sacrifice – The Raynville Rambler

Faith seeking understanding

A sermon for Maundy Thursday at St Peter’s Bramley
Readings: Exodus 12:1-14 / John 13:1-35

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you didn’t understand what was going on? I recall at least two such occasions, one secular and one spiritual.

A couple of years ago, my manager invited me to a meeting. I was given only a vague idea of what it was about and didn’t know who else would be present. I entered the room to find my manager talking to two people I didn’t know. I took my seat and the conversation continued without reference to me. Eventually I could stand it no longer and I interrupted, to ask if we could have some introductions, and some context for the conversation so that I could understand the discussion and join in. Afterwards my manager apologised, and agreed that there should have been introductions and an agenda.

Back in the 1990s, as those who have been Christians a long time ago may recall, there was a worldwide spiritual revival called the Toronto Blessing. Some members of my congregation had been to the New Wine Christian festival that year, and when they returned to the local church, several of them had changed in what seemed to me very odd ways. One young woman who was normally very shy and quiet had become much more confident in her faith and told of how the Holy Spirit had physically thrown her across the room. One older lady found that whenever the Bible was read aloud, she would shake uncontrollably. Others had received the gift of tongues for the first time. I’m not doubting that any of these experiences were genuine for those concerned, but to me it was disconcerting, and if I’m honest a bit frightening.

Both our readings today, as we remember Jesus’ last supper with his disciples before the crucifixion, are about people confused and frightened by spiritual goings-on. Put yourself in the position of the Israelite people: not Moses and Aaron, but the ordinary folk: the shepherds, brickmakers, straw-gatherers, male and female slaves, children in the street. They had experienced a series of plagues the like of which no-one had seen before: frogs, gnats, locusts, hail… it must have been truly terrifying. And now they are told what they must do to avoid their eldest sons being killed by the angel of death: they were to kill a lamb, spread its blood around the door, roast and eat it – but not with the usual vegetables, instead with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. And to dress for the occasion: not in their best clothes, but in belted tunic and sandals, holding a staff. The outfit of a pilgrim. And to eat the meat in haste, because as soon as the meal was over, they would have to flee for their lives.

Did the people act on these strange instructions? It seems they did, as the Exodus story givens no hint of any of them being left behind. In confusion they followed Moses and Aaron across the plains to the Red Sea, and we all know what happened next.

Move forward perhaps thirteen hundred years. Jesus’ disciples had already seen many miracles and other odd happenings over the last few years with Jesus, and other events more recently may not have made much sense, such as Jesus’ riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. But now they had been sent ahead to prepare the Upper Room for the Passover meal. At least they knew what to expect this time. There was a set menu, and the story of the Exodus was repeated word for word every year.

Except, this time it wasn’t. Jesus, their Lord and Messiah, acted like a slave in washing their feet. He used the occasion to warn of his imminent betrayal and death. Judas left the room to go about some unspecified business, which Jesus understood but the rest didn’t. Jesus started talking about his body and blood instead of bread and wine. And then, like the people of Israel in Egypt, as soon as the meal was ended they were ushered out into the darkness on a journey to – what? Very, very, strange. But again, there’s no suggestion that anyone was left behind. Without understanding, but with complete trust in Jesus, they followed on to find out what happened next.

What is it that makes people join in and follow without fully understanding what’s going on? In a word, faith. In our Start course sessions during Lent, we have discussed how much we need to understand about the Bible and the Christian life to set out on a journey of faith. The answer seems to be, not very much. If we can grasp the essentials, the rest will follow in good time. And there’s good precedent for this: the 11^th century theologian Anslem of Canterbury is perhaps best known for his three-word summary of Christian theology as being ‘Faith seeking understanding’. Faith comes first; understanding follows.

But what is this faith that we can grasp, before fully understanding it? The connection between the Exodus and Holy Week is no coincidence. In God’s master plan, one was always intended as a shadow, a prequel if you like, for the other. The details may have been different, but the core message was the same. I suggest it can be reduced, like Anselm’s summary of theology, to three words:

Lamb, blood, salvation.

