Sermon 4.3.26 Good Friday: the Detestable Sacrifice

“Since the Law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach. Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered?”

Pope Leo, this past Palm Sunday, made the bold claim that God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war and pray for things like “overwhelming violence.”

Those who play war games with other people’s real lives.

He based this on the Prophet Isaiah’s opening chapter, where the prophet tells us,

¹⁵ When you spread out your hands in prayer,    I hide my eyes from you;even when you offer many prayers,    I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

¹⁶ Wash and make yourselves clean.    Take your evil deeds out of my sight;    stop doing wrong.¹⁷ Learn to do right; seek justice.    Defend the oppressed.^[a]Take up the cause of the fatherless;    plead the case of the widow.

It has always been this way for those who have tried to practice peace through power.

And year after year after year, decade after decade, century after century, millennium after millennium, the sacrifices are made;

Whole sacrifices, burnt offerings, offerings for guilt, offerings for peace, Grain offerings, Passover lambs, crucifixions. Babies in schools, young people in uniforms, patients in cancer wards, protesters in our streets, gardeners, roofers, homebuilders, neighbors, blue collar workers, white collar workers, small businesses…

Year after year after year,

We pile up the sacrifices and wait to see if this year it will be pleasing in the sight of God.

This year, will exploiting our power make us more free, more wealthy, more inoculated from harm, more secure in our homes, more sure of our blessings, more certain that my prosperity requires your poverty, that my privilege requires your sacrifice, more, more, more?

God, if we pile up these sacrifices of the one for the many, and then the many for the few, will you make us perfect soon?

God, will you please send us a sign?

God, would you please show us the true form of our reality?

Jesus

While our world continues to follow the shadow of laws that sacrifice the poor and vulnerable,

While humanity continues to cry out to the savior, Jesus come down off of the cross and choose your power, so we can be justified in our works of sacrifice,

or, Jesus be a MAN, show your strength, so we may believe.

The true form continues to be and always will be the one who lays down his own life for the sheep,

Whose power and strength are forgiveness and mercy,

God came into the world, and the world continues not to recognize him.

But we do.

It is why we stop, it is why we are here,

To overcome the shadow of death and step into the light of salvation,

So that it not just God who looks at the detestable sacrifices and turns away,

But so that we do as well.

If you’re looking for a sign today, as I am, come to the cross and see the truth of eternity in the pierced hands, feet, and side