This post is a continuation on Christianity's need for a Copernican revolution. At the center of all Christian teaching is one person, Jesus of Nazareth. Who Jesus was and is or wasn't and isn't is what this and other posts will explore. In this post, the concept of Jesus as a sacrifice and its impact on Western thinking and how the early Church's theology of Jesus' being a sacrifice shaped our understanding of Jesus will be briefly explored.
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The central thesis of all Christian theology is that God, out of love for the world, "sent" his Son, Jesus to become for us a sacrifice that would save us from our sins and that all who believe this will be saved and resurrected like Jesus on the "last day." This is the doctrine upon which the Christianity has been premised for more than two thousand years. From this premise other teachings about Jesus were derived like his virgin birth, his physical resurrection, his ascension into heaven, that he is the Messiah (the Christ), that he is both fully human and fully divine, that he is the second person of the Holy Trinity, and so on. These teachings form the soteriology (the salvation theology) of Christianity.
The question being raised in this post is whether any of the above is accurate or true? Specifically, was the whole meaning and purpose of Jesus' life was to be a sacrifice to pay the price of our sins or is there another way to understand Jesus?
Many books and articles have been written seeking to explain the "real" Jesus. The questions they raise are valid because we don't know a great deal about the historical Jesus apart from documents written decades after his crucifixion and explained him in terms of a theology premised on the notion that he died as the Son of God to save us from our sins and then resurrected.
The concept of human sacrifice in some form or another appears embedded in the human psyche as a necessary price to be paid to fend off some personal or cultural threat of evil or misfortune. This particular concept of sacrifice is as old as religion itself. Today, the concept of sacrifice is largely understood in a humanitarian sense, as a price paid in response to some evil or disaster caused by human failure or a natural catastrophe. It is as if sacrifice is treated as the primary form of currency in a cosmic or divine economy that we humans are bound to pay. While we don't practice deliberate animal or human sacrifice to fend off misfortune or as an atoning response for human failure, we tend to imbue the tragic deaths of those fighting wars, the victims of war, and, in particular, the heroic individuals who lose their lives in the act of trying to save other lives as being sacrifices; the price we pay to fend off greater misfortune or as a response to human failure on a grand scale.
THE PERSISTENCE OF SACRIFICE IN THE 21st CENTURY
I am working on this post on the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attack of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the attempted attack on the Capital in Washington, DC. Sacrifice was front and center as a result of that attack. Sacrifice is what motivated the terrorist who were willing to die and willing to take the lives of their victims for what they believed was a righteous cause to end the evils they attributed to Western culture. In response to that attack, there were many in the United States who lost (sacrificed) their lives in an attempt to save the lives of others; such as the firemen, police, first responders and many civilians who tried to save the lives of those who were victims of that attack.
Those who perpetrated those attacks are rightfully considered by most people in the world as misguided, radicalized terrorists who had no regard for their own lives or the lives of their victims. Still, for others, their act was a sacrifice to preserve a particular way of life. On the other hand, those who died saving others from the effect of their attack did so because of their commitment to save the lives of others. Ironically their heroic acts, are also considered sacrificial acts. Their acts are often spoken in terms of the price we, as a nation, have to pay in order to ensure our way of life, our freedom, liberty, and democracy.
What I want to underscore here, however, is that sacrifice, as the price paid to save another person's life is not what such heroes did. They did something far more extraordinary. Their selfless act of putting their lives on the line in order to preserve the lives of others was a sublime act of grace. Those who lost their lives; in such situations as those responding to the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, did not do so as a sacrifice, but rather as an act of immense caring concern and loving-kindness to those in immediate need; what, in the scriptures, is called mercy. Their actions gave testimony to their direct participation in the life-giving kenotic activity of God expending self in order to expand SELF; giving witness to the interconenctive bond of life we all share. Mercy, as we shall see supersedes any sense of sacrifice and mercy is always an act of grace.
CHRISTIANITY'S ASSOCIATION WITH SACRIFICE
Western culture is largely influenced by Christianity. The Western idea of sacrifice is clearly attached to the idea of a Christ-like understanding of sacrifice; as in, the purpose of Jesus' life was to die (be sacrificed) as a ransom (to pay the price) to save us (past, present, and future) from our sins or the effects thereof (i.e. eternal damnation). Broadly speaking, the Christian notion of Jesus' death as a sacrifice is viewed by Christians both as means of appeasing the wrath of God to fend off eternal damnation and as a deeply forgiving response to Jesus' willingness to pay the cost of our collective human failures (sin).
While appeasing the "righteous" wrath of God for our failures is in keeping with the ancient religious purpose of blood sacrifices, its renders the Christian and Jewish concept of a loving God as a capricious god whose wrath could only be appeased by the willing blood sacrifice of someone worthy enough, spotless enough, and sinless enough to pay the price exacted by such a god. The problem with this understanding is that by the time Jesus shows up on the historical landscape, the prophets and the psalmists of Israel had already discerned that God had no taste for blood sacrifices or burnt offerings of any kind; that what God really wants from us is our contrite hearts, humility, and exhibiting deep care for those in need. This is the God that Jesus called his Father.
Jesus never portrayed God as being anything other than loving, patient, and immensely forgiving. Jesus never talked about God in terms of demanding a sacrifice for our sins, much less a blood sacrifice. That Jesus "knew" he would die was not prophetic foresight, but rather an expression of his awareness of the perilous conditions of the time in which he lived and the danger of preaching something that challenged the religious authorities and the tenuous status quo of his day. Even though the notion that God did not demand burnt offerings (blood sacrifices) had been around for a long time in Judaism, sacrifice remained a central feature of Temple worship in Judaism. Human sacrifice, however, was never an option in Judaism. The very notion of human sacrifice was considered abhorrent to God. In fact, if one reads the speeches of Peter in Act 2 and 3, the earliest account of a disciple of Jesus talking about Jesus' death and resurrection to their fellow Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of the Pentecost and when speaking before the High Priest at his defense for speaking about Jesus, Jesus' death is never cast terms of being a sacrifice for sins. So how did Jesus' crucifixion come to be considered a sacrifice?
