5

An Acceptable Sacrifice

JEWS AND CHRISTIANS share an origin story. While not quite as violent as the Babylonian version, it too is rife with bloodshed, including a famous original murder.

But before that murder, we first turn to the creation of the world. As Genesis tells it, God separated the water from the land and the earth from the sky and the light from the dark. And, according to the third-century Jewish teaching called the Mishnah, even before the world was created, God was busy: “Seven things were created before the world, viz., The Torah, repentance, the Garden of Eden, Gehenna, the Throne of Glory, the Temple, and the name of the Messiah.”¹ Repentance seems odd in that list. The teaching continues, “Repentance, for it is written, Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world. Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Repent, ye sons of men.”²

This tradition holds that early on the sixth day of creation, the Lord created repentance. Before the original humans had done anything to repent of—indeed, before they were even created—God already knew that repentance was going to be part of the equation. When Eve and Adam ate the fruit from the tree of moral knowledge, it was both inevitable and terrible. Prior to eating the fruit, they lived lives of stasis, of inertia. They walked with the Lord in the cool of the day. They had everything they needed. As my friend Rabbi Joseph Edelheit says, “Before they ate the fruit, Adam and Eve were sociopaths. Literally. They did not know the difference between good and evil.”³ That ended with two bites, and suddenly they became fully human. They knew good from evil, and they were confronted with moral choice, which has vexed every subsequent member of their species.

But in this scenario, the Lord had already built into the system a way for the human beings to repair their relationship with their God. The Hebrew word for repentance is shwb, and it means “to turn.” However, that’s not what Adam and Eve did after their original sin. They were cast out of Eden immediately, before they could eat from another magical tree that would grant them immortality, and the very next story recorded in the Book of Genesis is of their sons and the original murder. Adam and Eve never look back. They do not turn. They do not repent, and neither does their son after killing his brother.

And that murder is over an issue none other than blood sacrifice.

Sacrifice had not yet been commanded by the Lord in the earliest days recounted in Genesis. But it seems there was an inherent desire to sacrifice something to God, which drove these protohumans (and, more importantly, those who generations later told the stories of these protohumans) to bring a sacrifice to the God who created them. For some mysterious reason, sacrifice seemed like the right thing to do.

Adam and Eve’s sons brought to the Lord what they had. Cain brought fruit of the ground, for he was a farmer; he was given no instruction nor direction as to what God wanted. Abel brought sheep, for he was a shepherd. They each brought their sacrifice in the spirit of thanksgiving. It was, the text tells us, an “offering.”

For some inexplicable reason, the Lord liked what Abel brought (bloody meat), but not what Cain brought (vegetarian’s delight). So jealous was Cain of his brother’s success that he killed Abel—ironically, the farmer murdered the butcher—and this act deeply upset the Lord, even though it is arguably God who incited the murder by choosing one brother over the other. So the Lord both punished Cain by sending him out into the wilderness as a wanderer and protected him by marking him and ensuring that no one would do to him what he had done to his brother.

And thus the story begins. Within the first few pages of the biblical epic, there is disobedience and murder, acceptable sacrifice and unacceptable sacrifice. And it is quite clear from the story that we, too, are descended from these disobedient, murderous, confused people. As we explore the tradition of sacrifice in the Old Testament, we need to keep in mind what relationship it implies between God and humanity and what role offering sacrifice played in that relationship. Did God ask for these sacrifices, and if so, why?

Abraham and Isaac

One of the unique characteristics of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, the faith community of which I’m a part, is that we don’t have sermons in the conventional sense, delivered by a clergyperson from behind a pulpit or a lectern. Instead, we read through books of the Bible together, over several weeks. Usually we read a chapter a week. After a brief introduction, a paragraph will be shown on a video screen. Someone from the congregation will read that paragraph aloud, and a discussion will ensue, sometimes brief, sometimes lengthy. Then the next paragraph goes on the screen, and so on.

Recently, we were reading through the book of Genesis, and I must have drawn the short straw, because I was asked to lead the Bible discussion on Genesis 22. Arguably the climax of Genesis, this chapter is what biblical scholars call a “text of terror.” After decades of waiting for a long-promised son, Abraham and Sarah finally give birth to Isaac. The angelic announcement of Sarah’s pregnancy was so unlikely that she chuckled; when the child came, she named him “laughter.”

