In less than one week, we will enter the season of Lent. Over the years, the season of Lent has grown to be a meaningful time for me as I contemplate the meaning and purpose of Jesus' life and ministry and intentionally seek to reorder my life and ministry around his. This year, I have the pleasure of preaching during Lent, both here at Emmanuel on Sundays and also at Concordia in Oakwood, our founding church, on Wednesday evenings. My series of messages is based on several themes of the Christian faith that for some of us may have become so familiar that we have lost the impact of what they meant to the first Christians, and thus we have lost the ability to reorder our lives, thoughts, and actions around them in a meaningful way.
Take the example of sacrifice. The New Testament book of Hebrews says this about Jesus, "so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people". But what is a sacrifice? The book of Hebrews talks about it a lot, so much so, that it almost seems to be in bad taste. It refers a bunch to the Old Testament book of Leviticus which goes on and on ad nauseum about how to sacrifice animals. I would venture to say that most of us reading this, myself included, have never seen a sacrifice of an animal, or have ever even seen an animal being slaughtered for any purpose. So this image of the sacrifice is somewhat lost on us. In addition to that, sacrifice in our culture today has become a sort of churchy word that we use to talk about how we should give money, or how our young people going off to war should live, our we use the term to justify the ridiculously low wages we pay church workers, because they are sacrificing to do the work of the Lord. So on the one hand, we have lost the image of what a sacrifice meant in Biblical times, and on the other hand, we may even have a picture of sacrifice as a tool used to manipulate people.
Anthropologists will tell us, however, that the notion of sacrifice is deeply rooted in the human existance. At the deepest levels, human beings feel the need to sacrifice. There are two ways this works. The first is the sacrifice of firstfruits, in recognition of a Creator who made and sustains all things. Taking part of the creation and offering it back to the Creator is a way of acknowledging God's claim on all things and our role: that is that I have no claim, no right, to act on or use Creation apart from the way that the Creator intended it be used. I am not free to go my own way in matters of finance, environment, family, relationships, etc, but rather I steward them all on behalf of the creator who gave them to me and with an eye and ear toward how He would have me steward them. I can't give anything to God. I can only recognize that all that I am and have is His and He has given it to me to steward for His glory in this generation.
The second, is that deep in the human psyche is the notion that when something is wrong, it must be made right. When someone is wronged by another, it must be set right. This standard behavior is found in every culture and society from modern civilization, to the most remote people groups in South America, Africa, and the Pacific Islands, and all throughout history. People everywhere know that a sacrifice for wrong must be made. And when it comes to being right with the creator, it involves giving of the whole self, mind, body, and soul. And we can't do it. So people all over the world, even in our own neighborhoods, even in our own homes - maybe even you - live with this burning need to be made right with God, and every time you try to do it, you find that it's like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, which I know is a cliche term, but if you've ever fallen and tried to use that method to get yourself up, you'll find it is impossible.
The Old Testament people of God were given the animal sacrifice as a picture of what it would take to be restored to God. It would take giving of the entire life to God. And every time a sacrifice was made, the people could watch and hear the animal scream as its life was taken away from it, and it fought and its blood splattered the ground and the priests and the stench of blood filled the nostrils and if they seriously examined themselves and their hearts they would have to say, "That should have been me." Every time I act in a manner that is in rebellion to my Creator, that should have been me.
Because it was God's will that humanity would give itself fully to the will of the creator. It was God's will that the human race would be like a priest for all creation, offering a life of worship and praise on behalf of all creation. Adam and Eve lost that chance when they chose to take creation into their own hands to become like God. So God sought to restore this life to humanity by choosing a nation for himself to be a nation of priests, the nation of Israel (see Exodus 19). But the nation sinned and built an idol with its hands. So God chose a tribe from within that people to be the priests of the nation. But the Levites failed in their duty, so God sent his son, Jesus, to be both priest and sacrifice for the whole world.
And in the final sacrifice of Jesus, all of humanity - reduced to one in the person of Jesus Christ - finally gave itself fully to its creator. Hebrews 10:11-12 says, "Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God."
And because of the sacrifice of Jesus, the true life that God intended for humanity is available freely to all. This priest and sacrifice calls us to follow him and know what it means to truly live both NOW and for eternity. May we grow to understand that even more this Lent season.
To God be the Glory! Amen.
(Photo: Stefan Wagner, trumpkin.de)
