Jason Lee
Bryant
2 May 2003
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ....................................................
THE IDEA OF SACRIFICE IN
RELATION TO THE TEMPLE
I.
................................ THE
PRACTICE OF SACRIFICE
II. ........................................... THE
INNER CHANGE
III. ............................. JESUS
AS THE FINAL OFFERING
IV. ....................................... SACRIFICE
OF THE SELF
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................
Sacrifice has for the
larger portion of time been seen as the offering up of some thing, usually
valued by people in some way, to God. This was more often than not performed by one
seen as a cultic officiator, or priest.
In the following we will look at the development of sacrifice, reasons
seen to stand behind the practice, the culmination of this practice as
understood by the Christian faith as well as the current role in worship today.
The Idea of Sacrifice in Relation to
the Temple
The idea of sacrifice
is unable to be appreciated in its fullest sense apart from the perceived
notion that the temple serves as the dwelling place of God. In order to make this point fully
understandable, the Torah, or Biblical Law, placed great emphasis on the
responsibilities that went along with sacrifice. Leviticus 1-7 gives all the general
rules on the administration of a burnt offering: where to bring the animal, how
to lay on hands, where to kill it, how to handle its blood, how to prepare the
altar, and what to burn on the altar.
This section of the Old Testament closes with the statement,
“This is the law of the holocaust, the cereal offering, of the purification of
the offering, of the reparation offering, of the consecration offering, and of
the peace-offering which the Lord commanded Moses on Mt. Sinai” (Lev.
7:37-38). The chief requirement as set
forth in the guideline was to “attend daily to the needs of the resident deity
and to dispose of material that the deity found offensive.”[1] The rituals of the sacrifice suppose a
sacramental train of thought that sees God as making his presence apparent
within the limits of the material world.
These rituals developed to help solidify the manner in which the God was
really present in the human world. Even
though God was seen to exist outside of time and nature, it was through the
temple medium that he made his presence among the people. However, this was not to be merely stated or
assumed, it had to be experienced in some way.
This train of thought led to the conclusion that if the God was going to
live in the temple he must be revered and given the honor that was due him. All of this eventually led to elaborately
decorated throne rooms, with all the best used to decorate the surroundings,
only the finest garments for the servants or priests, and most importantly only
the best food for consumption by the God.
All of these were sacrifices on the part of the people as they had given
the valuable items for the use of pleasing God and not for the providing of
their needs. Sacrifice was seen as
setting the feast table for God. It was
only one of many acts that were believed to impart the peoples desire that God
stay in their midst and be pleased by their offering that in return he might
continue to bless the people.
The Practice of Sacrifice
According to the
scriptures the practice of sacrifice was the single most important part of the
liturgical life of the temple. The
greater portion of daily life was centered on the upkeep that was required of
the temple and the animals and the priests.
It is not surprising to know that the Hebrew word for service, aboda[2]
is the same term for divine worship.
In providing a sacrifice, the Israelite was not only providing for the
supposed needs of God, but also showing himself as subservient to God. The
sacrifice was performed using only the cleanest, most perfect (unblemished)
animals available to the people. The
animals were usually cattle, sheep, goats, doves, and pigeons, only those
animals regarded as clean by the Levitical laws. The Bible is not unfamiliar with the idea of
human sacrifice as evidenced in the books of Genesis and Judges,
I and II Kings. However the
Pentateuch strongly condemns the practice in regards to offerings brought
before God. Bataille states in Erotism “Anguish is desired in sacrifice to the
greatest possible extent. But when the
bounds are over-reached a recoil is inevitable.
Later on the other hand, as civilizations grew, animal victims would
sometimes replace human ones as a less barbarous sacrifice.”[3] All animal sacrifices have the same basic
elements: killing and subsequent dismemberment of the offering, burning at
least some part of it (the fat usually) on the altar, and applying the blood to
the altar by the priest usually by sprinkling or smearing. In Erotism,
Georges Bataille talks of sacrifice, saying “In sacrifice, the victim is chosen
so that its perfection shall give point to the full brutality of death.”[4] The act of sacrifice served multiple
purposes, appeasement of the deity we have already touched on above, but one
other major purpose was to remind the people of their own mortality and their
dependence upon the blessings of God for their survival. In particular, the holocaust or burnt
offering ties the spiritual and physical very close together in that the rite
opens with the one who has brought the offering laying his hands on the head of
the gift. It is in this gesture of
“self-identification”[5]
that it is signified through the animal offering, the person is offering
himself to God. This was seen as a way
to bring the blessing of God upon the individual in a sort of exchange, the use
of the animal by the person for his own needs is given up to God in hope of
greater blessings for family, community, etc.