The descendants of Jacob who ended up in Egypt were pastoral nomads. Lambs would be slaughtered as a sacrifice to God, and the meat would have been a regular part of their diet. But in this special feast it took on a new significance. The blood of the lamb, in particular, was used in this new ritual of marking the doors for protection against death. And through this Exodus, this going out from the plague-stricken land of Egypt, not only would their firstborn be saved from imminent death, but the whole of the twelve tribes would be saved from the wrath of Pharaoh. They didn’t understand at the time what was happening, but later they did, and passed the story down the generations until Jesus took it up that Passover eve in Jerusalem.

What Jesus did on Good Friday was to take this story of salvation through the blood of the lamb and make it his own. Not without reason did John the Baptist call Jesus the Lamb of God: it’s a title that has come down through the centuries. In his one, perfect sacrifice for sin, Jesus did away with the need for any other kind of sacrifice, whether of lambs or anything else. By inviting his disciples, and all who would follow, to share the cup of wine in remembrance of the shedding of his blood, we are united with each other and with those who came before us in the story of salvation. In his death, through the shedding of innocent blood, and through his resurrection that echoes the people if Israel coming up out of the waters of the Red Sea, Jesus has led us out from the slavery of sin, into the freedom of a life with God, without the fear of his wrath.

Those disciples didn’t understand, in the Upper Room, what all this was about. Later, after the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost, they did, the Gospel was preached, then written and passed down the centuries to us.

Now, it is for you and me to take this story and make it our own. To have faith in our Saviour, faith that throughout our life seeks a deeper understanding. To pass it on to new generations, that they too may know, believe and understand. This is his story: this is our song.

Lamb, blood, salvation.

Amen.

Eternal God, before whose face we stand

“Lest we forget: Poppy wreaths at the Cenotaph, Whitehall”
Copyright Derek Voller and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is one intended for the Remembrance season, so it is appropriate for today, 11^th November when we have been remembering the victims of war. ‘Eternal God, before whose face we stand’ by Timothy Dudley-Smith is a traditional style of hymn by a modern composer, and set to a 19^th century tune.

The first verse reminds us that [all] earthly children are made by God, who knows all our hearts and longings. On that basis we have confidence in praying for peace in the world. Peace can seem a hopeless ideal to those without faith, but faith in a loving God who answers prayer makes such prayers worthwhile.

The second verse acknowledges the mixture of feelings we may have when contemplating the soldiers of past conflicts: grief at their deaths, thankfulness for victory against enemies, pride in our armed forces (occasionally misplaced perhaps when scandals come to light, but often justified), loneliness and loss (felt most keenly by their immediate friends and relatives). These feelings we bring ‘to him who hung forsaken on the cross’, and indeed the whole tradition of Remembrance since 1919 is based on the Christian faith at the heart of most European cultures, that Christ was sacrificed for the sake of all humanity and not for one nation alone.

The third verse acknowledges the sin of war and makes a commitment to build an enduring peace across the world, and the last verse refers to that peace as a ‘fragile flower’. Indeed it is, as we so often see conflict re-emerging from a shallow peace, like the embers of a fire spontaneously re-igniting in a breeze. The final lines of the hymn look beyond our present earthly politics to the time when Christ shall renew all things: ‘When night is past and peace shall banish pain, all shall be well in God’s eternal reign’.

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy

Mercy Interceding With Justice
A bronze relief by Mario Raggi depicting one of the various charitable acts of Dr. Evan Pierce on the column in the Evan Pierce Memorial Garden in Denbigh, Wales.
Image © Copyright Eirian Evans and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

The hymn I picked today from Sing Praise was ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’ by Frederick Faber. John points out that the hymn is a shortened version of another, older hymn ‘Souls of men, why will ye scatter?’ (or in a modern inclusive version, ‘Righteous souls, why will you scatter?’) with an extra 8-line verse (or two 4-line ones) at the start, setting the scene for the rest of the hymn in humanity’s tendency to wander from God. That’s what he used in morning prayer, to a different tune. But it’s the Sing Praise book that I’m blogging this year, and coincidentally our own church music group sang ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’ to the same tune Coverdale before last Sunday’s service. So that’s my starting point.

