For years I have made it a habit to donate blood. The process doesn’t take long and, who knows, maybe it helped save a life. I was trying to explain all this to my Granddaughter, Rachel, who is three. (You know it was inevitable that I would write something about my grandchildren.) I explained that sometimes when people are very sick, they need blood to get better. Some people share some of theirs to help them.

“Oh,” she said, “It is like when Grandpa Ed gave us the juice of Jesus’ blood.” I had to stop and think about that one. Then I remembered. My Dad assisted me with Holy Communion on Christmas Eve, and Rachel received Communion with her parents. Rachel taught me something.

We are now in Eastertide, the season when we celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord. It’s hard for some people to grasp how it was necessary for Jesus to die in order to save us. Some cannot explain how his blood cleanses us from our sins. Perhaps the similarities with donating blood can help explain it.

Without a blood transfusion, some people will die. Their condition may be the result of sickness or injury. It doesn’t matter, the need is the same. But it can’t be just anyone’s blood, it has to be a match. So the donor has to have the same type, and the quality of the blood supply has to be pure. Before I can donate blood, I have to fill out a questionnaire that few people would dare give a preacher. It’s not just about my health history, it’s about where I’ve been and with whom I have been. There are places in this world that are so contaminated with HIV and other diseases that just having been there will disqualify you from donating.

The questions about lifestyle are so explicit that when our youth group met to discus the topic of AIDS, I downloaded the blood donation standards from the Red Cross website. They read for themselves what the church has been saying all along. It matters a lot who you hang out with and what you do. People who live an impure lifestyle are prohibited from donating blood. And by the way, the purity of your blood is your donation to yourself.

Now consider another disease that requires blood for healing: sin. Your sin and mine is lethal for our souls. It is part of the human condition. We should be able to avoid it, but nobody does. There is no known cure in medical science, but there is hope. God has the cure and he’s already made it available. He became one of us so that his blood type would match ours. Not only that, the source is certified pure. The healing power of Christ’s blood reverses our sinful condition and makes it possible for us to live forever.

When we receive the “Juice of Jesus’ blood,” as my granddaughter would say, we accept the gift of life that Christ freely offers. We are healed, not through some kind of magic, but by the gift of God’s love freely offered and humbly accepted.

On the walls of the Red Cross Blood Donation Center are posters of people whose lives have been saved through transfusion. They thank those who donated blood for them. To me, it is a small thing. I barely feel it and it doesn’t take long. But there is a donor who gave in a way that was most painful and whose blood was purer than mine. The walls of all the buildings on earth could not hold the faces of the lives he saved, but if they could, would yours be one of them?

Rev. dennis P. Levin