Scriptures: |
Romans 12:1-8 |
What do you think of when I say the word “sacrifice”? I know, I know, we are several weeks past Lent by now, which is that part of the liturgical year when we’re supposed to think about things like “sacrifice”. But just because we are a post-Easter people doesn’t mean that we can’t come back to significant elements of our faith from another time of the year. So, go on…take a moment. Get an image or a definition in your mind. My hunch is that if you are at all like me what you are thinking about now isn’t very pleasant – or at least not joyous. Sacrifice? Give something up. Sacrifice? Do something I didn’t really want to do. Sacrifice? Maybe even ala Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities go so far as giving up my life for a Charles Darnay – “’tis a far, far better thing I do…” and all that (terrible Ronald Colman impression).
For some reason the reading I’ve been doing lately – especially in The Christian Century and in a new book about how to understand C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia – has been focusing a lot on Christ’s sacrificial atonement. These authors are trying to look at new ways of getting at what this means, particularly the idea that God has sacrificed God’s only son. This is pretty heavy stuff. If you recall the mime that was done on Maundy Thursday, this re-enactment of the Passion Week heightened emotions in the congregation almost beyond relief. The mime was saying that Jesus dies – is sacrificed – so that we can live.
But despite feeling these emotions so intensely it’s hard, I think, for us really to identify with what is happening here. Rarely are any of us called on to sacrifice ourselves in the same way that Christ did. So, if when we think about sacrifice we think about giving up – even to the extent of giving up our lives – this is probably not a direction that is going to help us much on our spiritual journeys. We can give a nod to the idea of sacrifice as a virtue, but (our inner selves are saying) what practical value does it really have?
So, I want to see if we can’t come at this idea from a slightly different angle. Rather than think about the BIG sacrifice – Sydney Carton at the end of A Tale of Two Cities, say, or Mother Teresa giving up her life to serve the poor of Calcutta, or even Christ on the cross – what might it mean for our spiritual journeys to think about sacrifice at the micro level – and to see it as a positive?
In baseball, you know, a sacrifice is usually seen as a positive thing. When a batter moves a runner into scoring position with a sacrifice bunt, he (or she) has done his job and done it well. (In fact, sports commentators are often heard deploring the lost art of being able to put down a really good sacrifice bunt; in a day when so much emphasis is placed on the long ball, a batter who can execute a sacrifice bunt is lauded for his expertise.) Look in the dugout and you’ll see his teammates high-fiving him just as though he’d gotten an extra-base hit. And when there’s a runner on third and less than two outs a fly ball -- usually just an ordinary out – scores a run for your team. You are rewarded by being given a sacrifice fly and a run-batted-in – your batting average doesn’t suffer. In baseball a sacrifice is a small thing and yet it is valued and applauded – it helps to build runs and thus wins for your team.
Just so, in our daily lives we can seek out and do small sacrificial acts that build up others and thus the body of Christ. Stopping to assist someone even when we’re in a hurry. Lending a listening ear even when we’d rather be watching “Dancing With the Stars” or the latest reality show. Helping out on the bread run even if it means getting up early three mornings a week. There’s another word for this: such small, sacrificial acts are our service in the world. What was really happening to Jesus on the cross was that he was being of service to all of humankind.
That’s why the first verse of Romans 12 resonates so well for me, since it talks about what it means to be in Christ: “present your bodies as a living sacrifice…which is your spiritual worship,” as the NRSV translation that’s in your bulletins puts it. But the King James Version translates this last phrase, “which is your reasonable service”, and I think this is one of the few places where the King James English may have gotten it right more so than most modern translations, which is why I asked Ray to read from that version today (however, I’d forgotten how much non-inclusive language there was in the rest of that passage – but the key is the first verse). To present our bodies – which really means, our lives – as “living sacrifices” – that is, alive to the presence of God in the world and alive to the wonder and beauty that sacrificial living can bring – is indeed to be “in service” to God and others, and, yes, this does then become what the NRSV calls our “spiritual worship”.
