Today’s Scripture Reading
(September 22, 2018): Leviticus 3
I began to watch
“Jurassic World I” with my grandsons a few weeks ago. We didn’t get too far
into the movie before we switched over to Marvel movie featuring some of their
favorite superheroes – roll Spiderman, Iron Man, and Captain America. But later I decided to re-watch “Jurassic
World.” I have always enjoyed the Jurassic movies, even the worst of them, and
I hadn’t watched “Jurassic World I” in a couple of years. So I sat down to
watch the movie.
There is a scene in
the movie where Owen, played by Chris Pratt, places his hands on the side of
one of the Raptors, with which he had already
been working, in an attempt to calm the
dinosaur. And because of the previous relationship between the trainer and the
Raptor, the act seems to work, and the animal is
calmed.
So as I read these
words in Leviticus, my mind slipped back to the scene in “Jurassic World” and
the calming of the Raptors. And as I imagined this ancient practice, I wonder
if this isn’t part of the reasoning behind the procedure. Most of us don’t
offer sacrifices anymore. In fact, most
of us have no connection with the animals that make up the food that we eat.
But, repeatedly, the Bible seems to provide us with a picture of a relationship
between the one offering the sacrifice and the animal that was being sacrificed. It is not just that the
sacrifice is something with which you have an economic stake, but we are to
have a relational stake in the sacrifice as well. This animal is one that you
remember attending the birth and helped to nurse through the early days of its
life. It is an animal that you invested time and emotional energy into through
the past months. And now, as the animal’s life is brought to an end as a “stand
in” for your sin or your broken relationships, you are still there, calming the
animal that knows you as you place your hands on the creature’s head, and the
priests prepare to take its life.
We get that our
sacrifices cost, but sometimes we miss the emotional connection. I used to be
part of a church that twice a year took up an “Alabaster Offering” which went
to the construction of churches, schools, and
hospitals in areas of the world where these buildings are in need. The offering
came to be “collecting change that you acquire in a box for missions.” But that
was never the intention of the offering. Building on Mary’s sacrifice of her
expensive bottle of Alabaster perfume by pouring it out on the feet of Jesus,
the offering was intended to be a sacrifice of something that we wanted and
giving the equivalent currency to charity. I really
want the latest gaming console, but I am not going to buy it. Instead, I will give the money for the building of a
school in a poor area of the world that can’t afford to build it on their own.
I will make do with the old gaming console that I already own. It is an
emotional sacrifice of something I want
so that I can give to where the money is needed.
And that just might
what is missing in our giving to charity. Often we give what we really don’t need, rather than sacrificing
something that we want, or something that we have a relationship with, to atone for our sins – and for our broken
relationships with the world that surrounds us.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Leviticus 4
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