An Open Table where Love knows no borders

Sacrifices That Please God

A sermon on Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 by Nathan Nettleton

It would be nice to think that human sacrifice was a thing of the distant past, but unfortunately it is still very very common. In the past few weeks, Australia has sacrificed a couple more of its young men in Afghanistan, and they don’t tell us how many Afghani men, women and children they sacrificed in the same period, and we still have almost no idea to what end they are being sacrificed there. It seems to be a war without purpose and without end, but we continue offering up sacrifices in its name. The idea that human beings continue to be sacrificed in war is probably no surprise to you, but if I said that human beings continue to be sacrificed in the name of religion, and even in the name of Christianity, you might be rather more surprised.

Human sacrifice does not only happen by putting someone on an altar and killing them, but sometimes the consequences are nearly as destructive. The most common form of human sacrifice in Christian churches is to amputate a person from the community in order to purify the community, and it is done on the understanding that God will be more honoured and pleased by the more pure community that results. Just as you might give up some bad behaviour or habit in order to purify yourself and thus please God, so churches “give up” some less desirable people in order to purify themselves and thus please God.

This form of human sacrifice has a very long history. We find it clearly written in our own Judeo-Christian traditions, even in our Bible. The laws in the book of Leviticus say:
No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles. … He shall not come near the curtain or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may not profane my sanctuaries; for I am the Lord.” [Leviticus 21:17-23]

And the view remained in vogue around the time of Jesus. In the scrolls of the Qumran community, a kind of Jewish monastic order, we read:
Let no person smitten with any impurity whatever enter the Assembly of God. And every person smitten with these impurities, unfit to occupy a place in the midst of the Congregation, and every (person) smitten in his flesh, paralysed in his hands and feet, lame or blind or deaf, or dumb or smitten in his flesh with a blemish visible to the eye, or any aged person that totters and is unable to stand firm in the midst of the Congregation: let those persons not enter. [1QSa 2:3-8]

It sounds shocking when it is written down and relates to physical disabilities, but in variant forms it still goes on in many many churches of today. It is not common for it to be a written code, but it is culturally imposed and concepts of purity are still in play. People with alcohol or drug addictions are often shunned and pushed out. People with mental illnesses are often given up on and lost. Divorcees are not cut off as often as they used to be, but it wasn’t long ago. I’m not particularly ancient, but I was the first divorcee ordained by the Baptist churches in Victoria. And the current vogue is to sacrifice homosexual people, and you don’t have to listen to the rhetoric around that one long to hear the language of purity coming up. Churches that include homosexual people are described as impure and compromised and displeasing to a holy God. Either the individuals must sacrifice their own sexuality, or the church must sacrifice the individuals. It is seldom described as human sacrifice, but that’s what it is, and if you look at the statistics for suicides among young homosexual people brought up in the church, you will quickly see that it can be every bit as deadly as cutting throats on an altar.

You are probably getting the idea that I am not advocating in favour of such sacrifices. But with the idea of sacrifice so much a part of the tradition of understanding how we approach and honour God, how are we to understand and practice sacrifice as followers of Jesus today? No one gets killed in our worship services, but we still talk of offering broken body and poured blood in our worship of God. The language of sacrifice is still there. But what does it now mean?

The part of the Bible that talks most about a Christian understanding of sacrifice is the letter to the Hebrews, and one of its key images came up in the passage we heard read a few minutes ago:
Through Christ, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

It is a little summary sandwich statement, beginning and ending with the image of sacrifice: “let us continually offer a sacrifice … such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” So we are still called to offer sacrifices, and sacrifices are still pleasing to God. But what? Well, I called it a sandwich statement because it opens and closes with the idea of sacrifice, but there are some ingredients, some content, sandwiched in between. So what’s in the sacrifice sandwich? Two things. “Praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.” And “do not neglect to do good and to share what you have.”

There is more emphasis falling on the latter — doing good and sharing — because much of the lead up to this statement, as we heard, is urging people to go out of their way to love and serve others:
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers… Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. Let marriage be held in honour by all… Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have. etc. etc.

There is a real sacrifice involved here. We are being called to give up living for ourselves, and simply pursuing our own interests, desires and likes, and to live for others. This is especially apparent when we ignore the normal niceties and commit ourselves to welcoming, accepting and socialising with those who are different from us and perhaps discomfort us. Instead of sacrificing them, we are called to sacrifice something of ourselves in order to reach out to them. Jesus makes the same point in the story we heard from the gospel. “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” In a culture raised on those laws and instructions I read out before, Jesus is advocating the exact opposite. Don’t sacrifice them. Welcome them. Socialise with them. Share with them. Give of yourself to them. “For such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

Sometimes, they are not even the down and out. They are simply the people we don’t get on with; the people who are most different from us and who we feel a bit uncomfortable with. Even here within a single congregation, every one of you has people you don’t find it too easy to love. It might be the person whose personality gets up your nose, or the person whose speech you find harder to understand, or the person with whom you feel you have nothing in common. I often observe our after-service drinks and nibblies time and see two or three people standing on the outer edge of the group, with very little attempt being made to include them. The measure of your faith and discipleship is not how you express your love for those you like and get on with, but how you express love towards those who you find it a challenge to love. “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

But doing good to others wasn’t the only thing in our sacrificial sandwich, was it? It might have been the one where the most emphasis fell in the context, but it wasn’t all that was there. It also said, “let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.” We know this language, because in our Eucharistic prayer every week we speak of offering a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. It is the language of worship. It is something we do when we gather Sunday by Sunday to worship God. But what does it mean? And in what sense is participating in worship a sacrifice?

Well, there can be a simple sacrificial level to it in terms of giving up the time and the other things you might have been doing. Many of us make something of a covenant commitment to prioritising participation in worship over other interests we pursue at other times, and sometimes we feel that more than others. I have membership tickets for both the footy and the soccer, but there are lots of Sunday afternoon games. I know I could sometimes get the time off if I asked you, but I’ve chosen to make worship a priority that trumps sport. I do it freely and willingly, but some weeks it feels more sacrificial that others!

Really though, it is about much more than that. Really it links back to what we were saying about the sacrifice of living for others instead of pursuing only our own interests. Just as we speak, in our prayer, of the bread and wine on the Lord’s Table being offered in token of our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, so too our sung, spoken and enacted praises and thanksgivings are offered in token of our lives lived in the service of God and all who God loves. Anne used to say that one of the reasons she came to worship here most weeks, even though her job usually required her to attend worship somewhere else earlier in the day, was that she found that our liturgy somehow held her accountable for the way she lived her life and carried out her ministry. And that it as it should be.

The biblical prophets frequently rail against those who say and do all the right things within the worship service, but whose lives make a lie of their prayers the minute they leave the assembly. A life lived without love, hospitality or justice will render your prayers abominable to God, say the prophets. God is honoured by and pleased with our songs and prayers only if they are woven together with the ways we treat one another and the strangers and outsiders. The sacrifice of praise is a pleasing sacrifice to the extent that it is a seamless whole with the practice of love.

The letter to the Hebrews goes to great lengths to get us to understand that the sacrificing of any animal or human being does not please God. In sacrificing himself, Jesus has overturned the practice of sacrificing others, and calls us instead to follow him in honouring God through self-sacrifice. In some circumstances, that can, as it did for Jesus, mean the sacrifice of one’s own life, but that is never the aim and not what God desires. What God does desire that these two things, praise and generous hospitality, are woven together in a single seamless sacrifice, which Christ has initiated, demonstrated and shown us how to offer. “Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

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