Jesus Was No Sacrifice

STEP 26 THE FALSE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE

I am frequently asked to explain how Jesus' death saves us from hell. There is no doctrine that is more central to the official church belief nor more of a barrier to non-believers. This is truly an ironical and unnecessary tragedy.
There is no doubt that Jesus was killed by the Romans for crimes against Rome. There were three charges; guilty on all accounts: urging people to not pay their taxes to Rome - causing a revolt - claiming to be king (Messiah). (His followers claimed as much and that was the same thing under law.) There was also no doubt that Jesus could have gotten away. In a very real way he chose to die. I'm not going to un-pack the resurrection experiences at this point, but the truth was, his followers did experience his presence after his death in ways to change their whole lives and points of view. Afterwards they could only try with all their hearts to answer the questions of, why did he chose to die, what did he die for and what did it mean to them.
The immediate followers understood that the death and resurrection of Jesus proved that the WAY of Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the WAY of Yahweh, the Giver of Life. Jesus had died in order to show them that truth. That understanding allowed and gave them the courage to live that WAY in spite of all else. It was not a matter of doctrine but of experience and a change of being. Guilt and sin was not really a part of it. Life was. Death didn't matter any more. They were free of the power of death so they could get on with a life of love. It was the only thing that mattered.
But this event/understanding did not stay isolated. Saul of Tarsus (Paul) and others took the message to those in the Greek-mentality world around them. Their message was simple: "The loving God of creation, known primarily by the Jews, is available and open to all and can be known through the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Through him you can be freed of what binds you to ways of evil and death. Jesus has shown that those powers are meaningless! Believe. Follow. Live."
The words, symbols and actions used in this message were, of course, different than with the Jewish core. Those in the Greek understanding thought in terms of sacrifice, not love. Literally every Gentile understanding of the divine in back then included buying off the gods in some way. Any people who were involved with the "holy" were kept poor by the assumed and constant need to appease the gods. Gods of love, of travel, of weather, of crops, of sex, etc., etc,. There were few traditional gods that could be thought of as even being neutral. The most people could hope for was to be ignored. Gifts (sacrifices) to the many temples were how to keep the gods happy or away from you. Religious people's lives meant enslavement to sacrifice. It would never stop.
Obviously, the idea of freedom through Jesus (soon to be called the Christ) meant a change of all that. Sacrifices were no longer needed. Also obviously, because they had always thought in terms of sacrifice, if sacrifices were no longer needed, it had to be, in their thought, because a bigger and better, the biggest and best sacrifice possible had been made. This sacrifical way of thinking was so pervasive that literally every meat/butcher shop in every city was dedicated to one or more gods. As long as you were eating meat, it might as well be at least a semi-sacrifice to a god. It couldn't do any harm, even if you didn't really buy into it. Every death was seen as connected to a god. How could it be any different in the case of Jesus of Nazareth? What more logical way of making sense of his death? When Paul, a Jew and one who saw sacrifice as something else entirely, was trying to explain to others the importance of Jesus, how natural it was to speak in terms of sacrifice, the ultimate gift of love that enabled all to be set free. It worked. It connected. It made the "WORD" become FLESH to those people.
But to us? It sounds crazy. It goes against our thoughts and experiences. To us the scenario spells out something likes this. "There is a one and loving God of the universe. He had one Son whom He loved more than all of creation. God loved this Son so much, God sent Him down to earth in the form (lowly, sinful, fleshy, abhorant) of a person. People wouldn't believe and follow this Son of God so God had him killed so that God could raise Him from death, that the sinful and stupid people would believe. Those that do believe, finally, God welcomes to eternal life and those that don't understand, fry forever. (God still loves them, of coarse, but tough luck.) That the believers get to heaven at all is made possible by the fact that the Son willingly choose to die, becoming a big enough sacrifice to balance off all the mean and dirty stuff that humans have ever done and even will ever do. All those who were born before Jesus’ sacrifice or who haven’t heard? Again, tough luck. They fry also.”
The trouble is, we just don't think in those terms. We don't believe that a loving parent with ten imperfect children and one perfect child would/should/could ask the one good kid to kill himself. We don't think that it would make everything that the other ten had done suddenly all right. It doesn't make sense. It isn't loving and it isn't right. So don't believe it. And so we shouldn't.
So what do we do? We go back to the question that the doctrine/explaination of sacrifice answered then, and ask it using our own words and sybols. Don't let Paul get you confused. Read his words for what they were and are, not as the specifics as how we need understand the death of Jesus, but as a true example of how that changed lives back then, and be encouraged and challenged to re-hear the news anew for ourselves. If we allow ourselves to be limited by that language, how tragic, wasteful and sad. How deadly, for us and the world.
If Jesus took the form of sacrifice for the people then, if that was the paradymn that fitted and explained for them the new life that was offered, what is the paradymn for us? Before we answer, we need to remind ourselves repeatedly of how the earliest followers, those Jews who had known Jesus, thought of him. Remember how they lived, following the WAY, looking to Jesus as One Who showed and spoke God's WORD. Maybe that's enough, now as it was then. Maybe all we need to do is read what is there and look around the imagry that doesn't make sense to us and take seriously the results that the gospel had upon the people at that time. But we need to beware of the words of today that do not result in results of new life and love. They must be rejected. And they surround us. When we run into language that insults our intelligence, we need to throw them out, but not throw out the baby. Toss out the stuff that are barriers but keep the truth. Don’t feel guilty about challenging scripture. If these words in the Bible are indeed holy, God's Word will come through to us, if we are looking.

“It does not take many words to speak the truth.” - Chief Joseph, Nez Perce
“If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its devolopment.” - Aristotle