Washed in the blood of Jesus. That’s what our early hymns proclaim. We are washed in the blood of the Lamb, the blood of sacrifice, the blood of salvation, the cleansing blood of the messiah Jesus.

For most of us today that sounds like a rather strange concept. But then, when you think about it, so is partaking of the “body and blood” of Jesus as we celebrate what we know as Holy Communion.

In fact, this was a strange concept in the early church as well! Early Christians were in fact often called out for treacheries such as cannibalism and bodily aberration bordering on the macabre when people in the first century heard these words associated with the Blood of the Christ.

Only when disciples learned the “secrets” of the Christian faith would they understand what it meant to partake of t…