2nd Sun Lent-B’18 Words of Institution
“The Sacrifice”
February 25, 2018
God puts Abraham to the test. God calls to Abraham, and Abraham answers, “Here I am!” Not “Yes Lord?” or “What do you want now Lord?” Abraham essentially said, “I’m ready.” Abraham had learned to respond unhesitatingly to God’s will. But ready for what? Hear the story beneath the story….
“Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.” Early the next morning Abraham saddled the family donkey with Isaac and set out for the place God directed.
On the next day, when the great crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took palm branches and went out to meet him, and cried out: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel.” Jesus found an ass and sat upon it, as it is written: “Fear no more, O daughter Zion; see your king comes, seated upon an ass’ colt.”
On the third day of their journey Abraham caught sight of the place from afar. then he said to his servants: “Both of you stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go on over yonder.”
As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve aside by themselves and said to them on the way, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
Thereupon Abraham took the wood for the holocaust and laid it on his son Isaac’s shoulders while he himself carried the fire and the knife.
Pilate said to the crowd, “Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” Then he handed Jesus over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha.
As the two walked on together, Isaac spoke to his father Abraham: “Father!” he said. “Yes son,” he replied. “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the holocaust?” “Son,” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust.”
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, grant us peace.
When they came to the place of which God had told them, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it….
Arriving to the place called the Skull they crucified Jesus and the criminals there….
Next Abraham tied up his son Isaac….
Next Jesus was stripped of his tunic….
And placed him on the wood of the altar….
And placed him on the wood of the cross….
Abraham reached out and took the knife….
The soldier reached out and took the hammer…
{said together!} HE RAISED IT IN THE AIR TO STRIKE…
“STOP!” God cried out to Abraham, “STOP!”
Abraham’s relief (not to mention Isaac’s) was palpable. Still… a son of Abraham would be offered, only not the one Abraham expected. God the Father’s own son would become the sacrificial lamb of the holocaust.
Now we might ask what all this says about our God. Do we have a vindictive God who demands a pound of flesh for a pound of sin? Some bible thumpers would have us believe so embracing a vindictive image of God to justify their own evil acts, but not us. We catholics do not believe in a vindictive God. We believe an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
So why Calvary? Why the cross? If God’s son did not have to die to appease some big loan shark in the sky, then why? Well the crucifixion is best understood as the result of a collision between two opposing forces: humanity’s sin and God’s will. The collision of the cross happens when God’s will and our sin crash into each other… a collision made possible because of the freedom God gives us even to turn away from him; a freedom for which God sacrifices Himself; a collision whose final outcome is the victory of resurrection for all who place themselves on God’s side.
This sacrifice of God and resurrection victory is what we remember with every Mass offered… not just remembering it as a past historical happening, but representing it as if we were there… transcending time so we are actually sacramentally there!
You see, the cross is not the result of some vindictive God’s extraction of punishment; the cross is the result of humanity’s refusal to embrace God’s kingdom… when our sin runs into God’s love.
So much of our faith comes down to this: we have the freedom to choose to follow God or not. God gives us this freedom so we can make a gift of our lives to him. It is this God-given freedom and our use or abuse of it that we are called to reflect upon in this season of Lent.
As we see with Abraham, each step taken with God leads to another and another and another. Yet, with each step taken we receive a promise, a promise that we will discover new life both now and at the end of our journey. Abraham chose to say, “yes” to God’s will in his life, and was blessed with countless descendants. Jesus chose to say, “yes” to his Father’s will and was raised up on the third day and exulted. Now is our time to exercise our freedom of choice. God wants us to walk as children of the Light. The choice is our’s to make.
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