Peace offerings were more for the benefit of the community and were seen
as a way of thanking the God by partaking in the blessing as opposed to its
being burned or given over to the priests of the temple. The more serious sacrifices were those done
for atonement, whether it be for the sins of one, or the priest and community
as a whole, this sacrifice would involve the use placing of the blood of the
animal within the tabernacle at various places with varying degrees of
closeness to the Holy of Holies, the place regarded as closest to God seat
within the tabernacle. Chapter 4 of the
book of Leviticus is very careful to make certain distinctions between
people in regards to status and class.
The sins of the priest and those of the community were seen to be in
much more dire need of being forgiven than those of the individual, no matter
the class of the person. As the
seriousness of the sin is seen to be more grave, the blood of the animal being
offered is placed deeper within, drawing ever closer to the seat of God
himself. Whereas the blood offered for
the sins of a common person would be placed on the holocaust altar, that
sacrifice which is being offered for the priest or the community as a whole
would be taken inside the sanctuary. “It
is sprinkled on the veil separating the Holy of holies from the outer chamber
and placed on the incense altar. Finally
the blood of the purification offering on the Day of Atonement is sprinkled in
front of the mercy seat, this being with the Holy of Holies itself”[6] As Bataille states, “The principle of
mediation is given in the sacrifice where the offering is destroyed so as to
open a path for the return of the intimate order.”[7] It was by way of the sacrifice that one was
put into a right relationship with God.
One who was convicted of the faults in their life and was dealing with
the anguish brought about by this realization had a way to end it. Bataille, “Anguish is what makes humankind,
it seems; not anguish alone, but anguish transcended and the act of
transcending it.”[8] It was through sacrifice that one could
transcend the anguish one faced before God in dealing with various sins
committed and now atoned for.
The Inner Change
Eventually there came
a change in the approach of the sacrifice offered to God. While the early scriptures, more especially
the Torah, speak of offering as a requirement on our part towards God,
later scriptures, usually those of prophets and some of the Psalms begin
to tie the physical act of sacrifice to an inner change on the part of the
person. The prophets would speak on how
the sacrifice was only pleasing to God when it is offered by one whose inner
life is being changed and transformed towards God’s will for that person. It is not enough to view sacrifice as a
system of checks and balances, ‘I did this, now here is this, I’m sorry’ with
only the intent of returning to life as it has normally been. Eventually we are told that what is desired
by God is not burnt offering but a heart that has been opened to devotion to
Him. We see the development of people
that there is more than just the giving of material goods in hopes of
transgressions being written off, there must be a change within linked to just
action without.
Jesus as the Final Offering
It is a radical change then when Jesus of
Nazareth comes on the scene and begins to teach a life that is one of total
sacrifice. Not even focused on outer
actions of bringing offerings to God but the bringing of ones self completely
and wholly as the offering. Not
concerned with blemishes and being perfect before the offering, but being
concerned with life after the offering, life itself as an ongoing offering. The letter to the church of the Hebrews talks
of the death of Jesus as that event which definitively secures for the whole of
humanity the effects that older sacrifices brought about only temporarily (Heb.
9:23-28). It was through an ultimate
offering of the self to the point of death that allowed for others to no longer
fear death as they found their way of being to be one of freedom from spiritual
persecution and worry over offerings.
The life he taught gave each the offering they needed which was his own
and their participation in it. They saw
the devotion of their God to them in that he asked not for sacrifice on their
part through material goods but provided the sacrifice through one of their
own, Jesus of Nazareth. It seems this is
what Bataille is speaking on in Theory of Religion when he states, “In this
respect the sacrifice of a slave is far from being pure.”[9] The requirement is one of more than property
but must be a part, if not all, of the self.
It is through this participation in the acts of Christ that we present
ourselves as the Eucharist prayer states, “as a holy and living sacrifice in
union with Christ’s offering for us.”
