Sacred Space #3

Here is the next in our Bible Study series on Sacred Space....

Sacrifice and the Temple of Solomon 10/22/10

The Bible can be seen as a list of failed human attempts to relate to God, i.e. with means involving violence. One of the biggest of these is through the sacrifice of animals. At the Passover at the time of Jesus it is estimated there were over a million pilgrims. With each family making a lamb sacrifice, the Temple would have become like an enormous abattoir to accommodate the blood fest.

Chapter 4 of Genesis provides the first account of sacrifice. There is no preamble, no instructions from God to do it, no explanation why sacrificial practice suddenly appears in the text. It arises in the story of Cain and Abel where Abel’s animal sacrifice finds more favor in God’s eyes than Cain’s harvest offering. This leads to the first murder, Cain’s founding of the first city and the birth of civilization. A struggle exists in the text. God hears the blood of Abel crying out from the ground for justice, but then immediately God protects his murderer by placing a mark on Cain. God prefers Abel’s animal sacrifice, but then the blood of Abel himself (an even greater sacrifice) seems to lead God to protect and bless Cain in what seems a contradiction of his earlier call for justice. This is an anthropological rather than a theological text. It tells us more about us than about God. It is a reflection about who we are: that there is a deep human need in all cultures for sacrifice. That the end result of sacrifice is order, structure, civilization – and that the pouring of blood is a powerful thing. Sacrifice was common to all ancient cultures. It is a deeply embedded human practice that, because of its power, was ascribed to the will of God/the gods. It just emerges spontaneously in the Bible. This ancient human practice is incorporated into the text. The Bible both embraces it yet also cannot completely reconcile itself to it (see prophets below) - because it seems antithetical to the emerging understanding of God.

In Exodus 12:21-27 God gives the Passover sacrifice instructions. It paints an intolerable picture of God. He sends his angel of death to pass over the human metropolis of Egypt, slaying the first born sons of all whose homes are not marked by the blood of a slaughtered lamb. The blood is not just a marker (like paint). Rather it is apotropaic – something that wards off evil. Like making the sign of the cross, the evil eye or blessing someone after they sneeze. It is something holy or magical that keeps evil away. It was an ancient practice in Europe to kill an animal and place it under the threshold of the house to protect the home. Spilling blood is a powerful primitive means of protection.

In Genesis 15:7-20 God makes a covenant with Abram. He instructs Abram to cut several animals in half and to arrange their rendered bodies in two lines to form a corridor. A smoking pot and a flaming torch appear and pass along the corridor. These symbols recall the pillars of fire and of smoke depicted in the Exodus story. They represent God who now moves down the rows of animals. God is saying that if he breaks his promise then he calls down this destruction upon himself. Abram does not have to walk down the corridor – only God. The slaughtered animals act as a curse. This account gives us a picture of how ancient peoples behaved. They used blood to give binding meaning to a promise.

The book of Samuel is the story of the founding of the Kingdoms. Before there were kings, the people were led by Judges –charismatic figures (for example Gideon and Samson) who rose up according to the needs of the people. Samuel, an early prophet, objects to the establishment of a king. He eventually, grudgingly, agrees to anoint Saul king – giving in to the will of the people. The prophets emerge at the same time as the kings – speaking out against them. The kings are another failed prototype. The prophets speak out also against what inevitably comes with a king – the palace and the temple, injustice and false worship. David, Saul’s successor and the archetypal king, did not establish a temple. It was his son, Solomon, who built it. 2 Samuel 7:1-17 tells of David considering establishing a Temple, but he is dissuaded by God, through the prophet Nathan:
“Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’”
God is saying that, unlike a tent that moves with the people, you cannot move a temple.
A temple is to do with centralized, visible, vertical power.

The basis of the Book of Samuel is written by a scribe in @950 BCE. He is preserving both the memory that God did not want a temple yet also that history shows that the Temple was in fact built. The account is contradictory - God doesn’t approve of sacrifice, but then he does; doesn’t want a temple, but then allows it. There is a struggle within the text to reconcile both strands of the tradition. The account tries to resolve the dilemma by having God reply to David that his son, rather than he, will be the architect of the Temple. The temple is therefore removed, at least by one generation, from the idealized reign of David.

The mechanism that makes a temple a temple is sacrifice. The ancient human practice, recounted in the earlier Genesis stories, thus gets institutionalized and introduced into the heart of Israel. The prophets continue to speak out against the Temple and sacrifice, maintaining the struggle/tension within the text:
“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me you burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and your offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24 – a text quoted by Martin Luther King).
“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6)

Jesus continues in this prophetic tradition. He takes on the whole sacrificial mechanism, becoming himself the sacrificial victim but overturning the concept itself through infinite forgiveness and love. In so doing he shows us the way to break with the human dependence upon sacrifice once and for all.