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Today, we are thrilled to have Dr. Dave Jensen with us today. He'll be presenting. Dave is the professor in the Clarence N.

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and Betty B. Fireson Distinguished Chair of Reformed Theology here at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. His teaching and research focus on reformed theology, interfaith dialogue, and the interconnections between Christian theology and daily life. His talk today is about the elements of Christian faith.

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Flesh and blood, how appropriate for Halloween. Did you even think about that when you sketched? No, I did not know this was going to happen on Halloween. That's just perfect.

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That's just perfect. So the question being posed is, does Christian symbolism and language about blood perpetuate or subvert the patterns of blood and violence in our wider culture? So as we join him in this exploration of element of Christian faith that is central but it's often avoided because it just seems too bloody.

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We invite your questions after David finishes presenting. So you're always welcome to drop them in the chat in the meantime, just so you don't forget them. But we will have time for question and answer afterwards. So whether you jot them down, keep them in your head or put them in the chat, we welcome those questions.

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So I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Reverend Phil Dickey. I'm the director of Congregational Innovation here at Austin Seminary. I'm grateful to be here in lieu of Sean Watkins, who's typically here with us.

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So I love these conversations, love to be a part of them, and I always love anything Dave has to bring. So spooky Halloween, here we go. Turn it over to you, Dave.

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All right, thank you, Phil, and happy Halloween, everybody. I want to first say just thank you for taking time out of your day. Everybody has plenty of demands on their time. It is inspiring to me as a theological educator to see people take time out of their day to explore a little bit about Christian faith and

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My chief passion in life is teaching and reflecting on the Christian faith. And so let me just, I have a few slides that I'll be sharing with you, but let me talk first about how this project is emerging for me. It's motivated by a basic question, you know, how do we talk and live the Christian faith? Is our faith summarized by its beliefs, by its creeds, by its ethics?

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Or is it about all of that stuff? I think there are lots of ways of thinking and explaining the Christian faith and living it. But I also think we can also look at what I would call elements of Christian faith, or we might even call these symbols. I think one of the things that Christianity does quite powerfully is it takes some basic elements that are common to all human experience across culture, across history,

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and give them renewed meaning in and through Jesus Christ. And so this is, for me, this comes out of a conviction that the Christian faith is not about otherworldly things or even heavenly things. It's about things, people of this world and how God gives them renewed life and how God saves and redeems the things of this world. And so Christianity is about basic

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things. And so I'm currently writing a book that explores 6 symbols or elements, earth, wind, fire, water, flesh, and blood. And what I'm really going to touch on today is blood. I thought I had to do blood and flesh in one of these presentations, but I'm really just going to focus on blood.

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Maybe that's all the more powerful for Halloween. But here I'm going to now share my screen with you all and we'll get going. Okay, so share.

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Okay, and I want to make sure. Okay, can you all see that? All right, good. Okay, so blood, let's think about blood.

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This is a theme that most contemporary Protestants tend to avoid. But at the same time, there's a lot of fascination about blood in our wider culture, especially on this day. So blood repels and attracts.

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On the one hand, most of us find shed blood or spilled blood at least to be a little bit shocking. Some of us faint at the sight of blood. Or it might summon some good impulses within us to aid and assist. I don't, I donate blood once or twice a year.

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I don't like to look at the bag of blood that is swelling as I donate blood. Sometimes we've had blood drives at the seminary. I never look at the bag because I don't actually like the sight of blood. And I think that's common to a lot of people.

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But on the other hand, blood surrounds us in these days. The 20th century was one of the bloodiest of all human history because of war. There are wars continuing all over the globe today. And then think about how much blood and violence sells in American culture.

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Movies get bloodier. And so blood is complicated. It both repels and attracts us in a mysterious way. but it is basic to life.

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Without blood, after all, there is no life. So let's, without blood, there is no life. Let's think about the cross. You know, on the left, we have a crucifix with an image of the crucified Christ, and on the right, we have an empty cross.

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What does each one of these say? What does one mean without the other? There may be some good reasons for not becoming completely infatuated with blood. One critique of some forms of Christian piety is that it leaves Christ hanging on the cross, like on that image on the left, as if the resurrection did not occur.

