Sacrifice
If you are Catholic, or perhaps a fundamentalist/charismatic that forgot that the Protestants abolished the church calendar about 500 years ago, it is Lent, and you may get the pleasure of avoiding real meat today, as it's Friday... avoiding eating it, that is, I suppose that if there's a t-bone in the middle of the road, you don't have to swerve, but who knows. But whether you're avoiding eating meat because someone hundreds of years ago decided you should follow a Jewish custom at Pentecost to remember the death of Jesus Christ, the one, final sacrifice that made all such Jewish customs unnecessary (read: blind tradition often is ironic), life, and especially Christian life, is about sacrifice.
If you've read early Tolkien - and if you read my first entry, you have a little bit - you know that many of his stories do not have the happiest of endings like that in The Lord of the Rings, but people are constantly making sacrifices despite the imminence of failure. The story is called “The Fall of Gondolin” for a reason – the Valar sent no help in the end to save the glorious city, one of the last strongholds of freedom in Middle Earth; there was no Eagle to swoop down at the last second to pull Ecthelion from the King’s Well (although it is notable that Eagles did come to help Tuor and the remnant of the Gondothlim (including one Legolas Greenleaf) to escape). He made, what most people consider, the ultimate sacrifice, and we are told that “greater love hath no man that this” (John 15:13). Most are not called to make this ultimate sacrifice, but each of us is called to “deny himself and take up his cross and follow [Jesus]” (Matthew 16:24). Is sacrifice difficult? Sometimes it can be – especially if we have fore-knowledge of it. Jesus struggled many hours praying with His Father (Luke 22:42-44), but just as Ecthelion instinctively made the charge to what would be his death, when the time comes to make the choice, it should not be a difficult one, there is only one side to choose.
Whether we are sacrificing our safety or perhaps our lives in war or if we are simply sacrificing our time for others, we display our intelligence by making sacrifices for what we believe. We see it from the reprobate; many sacrifice their lives for their jobs or for money or for physical pleasures. Many will even sacrifice their lives and/or marriages for their children, believing that is their only legacy on this earth. The Christian is, in the end, making all sacrifices for God. The beneficiary of our sacrifice is never God – we cannot give something to God that he does not already have, but our ultimate goal is to glorify God in our hearts (we cannot glorify God either; he is God and has all the glory already!). Must we? No, and we cannot completely, and fortunately Jesus has removed the need to, just as (and at the same time as) he removed the need for the Jewish sacrifice and ceremony. But our faith causes us to, out of thanksgiving, and that is our sacrifice, even if it comes to fiery battle in cool waters.
If you've read early Tolkien - and if you read my first entry, you have a little bit - you know that many of his stories do not have the happiest of endings like that in The Lord of the Rings, but people are constantly making sacrifices despite the imminence of failure. The story is called “The Fall of Gondolin” for a reason – the Valar sent no help in the end to save the glorious city, one of the last strongholds of freedom in Middle Earth; there was no Eagle to swoop down at the last second to pull Ecthelion from the King’s Well (although it is notable that Eagles did come to help Tuor and the remnant of the Gondothlim (including one Legolas Greenleaf) to escape). He made, what most people consider, the ultimate sacrifice, and we are told that “greater love hath no man that this” (John 15:13). Most are not called to make this ultimate sacrifice, but each of us is called to “deny himself and take up his cross and follow [Jesus]” (Matthew 16:24). Is sacrifice difficult? Sometimes it can be – especially if we have fore-knowledge of it. Jesus struggled many hours praying with His Father (Luke 22:42-44), but just as Ecthelion instinctively made the charge to what would be his death, when the time comes to make the choice, it should not be a difficult one, there is only one side to choose.
Whether we are sacrificing our safety or perhaps our lives in war or if we are simply sacrificing our time for others, we display our intelligence by making sacrifices for what we believe. We see it from the reprobate; many sacrifice their lives for their jobs or for money or for physical pleasures. Many will even sacrifice their lives and/or marriages for their children, believing that is their only legacy on this earth. The Christian is, in the end, making all sacrifices for God. The beneficiary of our sacrifice is never God – we cannot give something to God that he does not already have, but our ultimate goal is to glorify God in our hearts (we cannot glorify God either; he is God and has all the glory already!). Must we? No, and we cannot completely, and fortunately Jesus has removed the need to, just as (and at the same time as) he removed the need for the Jewish sacrifice and ceremony. But our faith causes us to, out of thanksgiving, and that is our sacrifice, even if it comes to fiery battle in cool waters.
posted by Ecthelion at 1:35 PM
2 Comments:
So, are you for Lent?
No, I'm definately with the Protestant Church fathers on that one, hence me calling it ironic. The elect make sacrifices for God, the reprobate do it for themselves. Whether they would agree or not, I would guess that the Roman Catholics keep Lent and make sacrifices during Lent because they think it is beneficial for them in the afterlife (i.e. Purgatory time? Maybe my Catholic ideas are archaic).
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