The New Testament letters of Paul to Rome and Philemon as well as the
first letter of Peter all contain this theme of spiritual sacrifice, and it is
this notion that allows for every action in ones life to have the capacity when
offered in faith to be an offering acceptable to God. This is why the Eucharist is celebrated, we
can offer no more than has been offered in Christ. There is no more material sacrifice required
of us, nor will it make any difference.
The offering has to be ourselves towards the sacred. The danger lies in the reversal back towards
material sacrifice when the Eucharist is no more than a ritual in the church
and not a life altering remembrance of the life shown to us in Jesus with the
consequential giving of ourselves in participation. In this case, we may as well have been
performing material sacrifice all along.
As Kant said when discussing clericalism and the blending of temple
service and church worship, “An historical faith constituted the basis of both
of these until man finally came to regard such a faith as merely provisional,
and to see in it the symbolic presentation, and the means of promotion, of a
pure religious faith.”[10] The danger of losing the meaning of the
sacrifice is always present and thereby makes the Eucharist useless, for no
magic takes place without the participation in the act. As Bataille went on to say in an earlier
quote, “Quite late the bloody sacrifices of the Israelites were felt to be
repugnant, and Christians have only ever known symbolic sacrifice.”[11] There is a great truth in this statement: we
as Christians today do not know true sacrifice, the witnessing of a death being
brought about at the hands of another as a way of bring the blessing of God
down upon us. We have lost sight of the
true sacrifice on the part of Jesus of Nazareth because we have made death so
sterile. Rarely does one witness the
fullness of death before it is cleaned up by doctors and funeral directors, the
true severity and finality is stolen from us.
The chance to experience the anguish that would bring us to the
appreciation of life is snuffed out before it ever developed. It is precisely this separation from the
harsh reality of death that numbs our response to the hearing of the sacrifice
of Jesus. His being presented as the
paschal lamb to ward off the angel of death is for our benefit that we might
learn and take part in it. It is an
active sacrifice that we must become part of, not thinking there is something
that can be placed before the priest to make us right. This is the true meaning from John’s Gospel “
I am the way and the truth and the life.”
Sacrifice of the Self
No more are we to be
concerned with outer cleanliness as a way of being towards God, but only inner
holiness evidencing itself through our outer actions towards God by our being
towards others. This sacrifice when
participated in by all has the power to transform the world. Dwight Vogel, in his article Living the
Sacramental Life, states, “If Christ is the sacrament of the presence of
God, the church is the sacrament of the living presence of the risen
Christ. We are members of one another.”[12]
It is through this sacrifice that we participate in with our selves that we
offer to each other the gifts shown to us in the life of Jesus, the definitive
gifts that are eternal. We find our
place within all others as their servant, each seeking to better the life of
the other, sacrificing ourselves for them as they do for us.
In closing, we have
shown how sacrifice has for the larger portion of time been seen as the
offering up of some thing, usually valued by people in some way, to God. We have seen how this was performed by a
priest. We have looked at the
development of sacrifice, reasons seen to stand behind the practice, and the
culmination of this practice as understood by the Christian faith and its
current role in the world of faith and religious practice. But, it lies with us to renew the authentic essence
of sacrifice in our own lives.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bataille, Georges.
(1973). Theory of Religion. Robert Hurley, trans. Zone Books Edition 1989, New York: Urzone,
Inc.
Bataille, Georges. (1957). Erotism:
Death and Sensuality. Mary Dalwood, trans. First City Lights Edition 1986. San Francisco: City Lights.
Freedman, David N., Allen C. Myers and Astrid B. Beck
(Eds.). (2000). Eerdman’s
Dictionary of the Bible. Grand
Rapids & Cambridge: William B. Eerdman’s
Publishing Company.
Hollingdale, R.J. (trans.). (1977).
A Nietzsche Reader. New
York: Penguin Books.
Kant, Immanuel.
(1934). Religion Within the
Limits of Reason Alone. Theodore M.
Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, trans. New York:
Harper Torchbooks.
Metzger, Bruce M. and Michael D. Coogan
(eds.). (1993). The Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vogel, Dwight W., O.S.L. (1999).
“Living the Sacramental Life: A Reflection on Spirituality.” Sacramental Life, Vol. XII, Num. 3,
119-122.