The words of the hymn tackle some misconceptions of the Christian understanding of God. Is the greatest virtue that of liberty (verse 1)? No, greater virtues are mercy and justice, seen in the Bible as two aspects of God’s character as well as the basis of good human law – not opposed, but as the two sides of the balance that make liberty workable. If the rule of law strays too far towards strict justice, people get punished for innocent mistakes, while too far towards mercy and the guilty go unpunished. God is not a vengeful deity but one who demands and administers justice with mercy: ‘there is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgement given’. The opposite is in verse 2: ‘We make his love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify his strictness with a zeal he would not own’.

God is also not remote and unfeeling: ‘there is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt as up in heaven’. And in verse 2, ‘the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind’. Which is why he became one of us, sharing our emotions as well as our temptations.

The third verse focuses on the sacrifice of Jesus. ‘There is plentiful redemption through the blood that has been shed, there is joy for all the members in the sorrows of the head’. The final half-verse (if an 8-line tune such as Coverdale is used) challenges us to be more simple in our love for Jesus, to take him at his word. Meaning perhaps sayings such as “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Meekness and majesty

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Meekness and Majesty” by Graham Kendrick. It’s one that achieved wide popularity in the 1980s/90s, and is still used in some churches. There’s something about this hymn that makes it stand out from the many other songs and hymns about the incarnation of Jesus, and I can remember that the first time I came across it, at a Christian young people’s camp in the mid-1980s, it moved me to tears. Maybe it’s the combination of the way the music flows (John will be able to explain that better) and the words that emphasise the human suffering of Christ while at the same time not diminishing his divinity (from verse 1, “in perfect harmony, the Man who is God”).

Kendrick finds several ways to express this harmony: “Lord of eternity dwells in humanity”, “Perfect in innocence, yet learns obedience to death on a cross”, “Suffering to give us life, conquering through sacrifice”, “Love indestructible in frailty appears”, “Lord of infinity stooping so tenderly”. This sort of pairing of opposite ideas is not unlike the Psalms with their couplets where the second either emphasises or counters the first; I wonder if that was a conscious influence on this hymn?

The words of the chorus are “Oh, what a mystery! Meekness and majesty, bow down and worship, for this is your God”. Christianity is famously unique among world religions for making the claim that our human founder is also divine: other religions have prophets who were clearly only human, or claim a divine revelation not backed up by an appearance in the flesh. But on top of that, our incarnate God didn’t use this privilege to impose his will on others, but demonstrated a new way of living by his humility. We therefore worship God, not in fear, but in response to his own self-emptying love.

Jesus Christ, I think upon your sacrifice

Today’s offering from Sing Praise is one that I am already familiar with: “Jesus Christ, I think upon your sacrifice” by Matt Redman. It’s clearly a ‘song’ rather than a ‘hymn’ both in its structure and in being phrased in the first person as a personal act of devotion rather than a statement of faith.

In the first verse I (as singer) contrast Jesus going willingly to his death with the gift of life that he gave to me by doing so. The response, expressed in the chorus, is to be humbled (because there’s nothing I can do adequately to repay him for such a gift), broken (because I recognise the sin in my own life that caused him such pain), thankful (because that life is a free gift), and in return “pour out my life”, not in the same way but in the sense of offering my time and talents in his service. Humbled, broken, thankful and committed: the four steps of repentance beautifully expressed in this short chorus. That, I think, is why the song appeals to me.

The second verse looks beyond the cross to the resurrected and ascended Jesus Christ as “King of the heavens”, but quickly returns to the present reality: “But for now I marvel at this saving grace, and I’m full of praise once again”. There is also a short bridge before a repeat of the chorus, “thank you for the cross, my friend”. Calling Jesus, King of the heavens, “my friend” seems incredibly arrogant, yet that is what he calls us, and friendship once established is mutual. Its another of the deep mysteries of faith that the one who is beyond time and space is at the same time so close and intimate, that we can call him ‘friend’.

Turning values inside-out

A sermon for St Margaret’s Bramley, 7 April 2019

Readings: (Isaiah 43:16-21) / Philippians 3:4-14 / John 12:1-8

I want us to hear a couple of short stories this morning, as well as our two Bible readings. Let’s start with one of Aesop’s fables.

The miser and his gold

The miser put a great value on the gold, although in its hole it was of no practical use. Today’s Bible readings are also both, in different ways, about what people value.

