Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Jose Saramago, in his haunting book, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, paints a picture of the Great Temple in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus' birth. It is not the Temple we usually imagine (based on those pastel Sunday School pictures); not a neat, clean, quiet, nearly empty place. Quite the contrary. In Saramago's book, Jerusalem's Temple is a chaotic, noisy, frightening place -- a place choked with worshippers, tourists, pilgrims, priests, money changers. An enormous stone building with its mobbed courtyard, walls ringing with the uncouth shouts of camel drivers and the appeals of con men, and the pitiful cries of animals about to be sacrificed. A place of pushing and shoving, of bad smells, of unabashed discrimination: Gentiles could go only to here, and women (even Jewish women) only to there, and ordinary men only a bit farther. Beyond that, it was "priests only," until one came to that mysterious inner place, the "Holy of Holies", where only God was allowed.

The Great Temple Was a Place for Sacrifice

The main altar in this Temple was an enormous, granite cube, three times as tall as a man, with a horn protruding from each of its four corners. Day and night the altar was engorged with the blood and entrails of sacrificial animals. Beside the altar was a roaring furnace from which rose, all day, (directly to the nostrils of God) a cloud of black, greasy smoke. The picture revolts us, it turns our stomachs, but it is historically accurate. It is good  to remember, now and then, what the world was like before Jesus.

Sacrifice, of course, was not a Jewish invention. As far away, and as far back as we can trace the human race, people have been offering things to the gods. At times it was a simple, pious deed: a few grains of rice before an idol. At other times it involved complex systems of sacrifice, with professional priests presiding, as in Jerusalem. In the earliest days, sacrifice was to appease God, to damp down his anger. But as the concepts of Law and Covenant were developed (and religion became more civilized), sacrificing became just a regular religious duty, so well organized and regulated, in fact, that often its spiritual power, the personal discipline of giving instead of receiving all the time, was lost. That is to say it became an obligation, a business deal: give God his due, pay your taxes to heaven.

God Wanted People's Hearts, Not Just Their Obligatory Gifts

Hundreds of years before Jesus, the prophets of Israel saw the fatal flaw in that kind of religion: a religion not of the heart but of habit, and function and obligation. They spoke out boldly against empty sacrifices. They warned that ritual offerings would not forestall God's anger or bring blessing. God wanted people's hearts, the prophets said, not merely their gifts. But not until Christ did cultic sacrifice disappear for good, and that was one of the Church's amazing accomplishments. Think of it. A custom as old as the hills and as common as the wind, in full flower one day, gone the next. How? Why? Well, the Church said two new things about sacrifice, and after they were said and believed, there was no longer a place for all those priests and all that blood.

Sacrifies Have Been Relplaced by a Final, Ultimate Sacrifice

First, Christians said that a final and ultimate sacrifice had now been made in Jesus Christ -- a sacrifice truly astonishing in that it was not offered by us to God, but by him to us -- and to that gracious turning of the tables, the church said, no human offering could compare.

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride.
-- Isaac Watts

God pre-empted us in giving. In one great gesture of love, he squared the books. To emphasize the importance and the uniqueness of Christ's sacrifice, the old Episcopal communion service (which we still use at times in the Methodist Church) overstated the case. Speaking of Christ's death, it said, "he made there, by the one offering of himself, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world." It is liturgical overkill, but it makes it abundantly clear that no further offering, from either party -- us or God -- is needed. And voila! The priests and their altars are out of business.

Christ Urges Us to Give Every Bit of Ourself

But, there was a second, related teaching of the Church (which also helped ring down the curtain on the bloody cults). First the Church insisted that no further sacrifice was necessary, and then the Church said if any sacrifice were to be deemed appropriate, after Jesus' death, it would have to be a sacrifice of one's whole self: alive, not dead. Thus, in today's lesson, Paul beseeches the Roman Christians, "by the mercies of God," to present their bodies as "living sacrifices." It was as if Paul were standing before all the bloody altars of antiquity, saying to the devout pilgrims, who are coming offering birds or lambs, "Oh, no you don't! You can't get off that cheap -- not any more! Not now that Jesus has come and died for us. When you come to the altar of God as Christians, you better be prepared to offer your whole blessed self! Nothing less will do. No more dropping a few coins in God's meter, and going about your business. You must become a living sacrifice: a sacrifice of energy, and emotion, a sacrifice of will and desire, a sacrifice of life itself. That is the only appropriate gift, now that Christ has come."

It Can be Done

She was born into comfortable circumstances and could easily have chosen simply to enjoy a life of privilege. But, instead, Theresa entered a convent at eighteen and soon found herself working among "the poorest of the poor", as she called them, in Calcutta, India. When she died Thursday, at 87, she owned two pairs of sandals, a rosary, a wooden bucket, and a well worn Bible. What can we say about that? We can say that a obscure young girl, somewhere, a long time ago, for reasons this modern world will never understand, offered herself to God (quite simply and profoundly, as it turned out) and became, in fact, a "living sacrifice." She followed faithfully the example of her Lord who said, "Birds have their nests, and foxes their holes, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay his head." In the Kingdom of God, which is so different from the kingdoms of this world, it is she who is Cinderella, and who is now dancing with her Prince.

A great deal of good can be done from palaces and board rooms -- and it should be done. Millions can be raised out of the purses of the rich, at glitzy balls and exclusive parties, to help the poor and the dying. And it should be raised. But the highest achievement in Christianity is always to sit at the foot of the table, the lowest place. So nothing is finer or grander or more splendid, in God's Kingdom, than the emptying of oneself, the coming "out of the ivory palaces," the going down to the slums not for a visit but to live.

When Jesus died, many ancient notions about sacrifice died with him. He became, in fact, what his followers said he was: a Lamb without blemish, a sacrificial lamb so pure and so perfect that no other lamb need ever be offered . No blood could atone as his blood. All human gifts pale in the light of his gift. That is why we come to God empty handed -- not out of disrespect or greed, but because we have nothing to offer. "In my hand no price I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling." If some offering still seems necessary, we might try offering our hearts and souls. It is a hard teaching that we must be sacrificed alive, our whole ourselves, and not merely our possessions -- much easier, of course, to put a check in an envelope, or give a dollar to a beggar, and be done with it. But even publicans and sinners do that.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.