Sacrifice is a word that we use lightly these days: try counting up how many times it occurs in our regular worship, or on the news and then pause to think about what it means to you when you hear or say it. Readers will remember that Alfred Agius wrote last month in Around Langley about human sacrifice, and what the sacrifice on Calvary means to the church. The origins of sacrifice, as a way of appeasing gods, do go back to the beginning of recorded history and it really makes for horrendous reading.
Christianity has at its core Jesus’ death on the cross, God accepting his death as a sacrifice to atone for the sin of the world. Furthermore, we celebrate his death and resurrection in our Communion. So it is worth exploring the origins of the concept of sacrifice a bit. Early in the Bible we read how Abraham was spared making a sacrifice of his son, Isaac; thereafter the practice of human sacrifice died out among his descendants.
However, animal sacrifices continued in the temple according to strict and detailed regulations set out in Leviticus. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest of Israel sacrificed a bull as an offering for his own sins – clearly much greater than those of the people, because only two goats were needed to deal with the collective sins of God's people! One goat was killed at the altar and offered as a blood sacrifice, while the other was the scapegoat, sent away to wander and in the wilderness saddled with a burden which represented the sins of the people.
The altars at the temple was where animal sacrifices were made as atonement for the sins of human beings. The priest who performed this would robe in his priestly vestments of fine linen and wash his hands before approaching the altar; there animals would be killed and offerings of blood and meat made. Any resemblance of all this to what we do in the church, especially at Holy Communion, strike you? The resemblance is of course entirely intentional... Indeed I have often wondered how puzzling the concept of Jesus ‘bearing the sin of the world’ must be to people of other cultures and faiths.
It was only in 71 AD, when the temple was destroyed yet again, that the practice of animal sacrifices eventually died out in Judaism. The temple in Jerusalem was nearly completed in Jesus’ day, and ritual sacrifices would have been part of the reality of his daily life, as we know from the incident at the temple when Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers. The narratives of the last supper are redolent with allusions to sacrifice including eating the flesh of the sacrificed animal (again specified in Leviticus).
A problem with all rituals is that while there are probably very good reasons why they were instituted, with time it is easy to forget what it is all about. The Old Testament prophets were very aware of the dangers of simply doing the rituals. Isaiah and Jeremiah spoke out against those who brought sacrifices but did not live in accord with the Law. The Prophets Amos, Hosea, Malachi... condemned sacrifices that were offered without a regeneration of the heart, that is, a determined turning from sin and returning to God by striving after righteousness. Jesus took this very much to heart as we see in his teachings.
With this as background, I would like to touch briefly on our Holy Communion service. The Hebrew, Arabic and I guess Aramaic, word for sacrifice is Qurban – in the community where I grew up my Syrian Orthodox friends went to church for the Holy Qurbana, meaning Holy Communion. As I alluded to earlier, the similarities between our rituals and the ancient sacrifices are striking.
But we have a paradox in the sacrament of Holy Communion. We think of Jesus as the high priest (whose job as we’ve noted was to kill the sacrificial animals and offer it to God) as well as being the sacrifice. Eucharistic Prayer C of Anglican Common Worship, based on the Book of Common Prayer, focuses on the priesthood of Christ and offers a resolution. The preface says, ‘For he is our great high priest, who has loosed us from our sins and has made us to be a royal priesthood to you...’ And then in the institution narrative, before we hear about the blessing of the bread and wine we have: ‘by his death upon the cross for our redemption, made there one oblation (or offering) of himself, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world’. Here was a high priest offering a sacrifice – but the sacrifice is of himself. That is what we celebrate week after week at Holy Communion.
And we are also a sacrifice. After communion we pray: “through him [Jesus] we offer [God] our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice”. Sacrifice literally means of course ‘made holy’. ‘Living Sacrifice’ is an idea that I find profound. I have reflected on it a lot: when going through difficult times myself and when seeing innocent people suffering unjustly. Does it simply mean that we live as ’holy people’? Maybe I can invite you also to reflect on what it means— to you.
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