But then something terrible happens. In order to test Abraham, God tells him to take his son to the land of Moriah and “offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”⁴ Abraham doesn’t argue; he doesn’t even flinch. He just saddles up his donkey with his son and some dry wood and sets off for the mountains. When Isaac asks, “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham hedges his bets, saying, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”⁵ Abraham neglects to tell the boy about the Lord’s command.

When they arrive at the appointed spot, Abraham binds Isaac atop the altar and woodpile and draws his knife to cut the boy’s throat. At the last second, a messenger of the Lord appears and says, “Abraham, Abraham! . . . Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”⁶ Abraham sees a ram caught in a thicket and sacrifices it instead.

After reading this aloud at Solomon’s Porch, an intense conversation broke out. Many in the congregation looked for ways to let God off the hook. “This story didn’t actually happen,” someone protested, “so we don’t need to take it that seriously.” But it’s in the Bible, so we must deal with it, was my rejoinder. “Abraham knew that God was going to provide another sacrifice,” said another. The Bible doesn’t say that, I said, and we’ve only got the text we’ve got; we can’t superimpose thoughts into Abraham’s head. “God’s ways are greater than ours,” said another. “Who are we to question God?” How can you read this episode and not question God? I asked in reply.

These are all common responses to this text: a quest for a loophole, a desire to avoid the terrible implications of this terrifying story. The rabbis in the Midrash said that this happened so that Mount Moriah could be consecrated as the future site of the Temple. One medieval rabbi argued that Abraham was deluded and misheard God. The author of the New Testament book of Hebrews wrote that Abraham believed God would resurrect Isaac after the murder, thus it shows that father Abraham pre-believed in the resurrection of Jesus. And philosopher Søren Kierkegaard argued that, while the sacrifice of Isaac was ethically wrong, it was religiously right: Abraham was correct to think that God’s religious commands trump human ethics when he agreed without argument to kill his son.

Many have tried to make excuses for God, and many tried the same thing in our congregation. But I kept pressing them to deal with the story as it actually is: a man we uphold as the father of three religions is ready to slit his son’s throat. Deal with it.

Then a young mom in her twenties, Danielle, raised her hand. She was nursing her newborn child. I can remember exactly where she was sitting, in the middle of the room. I called on her. “I fucking hate this story,” she said. I swallowed hard—it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. “I wish it weren’t in the Bible. If God asked me or Mark to climb on the roof of our house and kill one of our children, there’s no way we would do it. This story is craziness.”

Well, I thought, at least she’s being honest.

As you might guess, the conversation turned on a pivot at that point. Instead of trying to defend God, we started to talk about what this incident must have done to Abraham’s relationship with God and to Isaac’s relationship with Abraham (nota bene, Abraham and Isaac never speak again in the biblical text). I’ll admit, God didn’t fare too well in that discussion. Twice in the early chapters of the Bible, God seems arbitrary in relation to sacrifice. First, God accepts one sacrifice and rejects the other, and then he demands a father sacrifice his son, only to step in at the last minute. The earliest history of sacrifice between God and Israel, with the exception of Noah’s sacrifice upon leaving the ark, isn’t great.

The Pesach Paradigm

For the last several years, my wife, my children, and I have been invited to the Passover Seder dinner at the home of Rabbi Joseph. There, we’ve sat alongside his grown children, college students, fellow professors, friends, and a Catholic priest. The Seder dinner is long and full of tradition. The meal begins with extended readings, and Joseph calls on different people around the table to read aloud from the prayer book. His children occasionally sing parts of the liturgy. And there is ceremonial eating, of maror (horseradish, a bitter herb to recall the bitterness of the Israelites’ bondage in Egypt), charoset (a sweet mixture of nuts and fruit, reminiscent of the mortar that the slaves used to build for the Egyptians), and karpas (parsley that’s dipped into salt water, representing the tears of the Hebrew slaves). Three whole matzot (unleavened bread) are stacked near the plate. Bread is unleavened during Passover because the Israelites didn’t have time for yeast to do its work while they were fleeing Egypt.

Each of these is an ancient element on the plate. Rabbi Joe supplements these with modern additions, each with a meaning of its own. One year, there were tomatoes, there in solidarity with migrant farmworkers, many of whom labor in near-slavery conditions and at risk of deportation. Another year it was olives, as a sign of repentance for how Israelis have treated Palestinians, including bulldozing ancient olive trees to make way for Jewish settlements. And an orange, placed for GLBT Jews and in response to an apocryphal story of a rabbi shouting, “There’s as much room in Judaism for a lesbian as there is for an orange on the Seder plate!” I’ve been fascinated to watch this ancient ritual evolve, even in the few years that I’ve been a guest.

