05/08/2026
Please, my dear lord Neptune …
We are in the liturgical season of the Resurrection, the season of Easter. Easter is an invitation to bask in life, light, joy, hope everything wonderful and miraculous. In seeking to live into the joy of the resurrection I was also reminded how Christians have an amazing ability to sn**ch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I was listening to a podcast from N.T. Wright, a New Testament scholar whom I follow. He pointed out some Christians get confused by language of sacrifice coming from the Hebrew Bible. We are very far removed from bronze age animal sacrifice and in that huge historical distance we are prone to make a significant mistake. It is easy to think that animal sacrifice was about appeasing the gods. But that is not how it was amongst those who worshipped the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is tempting to think that the logic of sacrifice is that we need to trick a blood thirsty God. It was true that in many ancient cultures, the gods were nasty, tricky and bloodthirsty brutes. That was certainly true of the Greek and Roman gods. You don’t want to peeve Neptune, whoo boy. Though, I sometimes think that I have peeved Neptune. At least that would explain why I am so very bad at catching fish, but I digress …
So, we kill an animal in order to trick the tricky gods. Hey, don’t kill me: I killed this animal so something has died: that’s the main thing, right? So leave me alone, and hey, Neptune, do you think that you can help me catch some fish next time?
I have spent a little bit of time with First Nations communities in Canada and came to understand that in their spirituality when you hunt, or fish, you would say a prayer for the prey animal that you have killed. You would give thanks that the death of the salmon, or the buffalo, or the deer, is in order for you to live. It recognizes that their can be no life for carnivores (or omnivores, in our case) without death, in order that we might eat.
In cultures that practiced animal sacrifice, it was an occasion for feast and celebration. Only rarely would you burn the sacrificial animal. Usually a portion would be set aside for the priests, and then there would be a celebration: a barbecue in fact. There was a cycle of death and sacrifice, honor for the animal who has given its life so that we might eat, and then a time of feasting and celebration.
That is how to understand sacrifice. Unfortunately, Christians, or at least some of them, misunderstanding the nature of sacrifice, have made it reminiscent of appeasing a tricky, blood-thirsty god. The death of Jesus becomes so that God won’t kill us. I am overstating it for effect, but this gets the death of Jesus completely wrongly: twisted in fact.
N.T. Wright pointed out that the blood of animals was ritually important because they believed that life resides in blood: so only blood, life, can wash away death. So also the death of Jesus is not about death, it is about life. It is not just something to go through in order to get to resurrection. It is using the language of sacrifice, of the Son engaging in giving himself, in order that we might have life: and as Jesus reminded us; life abundantly.
So the season of the resurrection is, to play with the metaphor, a time for a feast, a barbecue, if you will. Perhaps that is how best to make sense of Jesus saying “unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man …” His flesh is true bread; his blood true drink. We are invited into the Eucharist which is the reminder that life is a banquet.
The invitation of the season is life: what gives you life, what gives you joy, what gives you hope? The answer is Jesus. And in receiving life, how do we extend that joy, that life, that peace, that hope to others?
