The Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024
These words of Jesus as he addresses God, his Father, reveal a truth heretofore obscured from our minds broken and steeped in sin: humanity is addicted to sacrifice. Sacrifice is a means of manipulating the future… a means of manipulating God… a means of manipulating our neighbors. Sacrifice is a system of reciprocity: I do this for you now and you’ll do that for me later. It is a bargain of short-term pain endured for the sake of long-term gain. The sacrificial system of reciprocity reveals itself in this admonition regarding the future: “No pain, no gain.” It shows itself in relation to the neighbor in adages like this, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Sacrifice in relation to God was most evident in the pre-Reformation mass and endures in such biblical injunctions as “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God…” (He. 13:15).
Yet, this injunction doesn’t qualify as a command of the law because God “does away” (He 10:9) with such sacrifices. Even though sacrifices commanded by the law are no longer appropriate, God has put something in their place. Knowing humanity’s sin-born addiction to sacrifice, God has put the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the one sacrifice to end all sacrifices (cf. He 7:27). Jesus came to a sinful humanity in the body… in the flesh… as the Incarnation… which God had prepared for him (cf. He. 10:5). Jesus, in the fulfillment of God’s will, presented himself to the people. Through torn flesh and spilled blood, Jesus offered himself up to the hands of sinful men, a sacrifice not on account of God but on account of the sinfulness of a rebellious humanity.
No longer are there sacrifices demanded by the law. There is only the spontaneous praise that bursts forth from your throat, the throat of the new creature in Christ… only your praise that anticipates the exaltation of Jesus’ name above all names, the bending of every knee to Jesus’ Lordship, and the confession of every tongue “that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9-11).
Table Talk: Discuss the ways in which the sacrificial system is manipulative.
Pray: : Heavenly Father, so hold me in the faith of Jesus Christ that my throat is filled with the sound of praise. Amen
Hebrews 10:5–10
5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”
8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.