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But on the other hand, if we ignore the the actual experience of the crucifixion in the image on the right, we may miss another important thing that the Christian faith wants to tell us. So I think there are some important ways that we might reclaim the centrality of blood for the Christian faith, and that is by focusing again on what happens with blood in the ministry of Jesus. How is his life

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an example of blood for the sake of life. And it comes down, I think, to two things, or at least two things that I would suggest help us recover a renewed sense of the meaning of blood. Sacrifice and solidarity. So first I'm going to talk about sacrifice and then I'll talk about solidarity.

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First, sacrifice. I want to explore a fairly common understandings of Christ's sacrifice that I think is not particularly helpful. It has its moments, it has its wisdom, but I'm going to suggest a slightly different understanding of sacrifice. But before I get there, I want to explore this common way of thinking about the blood of Jesus' sacrifice.

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It says something like this. People have always sacrificed, and the main reason that they make sacrifices is to appease God or to get right in God's graces again. And this is an understanding of sacrifice that predates Christianity by thousands and thousands of years. The formula goes something like this.

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We do bad things. The bad things that we do offend God. And then we express our remorse by sacrificing something of worth, an animal, a grain offering. We give up something that's of value to us.

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We sacrifice it. And then by making this sacrifice, God is satisfied and we get back in God's grace again. And maybe even in the process, our life is somehow changed. By giving something up, I

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express my desire to be reoriented to God and God's purposes. And many Christians saw this kind of pattern in the life of Jesus. What they saw in that life was something like this. Sacrifice was something that God requires.

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And some even said that God demanded a certain kind of sacrifice. And for sin, what was needed was the ultimate sacrifice. And the most famous example of this view.

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You can keep seeing these, I'm advancing slides and you can see them, right? Okay. Anselm is the most famous theologian in the Christian tradition who came up with this. Medieval theologian, late 11th century.

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He said that the sacrifice of Jesus was necessary because sin was infinitely serious. Here was his formula. This is kind of a simplified version of what he says, but it goes like this.

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God creates a perfect world. And when human beings sin, they take perfection away. It's like a stain on the perfection of the world. We are guilty of that sin.

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and we need to make amends for it. But the thing is, we cannot make amends because we are not, we cannot restore perfection. We are creatures, we're not divine. So we can't mend the damage that we've brought on creation.

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And so there is a need for one who is both fully divine and fully human to make the sacrifice on our behalf. And that is who Jesus is. And that's how The balances of the scales are reenacted, and so that is the meaning of Christ's sacrifice for Ansel.

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the strength of this understanding of sacrifice is that it takes sin seriously. It doesn't let you and me off the hook. But the weakness, I think, is in its depiction of God. That in the end, it is God who sends Jesus to the cross.

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It is God who demands some kind of sacrifice of God's Son. And it's a God I think, who in the end is even somewhat distant from the sacrifice that the Son makes. And so I want to mess with Anselm a little bit and suggest a different understanding of what sacrifice is.

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And it focuses not on God who sends Jesus to the cross, to some kind of bloody death, but it focuses instead on our responsibility. And so we're a revised understanding of sacrifice might look something like this. Sin is serious, but God sends the Son into the world to heal, to mend, to renew, and to forgive.

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And what happens is instead of welcoming this act of reconciliation, the world rejects the Son. The world's own violence and own tendency toward violence is what sends Christ to the cross. It's not the result of God's demand, it's a result of the violence of the sin-sick world, if you might say.

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So God says yes to the sinful world in sending Christ to the world, but the world responds violently even to this act of compassion and subjects Christ to a violent death. This is what the powers do that are bent on accumulating more and more power, that they invariably devolve into violence. And so Jesus submits to death, but overcomes it with the resurrection.

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And so in this view, sacrifice is not God's demand of Jesus, but Jesus' willingness to experience all of the effects of the sin of the world and to even turn that around and redeem it in the resurrection. So to cut to the chase, it's not God who sends Christ to the cross. It's the world's violence that sends Jesus to the cross, and it has a bloody end.