“To present your bodies as a living sacrifice” is to be joyfully alive – to be living as post-Easter Christians. And just like the batter who lays down a perfect sacrifice bunt and is greeted with high-fives on his return to the dugout, we will experience these sacrifices as highs and joys, not as deprivations or the giving up of ourselves.
In ancient times it was thought that a sacrifice – a sacrificial lamb, as it were – was necessary to gain God’s favor. But even for those who wrote the Psalms this idea was beginning to turn around. Here’s the 40th Psalm: “Sacrificing and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear…. I delight to do your will, O my God.” And in the 51st Psalm: “For you have no delight in sacrifice…. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken…and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure, rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, then you will delight in right sacrifices…..” See how the Psalmist understands how serving others leads to a kind of sacrificial joy, which resonates with God’s chesed – God’s steadfast love.
The Hebraic idea of the sacrificial lamb – the scapegoat – was intended to show that we have the power. We use this power to thrust our sins upon others; that’s what being a scapegoat means. In the book of Leviticus (chapter 4) there’s a passage about when a ruler sins – whether intentionally or unintentionally – which says, “once the sin that he has committed is made known to him, he shall bring as his offering a male goat without blemish. He shall lay his hand on the head of the goat; it shall be slaughtered at the spot where the burnt offering is slaughtered before the Lord; it is a sin offering…. Thus the priest shall make atonement on his behalf for his sin, and he shall be forgiven.” (vs. 23-26) This is pretty common language which appears other places in the Hebrew scriptures.
And, in fact, despite the Psalmist’s protests of this kind of a sacrifice, both the idea and the practice of a sacrificial goat continued until the time of Jesus, and they were used to symbolize Jesus as the sacrificial lamb – the one who perfectly atones for our sins. Because he has been sacrificed for us, this kind of thinking goes, we no longer have to make sacrifices or find scapegoats. Rather, we can now offer what the Psalmist calls for as our own sacrifice: a contrite heart. This contrite heart, then, leads us directly to our “reasonable service”, our “spiritual worship”.
This turned view, then, of what it means to sacrifice oneself gives new meaning to Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one friends.” If each day is spent in looking for the small sacrificial acts that make up our “reasonable service”, our “spiritual worship”, then our whole lives become lives that we have laid down for our friends – which means for our neighbors, for one another, for the whole world. And this is a joyful thing! This is why Jesus here calls us “friends” and no longer “servants” or “masters”, because along with him we are each one of us on the journey – the journeys of our souls – and the milestones on the journey are those small sacrificial acts of service which are, in Jesus’ words, “the fruit that will last”. This is what it means to “love one another” as Christ has loved us – even unto death on a cross.
We have known in our own time as well as historically those who have sacrificed themselves for a cause. But Christ is talking here about individuals – the kind of commitment that is the sacrifice of one individual for another. This is the core of Christ’s sacrifice; he did not die for the “cause” of Christianity, not even for something so abstract as the “cause” of love. He died for individuals, women and men, you and me. Par Lagerkvist, in his novel Barabbas, tells the story of the man whom, quite literally, Christ died for – the man whom the crowd chose, asking Pilate to let him go free while Jesus is crucified. This fictional Barabbas asks the question which each of us should continually ask: “Christ died for me. Why me?” The answer is to be found in a love which did not hesitate at the necessity of sacrifice.
So, we can accept this sacrifice as one made for you and me and not simply in the abstract. We indicate this acceptance when we participate in communion.
Among the many things that communion has to do with it also has to do with sacrifice. When Jesus broke bread and drank wine with his disciples he knew that he was about to make a conscious sacrifice, and this sacrament, then, becomes our means for remembering the depth of that commitment. As they thought back on “this is my body” and “this is my blood”, the disciples had a beginning understanding of what it was he had done for them. Just so, as we take bread and cup this day we can begin to see how Christ’s act of sacrifice for us can play itself out in the acts of service that are our response each day to this sacrament.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
June 7, 2009