On a recent trip to Africa, we were driving through a beautiful rolling landscape of farms and goat pastures when our tire blew out. Because our spare tire also turned out to be flat, we got to spend several hours by the side of a road where the people who lived nearby slowly gathered on the hillside to talk and play with us, to be amused by the mzungas (white people), and to seek gifts from us.
Wearing the traditional Kenyan long dress and head covering, the jovial grandmother and matriarch of the neighborhood came across the road and greeted me warmly. I responded with my few Swahili words, “Habari! Mungu Akubariki!” (which means “How are you ! God bless you.”) Right away she tells me that she is a Christian, and that she can tell I have a good heart and a good husband.
Later, when Mike emerged from under the car, hot and grimy from working a slippery jack on soft dirt with several boys who were very eager to help, Jecinta waved her hands over him and prayed for him to be "covered in the blood of Jesus."
Covered in the blood of Jesus... not an image that spoke to me, to say the least. But to her, as to many—not all, of course, but many—Christians around the world, the blood of Jesus represents the sacrifice God made of his only son to redeem the sins of humanity, his other children. It is believed that Jesus shed his blood to save us because we humans are innately wicked and, no matter how much we try, we can never "earn" salvation (the ultimate and eternal stamp of approval from our divine parent).
But what kind of God would willingly intend suffering to anyone, much less his own kids? If God is love, as we’re also told, how loving is it to ask one person to be tortured and crucified as payment for someone else's mistakes? This aspect of Christian theology has never made sense to me. Yet I knew that I needed to dive deeper into this subject, to gain a better understanding of those for who take literally and seriously the "redemptive sacrifice" of Jesus.
Certainly, the idea of sacrifice did not originate with the Christians. Since prehistoric times, the ritual sacrifice of animals and humans has been practiced by many cultures who believed it necessary to appease the gods and insure their own survival. The Old Testament speaks of a God who demanded a lot of animal sacrifices, and the Psalmist declares that the early Israelites "sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan." (1)
There is archeological evidence that 3000 years ago in the ancient city of Carthage, thousands of infants and young children were killed as offerings to the deities. As late as the 15th century in Mexico and the 19th century in Africa, humans (primarily war prisoners) were killed by the high priest or shaman in public religious spectacles. The Aztecs in Mexico sacrificed over ten thousand people, mostly war prisoners, to "feed the sun" so that it would not die and "plunge the world into darkness." Wars were fought for the express purpose of providing these "blood meals for the sun." The North African Dahomey tribe also fought wars to collect victims for its violent rituals. (2)
An example from our own times of a kind of extreme and violent sacrifice is that of the Muslim suicide bomber. According to a Pentagon study, the bombers are motivated by the promise of "salvation and the pleasures of Paradise", and some financial security for their family members after their "martyrdom." A bomber believes that "because of the manner of his death, he will find favor with Allah." (3) Of course, this ideology is not held by the vast majority of Muslims, but only by a small, extremist faction.
On a much milder scale, even the idea of sacrifice has been used in harmful, destructive and manipulative ways. For example, who hasn't heard (or said) something like, "After all I've done for you, (fill in the blank) …" Mothers are known to be especially skilled with this guilt-inflicting weapon. Or, when trying to get someone to do what we want them to do, we say, "Well, we all have to make sacrifices. It builds character." However, sacrifices motivated by guilt or fear usually breed resentment and, instead of creating a stronger bond between people, end up creating more distance and separation in the relationship.
Can you tell I have never been a big fan of the concept of sacrifice? But in my need to understand Jecinta's blessing of being "covered by the blood of Jesus," I went to the dictionary. There I read that to sacrifice is "to make an offering of something precious to a deity," and "to surrender something for the sake of something else." (4)
So, in the light of these definitions, let us look at the sacrifice that Jesus made and what that could mean to us.