St Paul (or Saul as he was originally called) put great value on his Jewish heritage. He was proud of the tribe he belonged to, he boasted of his theological education, his devout practice in temple worship and obeying all the religious rules. He was even proud of persecuting the new Christian sect who didn’t do these things. He thought God valued him because of all those.

But as soon as Saul encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, he saw that those things he had valued were not only of no value, but negative value – “whatever gains I had, I have come to regard as loss” – the language is that of credit and debt. Like the miser’s gold in the hole that had been replaced by a stone, they had become not treasures, but a weight around his neck. He had not only to ignore, but get rid of, those things that were holding him back in faith.

Instead, Paul (as he was then known) valued more than anything his faith in Jesus Christ. He writes, “I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection, and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death”. That verse puzzled me when I first came across it, and it still challenges me now. To know Christ – yes, that’s what we all want to do as Christians. To know the power of his resurrection – yes, that sounds wonderful, although it’s not something we experience day to day. But to share his sufferings and become like him in death? That’s really challenging.

Does it mean that Jesus expects me to be persecuted and tortured to death to prove that my faith is real? I don’t believe that every Christian is expected to suffer literally in that way, though some do in other places around the world. Perhaps it makes more sense if we think of it in these terms of reversing values. To value our faith above worldly ideas of wealth and status will often mean losing out in financial terms, just as Jesus and his disciples lived a simple life with no settled home, and that hurts. It will sometimes mean losing friendships, when people don’t understand us and walk away, just as Jesus was rejected by many, and that hurts. When these things happen, we need to remind ourselves again what it is we are valuing – the cross and resurrection of Christ.

Value of course, is so often measured by the world in monetary terms, like the miser’s gold. In the Gospel story we see a great contrast between Judas and Mary in their values. For Judas the value of the perfume was monetary. He reckoned it at 300 denarii, which was nearly a labourer’s annual wages, let’s say at least £10,000 today. It was Mary’s life savings, in the form of a physical asset, again like the miser’s gold. But unlike the miser who kept the gold hidden in the ground where is was of no use, Mary was willing to realise its value in a new way. At that moment, when Jesus who had raised her brother Lazarus from death to life, came to visit, money meant nothing. Like Paul, she had come to a point where she understood that her relationship with Jesus meant so much to her that everything she valued, including the jar of valuable ointment, meant nothing. Indeed it had to be sacrificed in order to allow Jesus to take his rightful place in her life.

There’s another way of considering value, besides the value that we give to money, possessions or relationships. That is the value that other people, and God, put on us, on our own unique life. Here’s another story from a different religious tradition, that of the Sikhs.

Guru Nanak’s disciple and the precious stone.

[For non-Indian readers, 50 lakhs = 5 million Rupees; 2 Crore = 20 million Rupees]

Jesus, of course, said similar things about the value that God puts on us. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Or again, “Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones (that is, any of his disciples) for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.”

Lent is a time when we are encouraged to think about what we value, and what our value is to other people and God. Some people like to put aside something that they think is holding them back from God – like Paul laying aside his empty Jewish traditions, or Mary pouring away her costly perfume.

Others, like Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus to listen to him (as another gospel story tells us) prefer to take up or do more of something that they think will help them find God – prayer, devotional reading, or study groups.

When we do find God through Jesus, and realise our value to him as well as his value to us, often the only meaningful response is one of sacrifice. Mary’s outpouring of the ointment was both a response to Jesus’s teaching that she had received, and a thank offering for bringing her brother back to life. Paul’s response to encountering Jesus in his life was to sacrifice his high status in Jewish circles and join the very group of believers whom he had once persecuted.

Perhaps, then, it is to the extent that we are willing to make sacrifices for Christ’s sake – sacrifices of money, or possessions, or time, or status, that we being to respond to Paul’s challenge “to share Christ’s sufferings”. But we can only be motivated to do this, when we realise that the value God places on us is far more than the value we can ever place on him. On the cross, Jesus showed that the value he places on each one of us is greater than the value he placed on his own life. The sacrifice we owe in return is nothing less. In the words of a well known Lent hymn:

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

The Apocrypha in Lent – 30 March (Good Friday)

If this is your first visit, please see my introduction to these Lenten readings.