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But God in Christ overcomes even that. I think that's a more profound view of sacrifice that we might want to talk about at the end of our time. But let's turn to another dimension of what the blood of Christ, what human blood might mean.

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I think it means more than sacrifice. There is something about blood that also expresses solidarity. And for a better understanding of this, I think we can turn to a surprising place. And that is the book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament.

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Now, this is the book. that Christians actually are most prone to ignore because it's filled with the bedazzling number of rules that we believe no longer apply to us. And a lot of them don't. There are all kinds of regulations about how to dress, how the people of Israel are to eat, how they're to purify themselves.

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how to interact with Gentiles. So there are oodles and oodles of regulations and spinning out of the law for how the people, Israel, is to live in light of God's promises. And amid all of these rules are lots of regulations about the shedding of blood, how to slaughter animals, even where to put blood on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem. And so Leviticus

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among other things, focuses on how the priests of ancient Israel were to conduct the sacrifices of the people. And so what you have here on the left is a photo of contemporary Jerusalem where that long wall, you have the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest site in Islam there with the golden dome, it's a mosque. And then you have kind of straight ahead, you have the remnants of the Temple Mount of the faith of ancient Israel.

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And on the right, it's all that remains of the last of the Second Temple. And on the right is a kind of artistic rendition of what we think the Temple in Jerusalem looked like when it was in use. And so the religious life of Israel Ancient Israel centered on the temple in Jerusalem.

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And I'm not going to get into the lengthy history of that, but that changes in the year 70 when the Second Temple is destroyed by the Romans. And then after that, the faith moves into more of a synagogue organization than being centered on the temple and the temple sacrifice. But I think there's something interesting about the regulations of the shedding of blood in Leviticus, the sacrifices that the priests and the people of Israel made in the temple. And I want to give you a quote from a modern rabbi whose comment, his name is Daniel Pressman, and he's commenting on all these regulations about blood in the book of Leviticus and what do they say.

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And he says an interesting thing. He says, these regulations about blood in Leviticus show us that creation and sacrifice are linked. Creation produces life. Sacrifice takes life.

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When we take animals' lives in order to support our own, we should remember that both their lives and ours are part of a common creation and that both are treated in Torah, in Jewish law, as sacred. Now, I love that quote because it kind of, to me, it forces me to think, these regulations about blood in the Old Testament are not just relics of ancient practices that no longer, we no longer do today, neither in Judaism nor Christianity, but they might say something about our connection to other creatures. other non-human creatures.

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The practice of sacrificing animals actually shows that our lives are bound up with theirs. And I want to, and I think that's something that particularly in Western societies, and maybe particularly in the US, we've forgotten. I'm going to, this next slide shows something that I think is rather graphic and shocking about our American history over the last 150 years.

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On the right, you have the American bison, which used to roam the plains in millions upon millions upon millions. The bison was the center of, in many ways, Native American spiritual and physical life. And then as European settlement expanded to the West, what the European mind saw was a resource to be harvested and to be harvested mainly for its pelt or skin rather than its meat.

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And so what you have on the left is an unbelievable photo of a huge mound of bison skulls that just represents a small portion of the decimation of the American bison. And what you have in here is basically seeing another creature as a commodity to be exploited rather than someone we are related to in some deeply mysterious way. And then that makes me think, you know, most of us, I'm not a vegetarian.

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I don't even try to be. I get my meat in a shrink-wrap package at the local grocery store, were rather removed from the lives of the creatures that somehow give me a portion of their life, right? Meat has become a commodity in modern Western societies, rather than a reminder of our connection to other creatures.

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I'm told that the native American peoples of the plains used every aspect of the bison for, not a stitch was wasted. The tendons were used to make strings for the bows, the pelts for clothing, or for their own shelter. Every part of the animal was eaten, that was edible.

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The Levitical practice of the Old Testament made, I think, the peoples of Israel rather unique. Unlike people of the modern West, the people of Israel recognized the subjectivity of animals. Any taking of their life needed to involve some aspect of our own thanksgiving.

