Day 34 -- SACRIFICE

It's been awhile since I blogged. Between a conference in Atlanta, preparations and the reality of the 35th Anniversary of the congregation, and this trip to Haiti...the firehose I drink from has been larger than usual.

Here's my reflection on sacrifice for Day 34: I've been reflecting on Jesus, whose own sacrifice is a phenomenal thing to behold. I personally have trouble with the typical sacrificial atonement theory for the crucifixion...that Christ died for our sins to appease an angry God's need for justice. This sort of theology moves to easily into a divinely sanctioned form of child abuse/child sacrifice.

And yet, there was a real choice to embrace the cross by Jesus...and the reasoned sense in him that what he was doing in the cross was FOR "many." The powerful thing about this is that the "many" was full of people who hated and reviled him or were simply indifferent to him. We'd expect Jesus to offer himself up for those he (and by extension God) easily love. That's how we tend to love, or would like to imagine that we do. But Jesus, the one who bids us "love your enemies" loved his too. And it is this fact that makes his choice genuinely signifcant and powerful. His choice was "for" us even when ours was "against" him. His words on the cross stand out powerfully as a back drop to the violence he endured that day. "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do."

We are his people. We are a cross-shaped people. Jesus' life is cruciform. Our lives are called to be cruciform. Jesus' life is consciously sacrificial. The call on our lives, in waters of baptism, is no less signficant.

So it is that we talk about sacrifice in the life of the body. Inside the body this means that we are willing to "sacrifice" our anger and resentment at those who have done us wrong (real or perceived) in a movement of Christ empowered forgiveness. Outside the body, the expectation is no less the same.

So the question for the day is this: What sort of sacrifice is before you in the life of this body of Christ?

Praying life in the midst of sacrifice for you today...

Pastor Nathan