Build an altar of acacia wood, three cubits high; it is to be square, five cubits long and five cubits wide. – Exodus 27:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 1, 2015): Exodus 27

Governor Rick Perry apparently thinks that theater goers should be allowed to carry guns. Maybe if more people were carrying weapons, then tragedies like what happened most recently in Lafayette, Louisiana, would simply not happen – after all, who wants to shoot up a room when you know that the people you are aiming at are armed as well. And I am really struggling to understand Mr. Perry’s statement. Maybe my problem is that I have been in a movie theater (and I am wondering if Mr. Perry has been.) The movie theaters that I have frequented are dark places with plenty of shadows. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to think that a theater full of armed people would quickly become a killing place. Not only would it be hard to see where the shots came from, but finding the appropriate target would be almost impossible. And once the shooting started, I can see various members of the audience beginning to shoot in panic at the various muzzle flashes – most of them shot by various movie goers trying to shoot at the shooter. Chaos seems inevitable. But death in even greater numbers than we have witnessed in previous theater shootings would definitely be present. Essentially, the theater would simply become an altar – and altar, after all, is nothing more than a place of killing. I am just afraid that the sacrifices made in that kind of an altar would be a waste of life.  

It is this image of the altar that I think we lose in modern society. We begin to believe that altars are just pretty places. In a church they are places where we often go to pray. But that is not actually the definition of an altar – an altar is always a place of death. In ancient times it was animals that found their end on various altars like the one described in this passage. But altars were always places of death.

For Christianity, we still have an altar. But a quick look in a modern church would not reveal our altar readily. And it is not the prayer rail that is sometimes found at the front of the church (and referred to as an altar.) That is simply a prayer rail. After all, an altar is always a place of death. In the church that I attend on a weekly basis, the altar hangs on the East wall of the building. It is a cross – the symbol of the way that Jesus died. And there is no doubt of what Jesus sacrifice was about – his sacrifice was for us - he died for me.

But the altar of the cross doesn’t stop there. It continues with us. The problem that I struggle with is that the Bible never tells me to take up my gun – it tells me to take up my cross. “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:14-16). I am not anti-gun, but I am anti-stupidity. And the only altar that I want to be a part of is in the cross that I have picked up for Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). The next time I go to the theater, I think I will leave my gun at home – and I hope everyone else does as well.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Exodus 28