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And so sacrifice, the practice of sacrifice, actually puts us face to face with other creatures. People who are farmers, people who are ranchers will tell you that. A relationship develops between the rancher and the cattle or the sheep that they're raising, even when they're slaughtered, right? And so I think the practice of some of these rituals around in blood remind us of our connection to these other creatures.

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It shows our solidarity and connection to other animals. Their blood, after all, looks a lot like ours. And for our lives to continue, even if we're vegetarian, other forms of life are lost.

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Even when I, even if I take uproot a carrot, I'm ending the life of that particular plant. Okay, so most, even most forms of vegetarianism, there is some form of recognizing that my life is bound up with others giving up their lives in some way, even if it's the life of a carrot plant. But here's another thing that I think the practices of ancient Israel remind us.

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Solidarity is also celebration. The temple sacrifices of ancient Israel were family affairs. People who brought animals to sacrifice shared the sacrifice with others.

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So in our culture, we've become accustomed to eating meat on an almost daily basis. But in ancient societies, meat was chiefly reserved for special occasions, holy days, and so on. And so sharing a feast, I think for us Christians, anticipates what we might call the messianic age. a meal that invites all to the table, where the lines between haves and have-nots, where between families and strangers slowly starts to break down.

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And so when we see the blood of Jesus, all of this, I hope, might become apparent. His blood is our blood. His life is in solidarity with ours. And His life is meant for the joy

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and celebration of all the world. It reconciles and unites, and this is why his shedding of blood also can be a form of celebration. Now, there are a couple consequences to this. I think, at best, we see in what happens with Jesus' blood, a demonstration of the solidarity

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of all life across the lines that often divide us. Blood unites us with one another. Human blood, at least on a macroscopic level, looks identical across lines of culture, race, ethnicity, whatever. And even on the microscopic level, most of us can share each other's blood.

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That's why we donate blood. That's why it's necessary for the continuation of life. And even animal blood looks strikingly like ours, at least on the, upon first brush. And so blood reminds us of how we are connected to other living creatures.

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It flows and courses through reptiles, birds, fish, mammals. And when most of us see blood, we can't but help to notice. And so I think Israel's temple practice and Christian liturgical practice remind us that all blood belongs to God because all life comes from God.

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And then finally, I think this calls us to think about the central Christian sacrament, the Lord's Supper. Here is how the Gospel of Matthew records part of what happens there in the institution of the Lord's Supper. Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus shares his blood with us.

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And in sharing it, he gives us life. And we see in the life of Jesus a life that seeks others' flourishing. So when Jesus shares his blood with us, we are called to share it with each other.

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And the life of Jesus, I think, is one of constant intermingling. Jesus associates with those whom he's told he shouldn't associate with, mixes his life with people from other places. He makes room for all at the table where we take part in Christ's blood. And this mingling of blood in our vocabulary means in the end that there is no stranger to the Christian life.

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And perhaps this is the theme that we've missed more than any other in our history. The span of the church's history can often seem like a vigilant policing of ties of association, right? Who we can marry, who we shouldn't marry, who we can associate with or shouldn't associate with, and so on and so on.

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But I think the dynamic of the Lord's Supper stresses the mingling and sharing of blood rather than policing it. There's always room for one more at the table, no matter how many are gathered around it, and that sharing and giving, rather than keeping and hoarding, define the customs of the meal. So whenever we share this meal, we receive blood as a gift, a gift that gives life. And so when we are fed and nourished at Christ's table, we respond by mingling our lives and mingling our blood with others.

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Only in the sharing of blood, only in the mixing of blood, do we receive that life, at least in the Christian view. So that's what I've got. And Now we've got time to think, talk together.

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Let me stop sharing my screen and we will have time to journey together. Yeah, thank you, Dave. So if you're in a space where you can't unmute yourself, then you're welcome to type in the chat and I'd be happy to read it for you. Otherwise, you're welcome to unmute, raise your hand if you want to, but there's enough of us here, we can just unmute and just join in the conversation.

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So The table, if you will, is open. Dave, thank you so much for this. I really, really enjoyed it.

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I don't get to often hear, one, I don't get to hear a lot about Anselm. Right. His views. I wasn't aware of that.

