One Time Offer

When we walk into a grocery store we roll our cart over to the produce section and pick up some lovely vegetables and fruits. We do not think of the preparation and eating of this food as a sacrifice, but in a way it is. The vegetables were part of a living plant. The part we take from the display has been cut loose from the plant, separated from the roots, that you might benefit from its life. In some cases, the radish, the parsnip, and the carrot, it is the root itself that you purchase to give you life. Likewise, the dynamic is the same in the meat department. That which was a living animal is a sacrifice so you may take it as food and live. Life is taken, to extend your life. This is a kind of sacrifice.

Some ancient religions had ritual practices of animal and grain sacrifice to spiritually benefit the offerer or the collective cultus. So, whole burnt offerings, grain offerings, or some other forms, were made as a spiritual act so that life could be sustained. It is hard for me to understand but at its core, and in the most general terms, such an offering was to please God and to avoid the wrath of God. The food-producing people were making an offering of part of the produce so the things of life, including crops, flocks, and herds would thrive. The offering was made to make surer the continued life of the worshiping body.

The first chapter of Leviticus has a lot of instruction about how to conduct a sacrifice, but not much at all about the meaning of it. This is probably because the practice of “whole burnt offering” was already in existence since even more ancient times. We have scriptural examples of practices older than the Levitical instruction. We find the description of Noah, after the subsiding of the flood, making “burnt offerings” of all the clean animals in Genesis chapter 8. God instructs Abraham in Genesis 22 to offer his son Isaac, then tells him to stop and offer a ram instead.

With Christ comes an entirely new revelation about the saving life of God among the people of the earth. In the following first verse of an Easter Hymn, we hear the language of images from the Book of Revelation. The Lamb is on the throne of heaven, and there is singing from the faithful all around. The believers have somehow been washed by it all and nourished too. As you read it, notice especially the surprising mystery of what is offered, and who is doing the offering:

At the Lamb's high feast we sing
praise to our victorious King,
who has washed us in the tide
flowing from his pierced side;
praise we him whose love divine
gives his sacred Blood for wine,
gives his Body for the feast,
Christ the victim, Christ the priest.
(17th century Latin Hymn, Translated in the 19th century by Robert Campbell)

Singing this, we put forward a partial understanding that incoming within the human family and the earthly round, Christ was the ultimate priest making the ultimate sacrificial offering of himself. We come to glimpse that with this offering, Christ accomplished all for us, for all time. With this mystery held close to our hearts, the reading of this week’s Epistle lesson comes into focus. The one who writes the Letter to the Hebrews writes of a forever heavenly tent surpassing the greatness of tent of the children of Israel crossing the wilderness in Exodus. This perfect tent is the locus for the Sacrifice to end all sacrifices. It was an offering with immeasurable saving effect:

When Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God! (Hebrews 9:11-14)

We observe in creation that life is offered, and life is taken for the benefit of those receiving. It happens every hour of every day. Blades of grass give life to the grazing beast; small insects give life to the frog; on and on it goes. The Life that was offered to usher us into abundant and eternal life was that of Jesus Christ. That one gave his life, yet still, He lives. Alleluia!