The sacrificial reindeer of God

On Monday evening Alona, Yura's wife flew into town.  She is here for a few days for training for her administration job back up north.  For the few days of her course Yura and Alona are staying in a hotel paid for by her work on the far side of the city. They will come back to us for a few days later at the end of the week.

Alona brought a big hunk of reindeer meat with her from up north. Some of it is still in the freezer. It was mostly still frozen when she arrived.  Yura cut a chunk into thin strips while it was still frozen. I chopped up some onions. He  seasoned it with salt and pepper and the onions. He then fried it in oil.

We ended up with a large pile on a plate on our table. Dinner is served! Evenki people love their meat. In fact, by my reckoning most indigenous peoples in Siberia and North America eat more meat than anything else, or at least they need to for good health.

As we ate our meal we began to talk about the reindeer. The Tungus peoples have a traditional belief of there being a reindeer connected to each person. This reindeer can die if the person is in trouble. It is then seen that the reindeer was sacrificed for the person. These concepts date back to ancient times when all lived in the same part of the world and learnt about the spiritual principles of sacrifice.

We talked about Jesus being the Lamb of God. We said that although it is ok to refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God and that this makes sense in Israel or even Mongolia, that it makes more sense to refer to Jesus as the sacrificial reindeer of God. This makes sense for Evenki people, and in fact because they already have a traditional belief about reindeers being sacrificed it becomes an obvious redemptive analogy.

As we sat and talked further I got excited. We were discussing blood, and that blood has to be taken from the reindeer while it is still alive. Yura will not drink reindeer blood for this reason. I tend to agree, although it is a complicated issue. But he says that he will happily eat blood in the meat. I began to get excited as I looked at the meat and blood on the table that we had been eating (which was very rich and tasty by the way).  Jesus, when he had his last supper said "take and eat, this is my body.... and this is my blood.... do this in remembrance of me.... until I come again."  Is there any reason why this could not be our communion together?  We prayed together to thank Jesus for his death, sacrifice and resurrection and that we are waiting for his return.

Our first Evenki reindeer communion.