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was really interesting. So the part, initially it sounds like you're working on this for a book too, or as part of the book that you're doing. Right, Okay. So a couple of things.

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One, I have a question and then I may just share some things that you may have already looked at that might be helpful for your book too. I'd love that. I'd love that. So my first question is, on one of your early slides, you mentioned, which I like the idea, I'm trying to remember how you had it on your slide, that Jesus is executed, this sense of sacrifice is because

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the world essentially rejected him. So it's not so much of God the Father sending him to die. Right. But it's more, this is a response to the world.

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Yeah. So one, the question that I have, which I think will be a nice piece for you to touch on in your book, if you have space, is some of those passages where at least Jesus is depicted as saying, I came to give my life as though this is part of the divine plan. Right.

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And not so much that he dies because of the world's response, but it's more of I'm coming to do this. Yes. And we've got this sense of nobody takes my life.

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Right. I'm the one that's giving it. So that's one question. If we're looking at the sense, and I can follow, I do follow you on, you know, the world is reacting to him in some sense.

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Maybe it's not just an all totally fated thing. He needed people to actually execute him. Right. So I'll just pause and just say,

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That's one question. Is that something that you would touch on in your book, those passages that seem to push as though this is part of the good? Right. Wonderful, Rod.

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And I in no way want to undercut the idea that Jesus doesn't willingly undergo all of the whole trajectory of what we see transpiring in the New Testament. And I think also, I'm reminded of Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, at least how John describes it, right? And there's a, father, if it possible, let this pass from me, but not my will, but yours, right?

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So there's, I think, wrestling that Jesus undergoes in that, but also as a willingness to undergo, and so I guess I would read those passages as, again, not stemming from the demands of God the Father, but God the Father sending the Son in a sense, knowing that the world is going to react in this way. So I think you can still see it unfolding according to divine wisdom or divine plan, but it's not a, relentless demand of God.

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It's just stemming from God's knowledge of how the world's going to respond to this incredible act of compassion, I guess. But I'd love to talk to you more. more about how you think about those passages as well. I mean, I guess as a theologian, I'm worried in the end about how Anselm winds up portraying God, right?

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I mean, and it seems like a God who's actually quite distant from the experience of Jesus. And in some And Selmon, it almost borders on a cruelty kind of thing, which doesn't seem consistent with the God of the broad trajectory of Scripture. So, but, and I know you're also, you have a lot of understanding, or at least some understanding of Second Temple Judaism and so on.

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And I mean, I'd love what you think about how I wrestled with the Leviticus material and what, you know, I thought that was great. I started to light up as soon as you put up your tempo and everything. Yeah, those are really good points.

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And I'll follow up, but I want to open the floor and give other people a shout. Yeah. I might just intervene on the kind of atonement theories. And I think insomes obviously had such an important

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influence on what the kind of common view is. And I will say, having spent 16 years working in local churches, every time I taught on the various atonement theories, it like, you can just see people's heads like just not, I mean, they don't know what to do with it because they always assumed there was one. doctrine, right? Like when I tell people like these are theories and there's a multitude of them because they differ based on which gospel you're reading, which aspect the gospel is portraying from the Hebrew text as well.

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And so, yeah, I think Dr. Carruthers, you're really pulling from like the Johannine version of Jesus very much being in control. But I think if you look at the Lucan version, it's very much more where the blame seems to get put more on the world and the participants of the world and less so, and almost more Jesus being kind of the victim of that aspect of it.

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And so even just the stark contrast that we get in the gospels, I think is really enlightening. And there's a lot to be teased out, especially kind of from the lay perspective of it. Like people just don't have these conversations very often, right? Like that first, like

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formulaic view you put on there, Dave, I think is very much so the common view, typically what people will have, whether they grew up in a more mainline Protestant setting or whether they didn't. That just is the kind of pervasive societal understanding. And so I think there's a lot to tease out, especially practically speaking of whether it's comparing and contrasting the various views we get in the text or just reminding people that these are theories, they are not doctrines for a reason. Yeah.