The simple answer is that Jesus' followers felt compelled to give Jesus' tragic death a meaning and a purpose, beyond simply having him suffer the persecutions and death of other prophets. In order to do so they scoured the Hebrew scriptures in order to find language that gave it a meaning and purpose, which they found mostly in the Book of Genesis, the Psalms, and in the Prophets. In particular they saw in the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, God's willingness to sacrifice his son; with Jesus becoming the substituted ram, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, according to John's Gospel. But is that what God required? God didn't require that of Abraham. In fact, the interpretation that Judaism provides for that event is wasn't about Abraham sacrificing Isaac, but rather a test of Abraham's faithfulness, to demonstrate God's faithfulness to what God promised Abraham, and to eradicate the idea of human sacrifice as a necessary means to appease God.
The notion that Jesus' death was a sacrifice to cover the sins of the world was not apparent in the earliest (pre-Pauline) days of Christianity as noted in Peter's preaching on his way to the Temple. In fact there appears an association between the Temple and the Church of Jerusalem in the early apostolic period before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD. Temple worship was practiced by those associated with the Church at Jerusalem, whose members considered themselves practicing Jews who followed Jesus and Jewish tradition. While this association is largely ignored in the New Testament we find strong evidence of this association in Acts 21 where the apostle Paul is directed by the elders of the Church in Jerusalem to undergo ritual purification in the Temple for misguiding Jews about not needing to circumcise Jewish male infants. He and those with him were to undergo some sort of atoning ritual and sacrifice for his perceived misconduct. Paul and his followers are depicted as heading to offer a sacrifice and undergoing a period of ritual purification. Their attempt to do so led to Paul being arrested by the Romans.
If Jesus' crucifixion was considered a sacrifice "once for all" as Paul claims, or as the Letter to the Hebrews (10:26) points out "If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left." If that is what all early Christians believed, what led Paul to agree to participate in a ritual purification rite and offering an atoning sacrifice in the Temple in Acts 21?
What we see are rather diverse accounts of early Christian thought on Jesus' death being defined as a sacrifice. The death of Jesus was disorientating to the early Jewish Christians. If the tragedy of Jesus' death was mitigated by being understood as the ultimate sacrifice that atoned for the sins of the world, why sacrifice at all? Why go to the Temple?
That the early Christian community within Jerusalem continued with Temple worship suggests that the earliest (pre-Pauline) followers of Jesus did not view Jesus' death as a sacrifice, but rather a grave injustice against God that was corrected by God resurrecting Jesus. Ironically, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Judaism largely abandoned the need for blood sacrifices and burnt offering and substituted other rituals. Ironically, the idea of Jesus being a blood sacrifice for the sins of the world, became the centerpiece of its theology and its liturgical and worship traditions.
If habits die hard, traditions die harder. The tradition of Holy Communion as a re-enactment or remembrance of the Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is engrained into the Christian mindset. It has given rise to the idea of sacrifice in the form of people being killed in war or for a righteous cause is a necessary price to pay fend off evil is an unquestioned factor used to justify war and mitigate the loss of loved one's who die as a result of trying to save the lives of others just like Jesus did.
JESUS ON SACRIFICE
Jesus' references to sacrifice in the Gospels is sparse. At no time does he talk about his death in terms of it being a sacrifice. He mentions sacrifice twice in the Gospels: He tells a man healed of leprosy to show himself to the priest and offer the prescribed sacrifice as testimony of his being healed in order for the healed leper to return to society (Mark 1:44) and in his referencing Hosea 6:6 twice in Mathew 9 and 12, where the prophet quotes God as saying, " I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
What appears to be interpreted as Jesus referencing self-sacrifice are his comments about talking up one's cross and following him Mathew 10 & 16, Mark 8, and Luke 9 and " No greater love is this, than a man lays down his life for his friends." John15:13. These statements have all been interpreted in the light of Jesus' crucifixion as implying sacrifice, but Jesus is not implying that we sacrifice. Jesus is talking about kenosis (acts of grace) putting aside one's self or emptying one's self in order to make room for the other, to participate God's life-giving kenotic act of creation, and orientating ourselves to God's original intent of creating us for the purpose of returning God's love by caring for (showing mercy) and loving that which God loves, all of creation.
Heroic acts in which a person puts aside one's self in order to save others are not sacrifices but rather redemptive, kenotic acts - acts of grace. They are not a payment or a price paid to appease, to fend off, or a response to someone or something as an act of atonement. They are simply freely given (debt-free). They exemplify the very definition of grace itself.
Jesus' death was not a sacrifice required by God. If Jesus crucifixion is to be viewed as a sacrifice, it was because the religious authorities and the Roman officials were convinced that it was better for one man to die (be sacrificed) as a means of fending off the risk of an open rebellion during the Feast of Passover. (See John 11:49)
The truth is that Jesus' crucifixion was a cruel injustice committed against a righteous man, who did not seek death or who personally viewed that his death was paying the price God demanded to forgive our sins, but who, according to the Gospel of Luke, in the midst of dying committed an act of mercy by forgiving those who caused his suffering and death, turning his death into a kenotic act and a redemptive act of sublime grace; precisely what God requires of all of us, to show mercy and not to engage in the bartering act of sacrifice. As a testimony to Jesus' righteous mercy, God, according to the all the Gospels, resurrected him.
Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
