The Idea of Sacrifice

God doesn't want what is most precious to you. He wants you.

Faith, as the moment-to-moment intentional openness to grace, is a kind of prayer. This lived prayer is a kind of sacrifice in its offering up of self to the uses of heaven.
 

This idea of sacrifice has long been misunderstood, I think.

We have a history of ancient peoples all over the world who believed that their God wanted them to sacrifice that which was most precious to them. People sacrificed the best of their season's crops, or a perfect young calf or lamb, or even, in some places, their own children, as is suggested by the story of Abraham and Isaac. 

If the sacrifice we are really being asked to make is to spiritually offer up our entire self to divine purpose, then this apprehension of some ancient peoples - that they were being commanded to physically sacrifice what was most precious to them - was perhaps a blindly instinctive attempt to try to grope towards an understanding of the true ideal.

 

To those ancient peoples (and to our atavistic selves today), we might say: "God doesn't want what is most precious to you. He wants you." 

Jesus said, "I want mercy, not sacrifice" (Matthew 9:13), referring to the animal sacrifice people were then familiar with. Jesus was saying, I think, that we are not commanded to physically sacrifice what is most precious to us, but to devote ourselves to compassion and kindness and forgiveness.

Jesus was quoting the eighth-century B.C. prophet Hosea, who had articulated the voice of God for the people of his time. The fact that this idea of mercy was already being affirmed in the Old Testament shows a growing conception even then of a God who wanted spiritual dedication to compassion rather than physical sacrifice.

What does this mean for us today? What is our idea of sacrifice? Do we believe we have a moral obligation to sacrifice time or money for good causes? Do we (perhaps subconsciously) believe we get credit in heaven for time or money spent?  Perhaps we should examine any such belief in the light of Jesus saying, “I want mercy, not sacrifice.” Can we imagine a kind of sacrifice which is a prayerful offering up of self to the currents of grace?