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and it's interesting, just one riff on that, Phil. I mean, I'm so thankful there are four gospels, right? Because I mean, because there's something about, I'm just amazed that the early church did that because, and part of how I read that is that this story demands more than one perspective on it, or more than one narrator, right?

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It's, and, because it is such a grand story, and so there have been all these attempts over time to harmonize every single verse of every single gospel. And that's not the point. I think the folks who came up with a canon realized that, you know, that the point is not harmonization. The point is this, what happens in Christ is evocative of

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all of this, So, and which, I'm just thinking of this now, Rod, which gospel ends and they were in the temple every day rejoicing? Is that Matthew? I'm thinking, I was thinking you're talking about Acts. Yeah.

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Well, maybe. Right, but I mean, there is, the, after Jesus' resurrection, there's this movement, at least in one of the gospels, back to the temple, which is another striking kind of. This is a strong one in Acts, yeah, after his ascension. The whole idea is Peter gives his sermon, if you will, and all these people join and they say, hey, they shared everything together and they're continually in the temple.

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praying, so they continue some form of Judaism. Right. But now with this belief. Right.

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Is it just the three of us? Well, yeah, if anyone else would love, if you want a question to ask, again, you can put it in the chat, or if you want to just turn your video on and jump on here, we'd welcome other questions as well. Otherwise, we might get really in the weeds here before too long. Be careful of three people who work at a seminary to just...

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For sure. Then again, if there's no protest, then maybe we just go real deep in that. There's always space. Dave, just a quick question for your book.

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Will, do you know, will you be dealing with any of the ideas? I loved how you brought out Leviticus, these ideas of, in the solid, how did you say, I don't know if you said solidarity between the animals and human life. this sense of life is in the blood. So don't, you can sacrifice this animal, but don't eat or ingest the blood in some way because life.

00:39:15.440 - 00:39:33.600

Yeah, That's an interesting thing. I mean, yeah. It's fascinating to me also, you know, another thing that one of the other regulations of Leviticus is, you know, refraining from consuming blood.

00:39:33.840 - 00:40:01.120

I mean, that's why still to this day, kosher butchers, there are regulations about how animals are slaughtered and where the blood goes and so on. And it's, I see that, you know, there's one Christian Reed of that goes like this. That's that stuff that those people did a long time ago and that no longer applies to us. But I think deep, deeper

00:40:01.520 - 00:40:51.440

behind that is a reverence for life, right? A deeper reverence for these creatures than we've been schooled in, basically. You know, and I think this has implications for ethics, you know, the ethics of factory farming and this kind of stuff, you know, and so it's just, yeah. So I'm going to try to touch on that stuff in this book project too, and I think that, our eating in some small way should always evoke Thanksgiving, right?

00:40:51.840 - 00:41:24.880

I mean, I just think that's, eating is such a basic I mean, it's necessary for life without, we can't go very long with it. But, and so therefore, how are we standing in relationship even to the plants that we consume, right? I mean, it's just, and you don't have to do that in a ham-handed way, but just, there's something about these ancient practices that I think still are quite powerful in evoking relationship, you know, and reverence for other forms of life.

00:41:26.320 - 00:41:52.560

Yeah, I was just, I really loved your point on how our life is sustained. Yes. By the giving of these other lives and then also what you said with the vegetables and things of this sort, the carrots life has to end in order to support our life. But that sense of blood

00:41:52.880 - 00:42:19.360

back to, for your book, the sense of blood being needed, one life that gives to our life. I thought that'll be a really great point for solidarity in your book. Yeah. And the reason I showed that photo of the American bison in that, I mean, if you want an example, it's the polar opposite.

00:42:19.720 - 00:42:45.200

of that. I think it's, at least on the American continent, it'd be the mass almost near extinction of the bison, where, from millions upon millions to almost to near extinction. And actually, I'd love to give a shout out. There's a great PBS two-part documentary on the American bison.

00:42:45.200 - 00:43:05.360

It just got released. I think in the spring last year, it's really worth seeing. these buffalo bounty hunters would go out and slaughter thousands upon thousands A day. And then sometimes they'd only take like the tongue of the bison.

