Stephen
Terry, Director
Jesus,
the Perfect Sacrifice
Commentary
for the February 26, 2022, Sabbath School Lesson
It is impossible for the blood of bulls
and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he
said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for
me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said,
'Here I am--it is written about me in the scroll--I have come to do your will, my
God.'" Hebrews 10:4-7, NIV
This week, the news carried the
story of ten stabbings in the New York City subway system and an additional
assault with an axe. If we treat one another with such brutality, how much more
so the defenseless animals in our care. When humanity was created, they were
given dominion over the earth and its animals.[i]
This was not to be a rulership of tyranny or abuse, but a kind and
compassionate benevolence personified by Jesus as the Good Shepherd, who would
give his life to save his sheep. We can still see manifestations of that
original relationship between humanity and the animal kingdom when we look into
the trusting, loving eyes of an animal we have cared for and nurtured from
birth. They have received only kindness and good things at our hands. We have
given them no reason to expect anything different. Then one day we walk into
their pen and lop their head from their body as though no relationship of trust
ever existed. One might justify this to feed their family, but for millennia
hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of animals have been slaughtered for
religious reasons.
Beginning with Abel, who
offered a lamb in sacrifice and continuing all the way to the destruction of
the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, the slaughter of animals has been strongly
associated with worship of God. The belief that this bloodshed was to somehow
compensate for our failings, our sins, kept the practice going.[ii]
But enigmatically, despite our faithfulness in destroying so many innocents in
our pursuit of righteousness, that righteousness eluded us. For if we had
achieved that end, the sacrifices would have no longer been necessary.[iii]
Instead, we came to view it as an easy out for our sins. In the hardness of our
hearts, we saw it like going to the confessional with a priest. It was not a
deterrent to sin and may even facilitate it as a ready purgative for any
feelings of guilt that may cause us sleepless nights. One might see how the
relationship between priest and parishioner could devolve in this way since
saying a few prayers and burning a few candles is a low price to pay for
transgression. That system causes little in the way of physical harm beyond
slight inconvenience to the priest or the one seeking absolution. However, that
is not the case with the wholesale and endless slaughter of animals to obtain
that absolution. While the people may have felt their guilt assuaged, at least
temporarily, by those sacrifices, those being sacrificed suffered great mortal
harm.
Abel may have felt the
horridness of sin when he sacrificed that lamb back at the beginning, but by
the time of Christ, the sacrifices had become perfunctory with little
recognition of either the suffering or the uselessness of it all as a
palliative for sin. It was not seen as sin's deterrent but simply as the price
to pay for normal relationships between people. Merchants still used cheating
measures. The wealthy still enslaved the poor. Crime did not end. But if they
cut God in on the action with a lamb or a goat from time to time, he was cool
with it, or so they thought. The priesthood had become so much a part of this
corruption they had become blind to God's will in all of this, even encouraging
corruption openly in the temple precincts.[iv] A
system that may have begun with seeking absolution before God became one that
sought the favor of the priesthood and provided an avenue for political power
for priests and for those wealthy among the people who sought influence and
political endorsement.
God did an end run around that
corrupt priesthood by calling his prophets to bring the people back to a proper
relationship to God and one another. Thanks to the perceived absolution offered
by sacrifices, they had lost the idea of love for one another and had become
indifferent to the idea of loving God beyond what they thought others or God
could do for them in the here and now. The idea of mercy and compassion died
out of hearts, and many suffered under the oppression of the few. The wealthy
felt that their wealth was proof of God's favor instead of evidence of
powerbrokers' gratitude for their contributions to support a corrupt system.
But the prophets, called directly by God, were often opposed by the priesthood,
persecuted, imprisoned, and even murdered by those whose power relied on that
corrupt system. Ironically, those who relied on those priestly sacrifices to
buy them respectability were not above the sacrificing of a prophet now and
then. Once upon that path, there was little incentive to demur even with the
Messiah in the crosshairs. Believing that his death was important for the
nation's survival,[v]
they had no idea of the import of that belief.
The prophet Hosea, writing in
the eighth century BC, told the people that God desired mercy, not sacrifice.[vi]
Jesus quoted the prophet twice per the gospels, but I suspect that it was
mentioned more often than that during the three and a half years Jesus
ministered to the people. Jesus also mentioned the hardness of people's hearts,[vii]
an indication of the need for compassion, mercy, and empathy. How sad that a
sacrificial system that was popularly understood to be palliative for the guilt
of sin could not instill compassion and love for one another. For this reason,
it was powerless to do anything about sin. Paul wrote in his letter to the
Roman church that "all have sinned,"[viii]
but the ongoing sacrifices at the Temple testified that the sinning never
stops. A quick fix via a butchered animal, in the end, was no fix at all.
Something more was needed.
Isaiah, a prophet in the next
generation after Hosea, also recognized the problem. He pointed out the irony
of those who had plenty giving up enjoying it with a fast and believing they
were doing good while ignoring those who were in dire need of what they were
capriciously giving up for God.[ix]
Sacrifice in any form that fails to secure justice and mercy for those
oppressed is at its foundation narcissistic, a belief that God must reward me
with his favor though I do nothing compassionate for another.
The prophet Amos in a passage
quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "...let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!" cries out against the
self-righteous who continue to oppress their fellows while believing they are
God's favorites.[x]
But those cries fell on mostly deaf ears as the wealthy looked to their
prosperity as proof of God's favor and could not entertain the idea that their
spiritual condition was more wretched than they believed.
This is all a cautionary tale
for us. We may have trouble seeing it because we know the sacrificial system at
the Temple ended almost two thousand years ago. While there are still
non-Christian cultures offering animal sacrifices, that is not us. But in our
blindness, we may fail to see the forest for the trees. We may be just as
guilty of presuming on the death of Jesus on Golgotha as the ancient Jews were
of presuming on those animal sacrifices. We may feel that because we identify
as Christian, everything is fine. We may be tempted to see all that we own as
proof of God's blessing rather than a temptation to fall. We can be tempted to
look down on those not similarly blessed as spiritually unclean and lacking
God's favor. We may state "Those who do not work should not eat,"[xi]
as we shut tight our heart's door to their need. God does not need our sacrifices
when we neglect mercy and compassion. As the Psalmist states "I have no need of
a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the
forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the
mountains, and the insects in the fields are mine. If I were hungry, I would
not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Do I eat the flesh
of bulls or drink the blood of goats?" (Psalm 50:9-13, NIV)
When we understand this, our
sacrifices for God seem infinitely small in his eyes compared to how great
those sacrifices for our neighbors appear. The blood of animals does nothing to
put us right about this. But the sacrifice of Christ opens the door to receive
the Holy Spirit.[xii]
Once that door is opened to our hearts, our stony, compassionless hearts can be
replaced with hearts of flesh, sensitive to the needs of humanity and what God
has provided us to serve that need. Through Christ, the Sprit can set us free
from the prison of selfishness we have built. May God grant us the ability to
see opportunities to extend mercy to one another.