First and foremost, Jesus was a teacher of unconditional love and compassion, and he taught that God is love. Both his life and his death were a "precious offering" to serve love: in life, by his words and actions, and in death, by demonstrating that love (or God) is more powerful than anything that can happen to the body, even death. By choosing love (through his forgiveness of his persecutors), he showed that there is nothing that can be done on this earthly plane that can destroy who and what we really are.
Life itself is an attribute of God and cannot be destroyed, and to love is to align with Life. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change form. If you believe in the resurrection, then it can be said that Jesus' true self, his "Son of God" self, did not die but merely changed form. "He died for us" could then be interpreted as 'He surrendered his physical body for the amazing teaching example of the true power of love. He offered his mortal form to demonstrate the indestructibility of Spirit.' Because he said we also could do what he did, then the "sacrifice" of his triumph over death inspires us to learn to love as he did.
So, our sacrifice is also about offering or surrendering something precious for love's sake. What is precious to us, and what do we need to surrender? Our time and our thoughts. We are jealous of our time and addicted to our thoughts! But when we pray, meditate, serve, read holy books and study the sacred scripture of Nature, we are taking the time to change our consciousness.
When we look at our own belief systems and our conditioned mind, and are willing to surrender the thoughts that close the heart, we come closer to love. When we surrender the beliefs that create prejudice, guilt and separation, that foster hatred, suspicion, vengeance or fear, or that bind us to a limited, negative self-perception, then we are making a worthy sacrifice. Whenever we can lay our ego on the sacrificial altar of wisdom and integrity, then, like Jesus, we may experience a rebirth.
This idea is beautifully expressed in this poem by Merilyn Tunneshende:
The only sacrifice equal to the Greatest Energy and Spirit,
The only one worthy of being practiced,
Is sacrifice of self.
It is the only offering that will heal the world,
Evolve the spirit, and provide the
Harmonious balance of energies
Needed to create life.
It is the sacrifice that emerges
As something higher. (5)
One last perspective on the theme of sacrifice comes from looking at the Latin roots of the word, which simply mean 'to make holy.' The word 'holy' comes from a root that means 'whole'. (6) So, in that sense, Jesus’ "sacrifice" was to make holy (or whole) whoever came to him for help or healing.
As mentioned before, Jesus said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these …" (7) So, like him, our 'holy-making' is to offer healing. We do this whenever we can see, reflect and empower the wholeness of others.
We also make our awareness holy when we recognize the holiness that is already all around us. Earth-based religions affirm that the true nature of everything is holy because everything created is holy. In the words attributed to Chief Seattle, "Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every shady shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people." (8) The sacrifice of our mundane, distracted awareness allows us also to see and experience that holiness.
I have come a long way (both literally and figuratively!) from that roadside encounter with Jecinta and her powerful, provocative blessing. But I believe that she, also a woman with "a good heart," would agree with me on this: that the blood of Jesus is a tangible, visible, material symbol of a powerful and healing love, and that to be covered in his blood is to be showered with that kind of love.
So, in closing, I offer you my version of Jecinta's prayer:
May we find the courage and willingness to sacrifice whatever blocks our awareness of the Sacred. May we be inspired to know our own wholeness and to make our lives holy. And may we also be covered and showered now and forever in the sacred and life-giving arms of love.
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References
1. Psalms 106: 37-38, Holy Bible. Iowa Falls, IA: Riverside Book & Bible House.
2. Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997.
3. From a Pentagon briefing, cited in Wikipedia under “Suicide Attack.” www.wikipedia.com.
4. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, www.merriam-webster.com.
5. Merrilyn Tunneshende, Medicine Dream, 1996, quoted in Gateways of the Divine by Collette. Sonoma, CA: Epiphanies Press, 2001.
6. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, www.merriam-webster.com.
7. John 14:12, Holy Bible. Iowa Falls, IA: Riverside Book & Bible House
8. Chief Seattle, leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Native American tribes in what is now the state of Washington. Famous speech attributed to him was given in 1854. Cited in Wikipedia under “Chief Seattle.” www.wikipedia.com.
