To make sacred

Reading back articles of another blog I've discovered (there are so many talented writers out there) I came upon an excerpt from the following book: The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus' Final Week in Jerusalem. It goes now on my long, long list of books to buy and read. (For every book I finish on this list another five get added, it is a lifetime project.) This excerpt in particular caught my attention. I read it once, twice and then sat thinking.

How, then, did people create, maintain, or restore good relations with a divine being? What visible acts could they do to reach an Invisible Being? Again, they could give a gift or share a meal. In sacrifice as gift, an offerer took a valuable animal or other foodstuff and gave it to God by having it burned on the altar... No doubt the smoke and smell rising upward symbolized the transition of the gift from earth to heaven, from human being to God. In sacrifice as meal, the animal was transferred to God by having its blood poured over the altar and was then returned to the offerer as divine food for a feast with God. In other words, the offerer did not so much invite God to a meal as God invited the offerer to a meal.

That understanding of sacrifice clarifies the etymology of the term. It derives from the Latin sacrum facer, "to make" (facer) "sacred" (sacrum). In a sacrifice the animal is made sacred and is given to God as a sacred gift or returned to the offerer as a sacred meal. That sense of sacrifice should never be confused with either suffering or substitution.

Its not the definition of sacrifice we are used to, not the one we expect. My priest talked about a "what if" game they played in seminary. What if Jesus was gay? What if Jesus was married? What if, what if, what if? How would that change your faith? Trivial things in the end, that make no difference to me. But what if sacrifice is not what we thought? What if it has nothing to do with suffering? What if it is not Christ substituting himself for our punishment? What if, instead he did something so radically different that the Church has shied away from it in fear for two thousand years?

What if Christ made humanity sacred? What does that mean, what does that change? Not just, saved, not just redeemed from our place in the dirt, but sacred. Holy, vessels worthy of God. What does that mean for us, what about our faith would that change? What about the way we treat one another and act in this world would change? What about the way we care for ourselves would change?