who were martyred for their faith, and the Protestants of old who were martyred for theirs, all of them believing themselves to be right, and all of them now honoured for their faith and courage. How crazy it all must seem to the non-Christian. Yet each one of us has an individual walk to take and what really matters is that we take it with integrity. For one day, in God’s good time, all our strivings and all our differences will be hallowed and reconciled by the Cross – which points in four different directions, to all corners of creation.
“For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in Heaven by making peace through His blood shed on the Cross…” (Colossians 1 v 19)
Stay tuned for part seven, the finale of “Through The Cross To The New Creation, The Church In Action”. For those who would like to read the entire article: THROUGH-THE-CROSS Article 10
Thank you for reading and following our blog; we hope you are blessed by our work! ~Kathy
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Janeen
Hi,
I have heard that Catholics believe they are eating the blood and body of Jesus. I think it’s called subtransation. My husband said its satanic. It was meant to be a symbol.
If it’s demonic we need to turn from that to the truth, simple goodness of the bible.
Kathy
Hi Janeen:
The links below go to a couple of great articles on the Sacrament that is Communion. At it’s simplest, Communion is a Sacrament (ceremony or act of the Christian Church that is regarded as an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual divine grace), and the Bible does instruct us in taking Communion, in remembrance of Jesus. Jesus Himself instructed the disciples in taking this bread and this cup in remembrance of Him. I think Pastor Jack Wellman does a good job of explaining in the quote from the article:
“When we acknowledge what the elements of the Sacraments are, we keep reminding the members [of the church body] that it was Jesus’ broken body that He willingly gave for the ungodly (Rom 5:6), and that His death on the cross reconciled wicked, sinful enemies of God (Rom 5:8, 10), so when we take Communion, we should do this in remembrance of Jesus, specifically on the cross.”
I think it is symbolic too; the Bible is saying that it is symbolic of the new covenant Jesus ushers in, of his death and resurrection, and when we accept Christ as Saviour, we are partaking in all that is Christ’s; we become his bride through the blood shed on the cross and through his body broken and bruised, defeating the devil’s work, taking our place in death in order to restore the created order for all creation – Christ defeats death itself, the consequence of sin (or separation for God). This is what we are remembering when we take Communion! It is a privilege and an honor! We recognize through Communion our becoming one with Christ, like we become one in marriage to our spouses. It is a very deep thing.
I would not be overly concerned myself about what the Catholics think; in a sense we are to think of it as eating the body and drinking the blood; we are participating in his death (symbolic for putting to death our corrupted flesh), and in drinking the blood (his blood that is shed represents life) we are partaking in the resurrected life that Christ is for us.
Love and blessings!! ~Kathy
Bible verses about Lord’s Supper or Communion
Janeen
Yes, the Protestants broke away from this transubstantiation of thinking it transforms into the real body and blood.
I think it is Wycliffe that felt it wasn’t biblical.
Yes communion is a good thing, but this was part of the reformation.
Carol Cole Flanagan
Imagine, if you will, the old shepherd who goes to the sheepfold one morning and discovers that during the night one of the ewes has died giving birth to a lamb. The shepherd now must care for the orphan who needs someone to nurse and care for it. Meanwhile, during the night, another ewe has given birth to a stillborn lamb. This presents a problem for the old shepherd because sheep can become depressed and the ewe may languish and die of a broken heart. The obvious thing to do is to pair the motherless lamb with the childless ewe. The problem is that sheep know their own young by smell and will not adopt orphans without some intervention on the part of the shepherd. What the old shepherds discovered long ago was that if you wash the orphan in the blood of the stillborn lamb, the ewe will accept the orphan as her own. In the world of shepherds and sheep, this is how adoption occurs.
Those old shepherds came to realize that we are like the orphans who can die for lack of sustenance. However, when Jesus was at supper with his disciples, and he took the cup and said, “This is my blood…” he identified himself with the stillborn lamb. When we are baptized and when we receive communion, through that wine we are washed in his blood. It conveys the reality to which it refers. And by it, we are adopted. We become sons and daughters of God. We are no longer at risk of losing our lives. We now have a relationship to nurture and sustain us. So when we speak of Christ as the Lamb of God, this is what we mean. He is the stillborn lamb whose blood provides for our adoption.
Kathy
Carol, thank you for sharing! This is well written and describes our adoption well. Blessings in Jesus! ~Kathy
nicolecorradoart
Reblogged this on Art by Nicole Corrado.
Kathy
Thank you Nicole for reblogging, appreciate you sharing as you do! Many blessings. <3