Blood

Christ began His ministry turning water into wine and ended it turning wine into blood. The first was literal, the second was symbolic. We often use the word "blood" in a symbolic way. When we speak of family we say that blood is thicker than water. When we speak of inherited gifts we say, "It's in his blood." We say that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. We say the murderer has blood on his hands, but we do not necessarily mean that to be taken literally. Gain that comes at the price of human suffering we call blood money. In the Old Testament the blood of Abel cries out from the ground. In the New Testament, Pilate says he is free from the blood of Jesus, while the crowd says, "Let his blood be on us and on our children." It is, then, not surprising that the word has such rich symbolism in Christian hymns and in preaching.