30 March 2018. Daniel chapter 14

Like the story of Susannah on which I wrote earlier this week, this chapter, known as “Bel and the dragon”, is unrelated to the rest of the book of Daniel and is only included because Daniel features in the three short stories that it comprises, all of which share the theme of the defeat of idolatry. The chapter is omitted in Protestant Bibles as “apocryphal”.

In the first of the short stories, King Cyrus – mentioned elsewhere in the Bible and undoubtedly a historical person – is portrayed as worshiping the idol called Bel or Marduk which appears to eat a large amount of food (including sacrificed sheep). Daniel is no under illusion – he knows that the idol is only a bronze -covered clay statue, and tells the king that their must be trickery. Cyrus is at least willing to investigate the truth, but the priests of Bel are confident their secret trap door (by which they go in to eat the idol’s food at night) will not be discovered. Daniel uses a simple built of forensic investigation by scattering ashes on the floor to expose the footprints of the people who come in at night, and thus persuades the king to stop worshiping the idol.

In the second story, the king is now worshiping a living creature – a “dragon” (we cannot know what sort of animal this really was). He believes it to be immortal, but Daniel very simply chokes it to death with balls of hair, grease and pitch. In this way he persuades the king to drop the practice of idolatry. But that is not the end of the story – for the second time (if the stories in the book are in chronological order) Daniel is fed to the lions, yet survives by God’s miraculous intervention.

Is there any relevance to this story for Christians? Yes, very much so! Today is Good Friday, when Jesus was condemned to death by Pontius Pilate. Pilate found himself in the same position as Cyrus did – faced with a believer in God who had been upsetting the religious systems of their day, yet willing to be persuaded that the believer in question was not only harmless to society, but maybe even right in representing a different form of religion.

Yet in both cases, the priests of the established religion – the servants of Bel, or the priests of the Jerusalem temple who professed to worship the true God, the God of Abraham (and for that matter Daniel) – were so afraid of losing their influence and their income that they threatened to riot. Just as the priests of Bel “pressed [Cyrus] so hard that the king found himself forced to hand Daniel over to them to throw Daniel into the lion pit” (14:30-31), so Pilate was pressed so hard by the Jews to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus, that he did the same.

What can we learn from these stories – true or not? It seems impossible to modern people that an intelligent person such a Cyrus could believe in a statue actually being a god, but then it seems impossible for many people that an intelligent person can believe in an unseen god. The deity of Bel and the Dragon could be disproven; the existence of God can neither be disproven, nor proved by scientific experiment. Daniel, if these stories are true (and the Bible has many examples of people being miraculously preserved from death) could point to the evidence in his life of a saving power, and so can many people today. Belief in God requires faith, but a faith for which there is evidence.

It is not surprising that when Jesus hung on the cross, he was taunted to save himself and come down from the cross. He had healed people of all kinds of illness and disability, even raised people from the dead. But it appeared he could not save himself. Where was the God who rescued Daniel from the lions, Joseph from the pit in which his brothers had thrown him, or the three young men of chapter 3 from the furnace, when his own son was dying? The miracle of Good Friday is in fact in the fact that Jesus was not saved from physical death. For he had to undergo it in order to be raised to life, without which his saving work for all of humanity would not be complete. Daniel’s life was saved as a reward for defeating the power of idolatry and destroying the terrifying dragon, but Jesus on the cross faced down the greater enemy, the unseen power of the Devil. He paid the price for that with his life, but was rewarded with the everlasting life that he also offers to us.

Happy Easter!

Here ends the book of Daniel, and with it my survey of the whole Bible (including the apocryphal bits) over the last 15 months.

The Apocrypha in Lent – 22 March

If this is your first visit, please see my introduction to these Lenten readings.

22 March. Ecclesiasticus chapters 50-51

The book ends with two very different chapters. The first describes in detail some of the rituals of the Temple, over two thousand years ago, but so slow is change in religious circles that the High Priest of those days, if transported to a Catholic or traditional Anglican church now, would not feel completely out of place. A priest in vestments that have changed little since Roman times, standing before (or behind) an altar, raising his hands in prayer, holding a cup of wine as an offering, the smell of incense, the sound of the organ perhaps resembling the trumpets of his day, a choir chanting psalms, and at the end a blessing over the assembled people. And all this in a building designed to symbolise segregation – the narthex for ordinary activities such as eating and drinking, the nave for the laity to worship, a chancel for the choir, the sanctuary with its altar only for the priest.