Two more items grace the plate. Both are ancient, and both denote sacrifice. The first is z’roa, a roasted shank bone of a lamb—a symbol of the roasted lamb sacrifice in the Temple and the first animal sacrificed in Egypt and then consumed entirely that night—but now it is neither eaten nor touched during the Seder dinner. That’s because since the Temple was destroyed by Roman forces, Jews have not been able to sacrifice, which leads to the final element on the table: beitzah is a hard-boiled egg that is charred with a flame, representing the destruction of the Temple. Eggs, traditionally the first food served at a Jewish funeral, are a food of mourning.

Jews around the world hold Passover Seder with these very same elements on the plate, as they have for centuries. Passover—also known as Pesach—is the holiest time in the Jewish year.

It would be difficult to overstate the change at the very heart of Judaism that took place when the Temple was razed by the Roman general Titus in 70 CE. In fact, it can be argued that Judaism as we know it is a result of that event—that the religion of the Hebrews that preceded the destruction of the Temple cannot rightly be called Judaism.

The religion that Jesus knew, and what had been known by Hebrews for generations, was centered on worship in the Temple. Everyone who was able would journey to Jerusalem for the several festivals per year, but none matched Pesach, the festival that happened each spring, for the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt is considered the single most important event in all of their history.

In that well-known story, Moses is raised as Pharaoh’s son, even though he’s a Hebrew. When this fact is discovered, he escapes to the wilderness, where he finds a tribe, a wife, and a fiery bush through which the Lord speaks to him. Moses’ task from the Lord is to rescue his people from slavery. He returns to Egypt, but his demand of freedom for the Hebrews is met with a scoff from Pharaoh. So, in a show of strength, God inflicts ten plagues upon the Egyptian people. Though his people moan, Pharaoh stays strong. That is, until the final plague.

On the night of Pesach, Moses tells the Hebrews to kill an unblemished lamb at midnight and spread its blood on their doorposts and lintels. They are then to eat the lamb, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. At midnight, just as had been promised, the Lord murdered the firstborn son in every home in Egypt, except those marked with lamb’s blood—those he passed over.

“There was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.”⁷

That very night, Pharaoh demanded that Moses and the Hebrews leave. And, though Pharaoh later changed his mind and pursued the slaves, the Hebrew people did escape and eventually made it to the land that God had promised to them.

Embedded in the chapter-long story in the book of Exodus are Moses’ commandments for keeping the Passover, including some of the very elements that Rabbi Joseph has on his plate. Also embedded in that story is the genesis of the Jewish rite of sacrifice. From that day forward, according to Moses, the Israelites were to sacrifice the firstborn of everything—“you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb.”⁸ That goes for all except firstborn human sons, which are redeemed by the Lord.

Moses does not introduce sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible. We’ve already seen Cain and Abel sacrificing to the Lord, as did Noah after the ark runs aground—it’s said that Noah burned animals from the ark, and the Lord found the odor pleasant.⁹ And, of course, we’ve got God’s demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac. Each of these played a part in launching the practice of sacrifice. But the Mosaic moment marks the inauguration of regular, systematic sacrifice. And this command to sacrifice—unlike the command that Abraham sacrifice his son—is accompanied by an explanation: the sacrifice of the firstborn is an act of thanksgiving and remembrance: “It shall serve as a sign on your hand and as an emblem on your forehead that by strength of hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt.”¹⁰ In this first instance, “sacrifice” did not carry the connotation of surrender that we now think of. Instead, the word means a thanksgiving meat offering.

Sacrifice, it turns out, is about blood. And there’s no blood without violence.

Jews are very specific about the fact that there was only one Pesach. Every Passover celebration since—whether an animal sacrifice prior to 70 CE, or a Seder dinner since—has been an imitation and commemoration of that one Pesach. When Christians take communion, we don’t think we’re at the Last Supper; we are performing an act of remembrance of that singular event. Similarly, the Passover Festival was and is an act of remembrance. And what Jews are remembering is a deliverance from bondage, bound up in a rite of animal sacrifice. The blood on their doorposts played a pivotal role in their freedom from slavery, and so the rehearsal of that night every year on Passover is laden with the hope of future deliverance. And that is fundamentally messianic in nature.