Washed In The Blood

Maundy Thursday, 1999

My usual Sunday assumption, in dealing with you in sermons, is that you are all sinful, fallen, depraved.

However, if you will come out to worship on a Thursday night, well then you must not be all bad! Thursday evening piety ought to count for something, you're thinking. That you are feeling rather righteous, by being here tonight at table with Jesus, is proof positive of your unrighteousness.

Cockfighting is legal in Louisiana, and in four other states, though it is estimated that there are at least half a million cockfighting enthusiasts in this country. Cockfighting involves taking two rosters, specially, expensively bred to fight (all chickens are natural born killers), strapping surgical steel blades (gaffs) to their legs, putting them in a ring and watching as they slash one another to bits. Pent up for two days prior in total darkness, injected with testosterone (the feminists would love that), as well as vitamin K to make wounds clot quickly, it's pure blood sport. It often takes only a few minutes for one cock to kick and claw another to death, but sometimes the blood and feathers fly for half an hour. Not many cocks leave the ring alive, even the winners. Cockfight is a big part of the culture in the Philippines, in Bali, and Puerto Rico. George Washington and (of course) Andrew Jackson dearly loved the sport. Abe Lincoln was a cock fighting referee and when asked if cockfighting ought to be banned replied, "As long as God permits intelligent man created in his own image to fight in public and kill each other while the world looks on, it's not for me to deprive the chickens of the same "freedom."

It has been estimated that there are more cock fights today than at anytime in our nation's history. I know more on this subject than any Methodist preacher alive, having seen Western North Carolina's Professor Fredrick Hawley's dissertation on the subject. And we can be glad, you and I, that cockfighting is relegated to the realm of illegal, redneck recreation. It really is quite horrible what these ignorant people will watch.

Tyson Foods slaughters 1.3 million birds a week. We consume seven billion chickens a year. It now takes only about six weeks for an egg to roll down a conveyer belt, be incubated, hatched, and be a four pound victim whose feet have never hit dirt, to be hung up by the feet on a conveyer belt to be decapitated by a buzz saw. Of course, all this is kept from the sight of a people who so want to believe that we have risen above a taste for blood. Who are the chicken killers now?

Augustine (in De Ordine) tells of noticing a couple of barnyard cocks in bitter battle just outside his front door. "We chose to watch" he said. And Augustine noted his choice to watch as visible evidence of his sin.

"At least our birds live a pampered life and get to die heroically," said a cockfighter, "which is more than you can say for the ones you eat."

Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death) mocked modern humanity who lifted up his head, smacked his lips over a mountain of animal carcasses and proudly declared, "Life is good."

And so, in a classroom discussion about corporate greed, about the badness of multinational business, an honest student pointed to the Nikes he was wearing and said, "I'm guilty."

If only we could pin the sin on other people, some gaggle of grinning redneck fools clustered about a bloody pit. No, I had dinner tonight. I'm guilty. We are washed in the blood.

"The dragging death of a black man in Texas at least ended in a vindication of our belief in the American justice system with the conviction of that white supremacist monster," he said.

"That you think that rare in this country is a problem of white supremacist monster, is a vindication of my belief that America hasn't confronted the truth of racism," I said.

So when an alleged "theologian" at Union Seminary, New York declares "We don't need some man bleeding on a cross to save us," I say, "Well, I sure do."

Any God too good to get his hands a little bloody, unwilling to stoop, to suffer, can't do me much good, so deep is my self-deceit. We're all natural born killers, and I'm not just referring to the murder rate in New York. To get to us, to do something decisive about us, blood must be shed, for we are a very bloody lot. Our sin is a life-and-death matter. If we could contain our carnage to a few billion chickens, maybe we could be improved. But, God help us, we can't.

God help us.

A cup is lifted over a table filled with sinners, over the burned body of the sacrificial paschal lamb, Jesus turns to his disciples (who are also his betrayers) and gives us the good news, "This is my blood, poured out for you…for the remission of sin." Amen.

I have been helped, in this sermon by Burkhard Bilger, "Enter the Chicken: On the Bayou, Cockfighting Remains Undefeated," Harper's Magazine, March, 1999, pp. 48-57.

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