There are differences, of course, and the Mass even in a very traditional setting is not intended to resemble an animal sacrifice. Women priests (in an Anglican setting) might be the biggest surprise to our time traveller. The congregation is more likely to be standing or seated than prostrate in prayer – an attitude now found more in Islam than Christianity, but a powerful symbol of humility before God. But overall, the principles of communal worship have not changed that much.

The whole book of Ecclesiasticus has been, supposedly, about Wisdom, and the second half of the last chapter (51:13-30) summaries the search for her. This female personification of God’s inspiration has taken the writer in many directions – good and bad relationships, sex and marriage, and the value of friendship; asceticism, indulgence and a healthy attitude towards money; life, death and the afterlife; good and evil; truth, lies, gossiping and careful speech; physical and mental health; worship of God and admiration for his creation; and the guidance of God for his people throughout history. A whole library of practical life skills, in fact. It deserves to be more widely read.

The Bible in a Year – 14 December

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

14 December. Hebrews chapters 11-13

These last chapters of Hebrews turn from a consideration of Jesus and what he has achieved, to a list of the great figures of the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) and what they achieved through faith. Much of what is written here is not found directly in the scriptures, and is probably based on rabbinical teaching, but let’s take it as it stands.

The main thrust of the author’s argument is that having faith is not about immediate gain. The “prosperity gospel” (“if you believe in God and pray hard enough he will make you rich”) is totally alien to this Christian doctrine. Rather, the riches that the great heroes of the past sought were spiritual ones – the reward of finding God’s blessing in this life, or of preparing others for a life of faith.

The examples given include Abraham, who was promised a vast number of descendants through his son Isaac although he was also called by God to sacrifice Isaac, before the mission was abandoned at he last minute; also Moses, who led an entire nation to safety before his life ended within sight of the promised land; and many unnamed saints who endured physical torment for the sake of the eternal life that was their hope.

The point being made is that we should look not to be rewarded ourselves in our own lifetime, but to “store up treasures in heaven” as Jesus put it, by selflessly working for the benefit of others. This is so counter-cultural that it needs to be repeated often. To quote Jesus again, “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single grain”. In other words, you have to put yourself out for the sake of others, before God can use you to grow his kingdom.

This Christmas, when we respond to charity appeals at the same time as feeding and giving presents to our families, let us remember that we celebrate the one who laid down his life that we might have fulness of life.

The Bible in a Year – 13 December

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

13 December. Hebrews chapters 7-10

Chapters 5 to 10 are a lengthy explanation (originally for the benefit of Jewish readers) of how Jesus has superseded all the requirements of the Jewish law, at least those that relate to sacrifices, food laws and anything else to do with Temple ritual. Judaism has of course moved on itself since those days and no longer has a Temple or sacrifices, so the distinction is not as great as it was. But the point is still worth making, that Jesus started a completely new way of relating to God.

There are several points to the writer’s argument, and some of them (such as Jesus being equivalent to the obscure priest-king Melchizedek from the time of Abraham) are rather too obscure to explore here. More to the point is the fact that the old system of sacrifice required an endless succession of priests who died like everyone else, making regular sacrifices in a specific place (the Tabernacle or Temple), using animal blood, to forgive sins that had been committed, but could not achieve atonement (putting right) for sins that people had not yet committed. So there was no end to that system and it had no effectiveness outside the Jewish community who participated in the rituals.

Until Jesus, that is. He came as the one who outlived death, so requires no successor. He shed his own innocent blood instead of that of young animals, so no animal sacrifices are needed. He ascended into heaven and is therefore connected with all places at all times, so his sacrifice is also effective at all times and places. And he came for the benefit of all humanity, whether or not of Jewish heritage.

So why does the Church re-enact Jesus’ last meal (and thus symbolically his sacrifice) every day in many places, and at least every month in most congregations? Isn’t it enough to take Communion once, as we are baptised only once? Although Jesus’ death is effective at forgiving the sins of those who confess them in faith, we fallible people constantly need to be reminded of that.

We also need to be reminded regularly that “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (9:28), which is why we have the annual season of Advent in which we are now living. And “in a very little while, the one who is coming will come and will not delay; but my righteous one will live by faith.” (10:37).