The realness of sacrifice.

 The realness of sacrifice

I was still grading papers when it dawned on me that we are heading towards the Easter holidays and in the South African context this is for many reasons a sports holiday. Schools send their netball, hockey, and rugby teams off to compete in pre-season tournaments. Easter egg hunts are arranged for the holiday. Anyway, I was thinking this is sad because again we become preoccupied with other things on the most sacred of Christian holidays.

It was then that I thought it would be a good idea if the staff of my school gets sent off on holiday with some food for the soul. I contacted our music department and asked those more gifted than me to perform something for the staff. They decided to sing the song, Christ has no body now but yours.

I wanted to prepare some profound words to introduce the song. I read a little on the topic. Nothing I read felt real to me, it felt like words. Yes, many books and countless words have been written and spoken on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The texts I read did not resonate with me at that stage. Then I turned to the Gospel of Matthew and read, Jesus, became overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death (Matthew 26: 38). Suddenly, it felt real, like something I recognised – a human condition.

Strengthened by the beautiful words of the song, I began to ponder about the act of sacrifice, stepping in for another to save them from a fate too hard to imagine. Sacrifice is not easy it does not flow like all those thousands of words in the different articles. In our society words are cheap and realness is missing. An average person speaks 16 000 words in a day according to a study done at the University of Arizona. People are exposed to between 6000 and 10 000 advertisements in a day according to Forbes Online. People on average only read 20% of an article, skimming through it mostly in search of pictures. A whopping 5 billion photos are taken each day. To top it off the average person gets distracted every 8 seconds. Given these statistics the message is clear. If you cannot say what you want to say in under 8 seconds, in 20 words or less, enhanced by preferably moving pictures, your message is lost.

In this overloaded distracted modern society, we need to just be quiet and think of the act of sacrifice. It is not something spoken, it does not live and gets captured on a screen and developed in a darkroom. Sacrifice is real. It was to Jesus – not something he wanted to do, but he had to do. His Father’s will had to be done and the sin of the world had to go somewhere. That is the thing about sin. It just kind of tend to hang around, polluting those in its vicinity. That is why Jesus sent the possessed man’s demons into the pigs, but it ultimately became he who had to bare and conquer the sin of the world. That is why in the garden of Gethsemane Jesus became overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

Confronted with a task one does not want to do, but has to do, you don’t want to be alone. Jesus asked Peter and the two sons of Zebedee to stay with him and keep watch while he was praying, but they were distracted by sleep. Three times he woke them and every time he found them asleep upon his return. It almost seems as if Jesus were empathetic towards them by the third time, realising that they could not understand the enormity of the task he faced. When Jesus was arrested, he accepted his fate, but one of those who were sleeping earlier tried to defend Jesus with the sword. Jesus ordered him to stop. Violence only begets violence.

Upon his arrest, Jesus accepted the task that was given to Him. He was the fulfillment of the law, a law that was present for all to read and to see every day in the Torah. It was however only made real in Jesus’s crucifixion and willingness to be sacrificed.

Yes, faced with the opportunity to deliver a message on such a special occasion. I was humbled by my inadequacy to really say anything. All I can truly say is let us not fall asleep or get too distracted to hear the message of Easter. Let us be overwhelmed by deep gratitude that we were thus loved and saved.