Sacrifice is a troubling concept for many of us. And understandably so. Most of us aren’t used to the blood and guts involved in preparing the meat we eat. So animal sacrifice seems jarringly foreign—even primitive. And when we look at the violence of human sacrifice, our discomfort turns into (justifiable) disgust. How could Abraham even consider killing his son? How could God ask that of him? And today on Good Friday—where is the sense in Jesus’ bloody, gruesome sacrifice? How is that “good”? What kind of God demands a human life in order to forgive sins?
If that’s what this sacrifice stuff is about, then we want no part in it!
And that makes sense. It really does.
If we read the stories of Isaac or the crucifixion through this lens, it’s difficult to find the good news—the beauty in the story—the hope of something new.
But we can’t let the violence involved in sacrifice block our view of the bigger picture. Because sacrifice in biblical contexts wasn’t primarily about the bloodshed. “Do you think I drink the blood of goats?” God asks in the Psalms. No, of course not. Sacrifice in the Bible isn’t about violence and death. It’s most fundamentally about radical trust and surrender.
Sacrifice involves taking something precious—like the blood (the very life essence) of livestock we depend on—or the first fruits of a harvest that hasn’t been counted—and giving it to God. It involves releasing to God what we have in our hands, even before we know that there’s more on the way. It takes our usual mindset of scarcity and competition and turns it completely inside out. Sacrifice serves as a radical demonstration of faith—of trust—that God will be faithful to his promise—that he will give us enough—that he will always act in our best interest.
When we carry this in mind and look at the story of Abraham and Isaac, the sacrifice that God is asking for comes more into focus.
God is asking Abraham to trust that God’s promises to him will come true even if it seems impossible. God promised Abraham countless descendants, and—when it seemed like God had made an impossible promise—God gave Abraham and Sarah Isaac. Now God wants him to give up that very gift?! Taking away the only chance for Abraham to get what God promised him?!
And Isaac—the young boy trudging up Mount Moriah, carrying the wood for the pyre that’s supposed to burn him—we usually focus less on him, but he’s being asked for a demonstration of radical trust as well. “God will see to it,” his father tells him when he asks about the lamb. God is asking Isaac to be totally dependent on him—to trust that he will provide—despite all appearances to the contrary.
This faith—this life lived in trust of God’s continued goodness through all the darkness, misery, and despair the world may pile on—this faith is the basis of the covenant God makes with Abraham and his family—and with Israel his chosen people.
The early Jewish rabbis saw themselves as both Isaac and Abraham in this story.
God asks Israel for perfect trust—both in their suffering as the one being sacrificed and in their surrender as the one giving up the way to secure their own future. In the midst of the pillaging by empires, in the midst of famine, disease, and destruction, as they are stripped away from their homes, God asks Israel—as he asks Isaac—to trust in his faithfulness—to trust that God will guard and protect them—never let them go.
And he asks them—like Abraham—to let go of their instinct to save themselves through their own power—robbing the poor, exploiting the land, and selling themselves out to foreign rulers and gods. God asks them to trust that he will provide the future he has promised, because he has always been faithful.
This is the heart of sacrifice in the Bible—a demonstration, an embodied reminder, of radical trust in God. We humans are weak and prone to take matters into our own hands. And the Israelites weren’t any different from the rest of us on that front. But rather than renege on his promise, God taught them a rhythm of life that would show and cultivate the life of radical trust that he asked of them. Day by day and year by year, the priests and people offered the fruits of their labors, reorienting their lives to once again let go of their attempts to take control.
This is the centuries-deep backdrop for the scene of Jesus’ own sacrifice today. Today, here, on the Cross, Jesus is both the Lamb and the High Priest—he is both Isaac and Abraham—both the sacrifice and the one making the offering.
But this sacrifice is different. This isn’t just a human priest making a sacrifice in the temple to restore Israel’s relationship of trust with God for another year. This is God—the eternal Word—who made everything and has everything—but who chose to become a simple human being—to live as one of us—laughing, crying, eating, sleeping.
And he isn’t just offering up a lamb, the firstborn of a flock of sheep. He’s offering up himself—the firstborn of all Creation. He is an eternal priest, and he makes an eternal sacrifice. He accomplishes something that previous sacrifices could only ever approximate. As fully God and fully human—one of us—he offers the worship, sacrifice, the radical act of trust that God has called us to make from the beginning.
We face a different darkness in our lives now than the Israelites or Abraham and Isaac faced. The Mount Moriah that we’re hiking up in our lives has different terrain—different bleakness—different dangers. People are dying around us—from disease and violence and hunger. Many of us are wracked by loneliness and exhaustion. And our planet is groaning under the weight of our actions.
And yet—somehow—we’re called to trust in God to provide—God asks us to stop putting ourselves first at the expense of our neighbors, to stop grasping so tightly to what we have, and to trust that he will act in our best interests. I don’t know about you, but for me at least, this call to faith feels impossible much of the time—as the world’s doubts and darknesses pile on, one after another. We can’t live out the life of total trust that we’re called to by ourselves. Without help it is too much for us. It really is.
BUT! But—there is one who has all power.
And that’s why we must look to the Cross—today, tomorrow, and every day after. Jesus’ sacrifice—his perfect act of faithfulness—it isn’t just a model for us to follow—a fable or an example of how to live a moral life. Jesus accomplishes something here at a cosmic scale. His sacrifice is perfect—eternal—boundless in time and scope. He doesn’t do it just for himself or as an example for us to aspire to. He does it for us—in us—in our human nature.
His sacrifice provides for us perfectly because we can participate in him in a very real way—the most real way. Baptism—which we look forward to at the break of Easter—encloses us in this reality of Christ on the Cross. It enables us to make this proclamation of God’s faithfulness with our lives, trusting because God has kept his promises in Christ Jesus.
Water pours from his side—filling the font—burying us with him in this crucifixion moment—so that we might be raised with him at Easter.
Blood pours from his side—filling the chalice—nourishing us from this very sacrifice—so that we might participate in his intimate, his eternal, his perfect self-offering on the Cross.
So as we gaze on the Cross tonight, Sit in the depths of darkness with the High Priest and the Lamb. Know that you are wrapped in his act of perfect faithfulness. And invite that timeless confirmation of God’s love to seep into your very bones.
Amen.