00:43:06.080 - 00:43:37.120

They wouldn't even bother because they're obviously seen as some kind of elixir for something. And maybe the part of the pelt and then leave the rest rotting on the prairie. And so you had just this, that's the ultimate commodification of some other living creature that just, treated without reverence, And so I thought that stood as a really interesting contrast to practice of Levitical sacrifice.

00:43:37.440 - 00:44:02.000

Yeah, I don't know if they mentioned this in the PBS special, but We had a chance to interview an indigenous author recently, and she was talking about the direct line that research has shown between the near extinction of the bison and what it led to the Dust Bowl because of the biodiversification that the American bison had. And so it's back to that kind of like cyclical aspect of like, what is it, symbiotic? chaotic relationship, whatever, right?

00:44:02.000 - 00:44:21.200

If we take that out of the mix of it, then that actually led to the buffalo grass, I think is what it's actually called. Is it buffalo grass? I think that's what it is. Like devastating, like being lost in, which has deeper roots, which then made for poorer soil, which like the whole cycle that like led then to what we got to the Dust Bowl and people, you know, nearly starving because of that, right?

00:44:21.360 - 00:44:36.240

Yeah, Like it just all hangs in such a very delicate balance. Yep. That was such a powerful image. I was just curious, the one on the left that had the bison bones or skulls.

00:44:36.880 - 00:44:46.680

Skulls. What was going on? Was that just a pile of them or what was going on with that? Yeah, it was just, you know, so they'd leave these carcasses rotting on the prairie.

00:44:46.680 - 00:45:24.000

And then once they got consumed by, decomposed, what was left were the bones. And then for a while, even the bones were harvested for other things. But a lot of, to me, part of that picture was also just look at what we've conquered here, right? I mean, it's kind of the ultimate settler hubris kind of mentality of, this is the power of, a few people with guns can

00:45:24.480 - 00:45:48.520

unleash this, right? I know it's a totally different context, but just seeing that image, because it was so many skulls piled up and stacked up like that, it made me think, and I can't think of the name of it right now, but it made me think of that one church that has all those skulls that are part of its architecture. Where is that? I can't remember right now.

00:45:49.440 - 00:45:59.120

An image popped in my head, but it's a very well-known Yeah. Thinking maybe medieval or ancient church that has all these skulls. That's right.

00:46:04.800 - 00:46:13.160

Well, a quick Google search says it's in the Czech Republic. Interesting. Sedlec Ossuary. I don't know.

00:46:13.160 - 00:46:15.200

Ossuary. Ossuary, yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

00:46:15.680 - 00:46:21.120

Church of the Bones is what it's referred to. I had never heard of that. That's the one. There you go.

00:46:21.400 - 00:46:41.440

There you go. if no other questions from the rest of our gatherers here, we'll let everybody out a little bit early then, I guess. Dave, any kind of final thoughts or anything you want to wrap up on? No, I just, I mean, I guess if there's one word I'd like to end with, it's relationship.

00:46:41.520 - 00:47:03.040

You know, I think at the end of the day, blood teaches us about our relationship to other human beings and other creatures. And that's part of the good news. Right. And that as we mix and mingle, we are taking part in some of what it means to be sharing in Christ's blood.

00:47:03.680 - 00:47:08.880

So. But we look forward for your forthcoming book. Did you give us a date? When's it coming?

00:47:08.880 - 00:47:13.680

Do we have that? It's the manuscript's due in June. So no, got it. So.

00:47:14.400 - 00:47:33.840

Well, we are grateful for your wisdom and for you sharing with us today. We hope you come back next week. We will have Sean Watkins, the Associate Dean of Lifelong Learning here at Austin Seminary. He'll share his insights on cultural core concerns, issues specific to individual ethnic groups, in an effort to help heal the racial divides in our nation and around the world.

00:47:33.840 - 00:47:46.320

So same time, same place. We hope you come back. And again, Dave, thanks so much for your conversation and for all of you joining today. As you said, as you opened us with, we know time is valuable and we pray that this was a meaningful use of your time.

00:47:46.720 - 00:47:48.480

Go forth in peace. Bless.