Sacred Blood Bonds: an ANZAC reflection
The Spirit is calling us to a deeper realisation of how much we need one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, this will reveal Jesus as the ultimate source of the mateship Australians so admire.
Personal Matters
As a WWII veteran my dad generally took part in ANZAC Day marches, and I knew for him the real power of that day was the mates he had made for life through their service together in PNG. Those who fought together never questioned they would stay close to the end of their days. The combination of service and sacrifice which marks the meaning of ANZAC seals a bond between brothers that is unbreakable. Whilst we happily celebrate Australia Day at home, in this 100th anniversary of Gallipoli you need to win a lottery to be on site for the commemorations. Celebration involves happiness but commemoration involves honour and respect. ANZAC Day alone is a national holiday with substance because it uniquely involves entry into the realm of the sacred. This should be a space where nation and Church deeply connect. In their relationships with one another Christians should image the unbreakable connection between God and humanity in Christ to which all true mateship ultimately points. Our divided denominational allegiances, church shopping and congregational splits clearly obscure such an unbreakable unity, but these are merely symptoms of a deeper lack. To use traditional language, our sacramental theology of grace needs radical renewal.
Sacred Time
Christians partake in the Lord’s Supper/Holy Communion/Mass/Eucharist in obedience to the command of Christ. “And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins…. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (Matt 26:27-28; 1 Cor 11:25). Whilst there are many competing theories about the nature of Christ’s presence in/through the Supper, a neglected dimension of sacramental theology concerns sacred time. Whenever we obey Christ’s command to remember him we enter into a sacred time that cannot be bounded by the world as we normally experience it. The starting point for this understanding is to recognise that the Last Supper was a Passover meal (Matt 26:17).
At the time of the exodus out of Egypt Passover was instituted by a blood sacrifice that directly involved every Hebrew family (Ex 12:1-28). It is commanded to be a “memorial day…throughout your generations” (v.14). When the people entered the Promised Land each generation was told at the annual Passover commemoration that it had been delivered from bondage in Egypt. Each generation is connected to the power of the unique saving event of the exodus by being taken back to the deliverance which founded the nation (Ex 13:8, 14; Deut 5:3; 6:20 ff; 16:3). Participation in the Passover preserved the identity of Israel as through it the people entered a sacred time where they were present to the original saving acts of God. How this temporal relocation could take place was never explained.
Christians gather at the Lord’s Supper to commemorate the new exodus out of sin and judgement through “Christ our Passover lamb… sacrificed for us” (1 Cor 5:7). Our “remembrance” of Jesus’ blood sacrifice takes us in the Spirit back to the sacred time of the crucifixion itself (Matt 26:27-28; 11:25). In the eyes of God we are at the time when Christ sheds his blood on the cross; but we are there with a new identity. We are no longer enemies for whom Christ died but surround the cross as brothers bound to him through the forgiveness his shed blood brings (John 20:17; Rom 5:10; Heb 2:10-12; 9:22). All the elements that characterise ANZAC, an epic event of suffering service founding a national identity, is present in the story commemorated in Passover and Eucharist. Everything that Australians admire about the unbreakable bonds of mateship forged by suffering for others is perfectly fulfilled in Christ’s blood sacrifice for us.
The Fellowship of Blood
Paul says of Communion, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a fellowship in the blood of Christ?” (1 Cor 10:16 cf. Mark 10:39). To take Christ’s cup together is to be united as one in the power of his original sacrifice Through this sacramental action we are present with Jesus in heaven where the power of Calvary indwells the victorious Lamb of God (Eph 2:6; Rev 5:6). Encompassed by the sacred time of the cross, in the Body of Christ we become great mates with the one Great Mate who shed his blood to give us all a new identity in the homeland of his Father (Heb 11:14). The bonds of Christian fellowship should point out to our compatriots that everything they hold sacred about the power of sacrificial service to create unbreakable bonds of friendship is amongst us in the Church. Mateship through suffering is a redemptive analogy in our culture imaging the power of the gospel to create lifelong relationships. This is true of the gospel, but it is not true of how we are living as Church. In our selfish individualism we seem blind to the testimony of the blood of Christ in our time. Our slaughtered and persecuted brethren from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria…are surely aware that they are indwelling a sacred time together “in Christ” where Jesus is incredibly near. Jesus will never be incredibly near in our churches until we embrace God’s word, “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Cor 12:26). Let us hear what the Spirit is saying on the 100th commemoration of ANZAC as we set nation and Church in parallel.
Conclusion
It is embarrassing to recognise that many pagans “get” the power of shared sacrifice more than Christians do! The soldiers who fought our wars knew how much they needed one another. On ANZAC Day our secular nation stops to sense an unbreakable relational bond in a sacred time that words cannot comprehend but the ode “we will remember them” seeks to express. Compared to this our Eucharistic remembrance of Jesus often seems pitifully powerless. We seem blind to notice that a lament-free celebration worship culture of our megachurches has smothered the sacramental grace of commemoration. The heroism of Australia’s wars testifies to the holy truth, ““Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.””, but the feeble quality of many Christian friendships testifies of the absence of the power of the shed blood of the Lamb (John 15:13) .
The Word from the Lord to his Aussie Church is sure, “You need one another like you have never needed one another before.” Perhaps through the centenary commemoration of ANZAC God in his great mercy will awaken the Australian Church to the fact that he is the true power and presence of everything we hold dear about the foundation of our nation’s identity. Perhaps Jesus will help us understand that he is everything any true Australian has ever aspired to be. It is surely time to acknowledge before our brothers and sisters in Christ how much we need them. Only through such humility will the one true Great Mate be revealed in our land (1 Cor 10:16>Ps 133:1, 3b).