The First Sunday in Lent
February 22, 2026
Just a little while ago, we affirmed these words:
In the midst of an imperfect world,
Jesus is the light of hope.
In this sermon, I want to contrast that language with the language of one of the readings this morning, which talks about sacrifice and justification. This is going to involve a little theology, so I apologize in advance for two things: First, I am not a trained theologian, so I may get some stuff wrong, and I hope some of you will be listening carefully enough to correct me. Second, if you don’t enjoy theology, I’m sorry and will try to keep it engaging.
I think most of us believe some version of what our Lenten liturgy declares, or at least the spirit of what it’s saying. The world is indeed imperfect, and for us Christians Jesus represents something different, a beacon of hope that shows us that life can and will be better if we try to follow that light.
But do we believe that this hope can be found in the death of Jesus as a sacrifice? an atonement for the sins of humankind, so that by believing that Jesus is the son of God, we will be saved from death ourselves? That is the gist of the reading from Romans this morning, and it’s even more clearly expressed in the verses just preceding the reading, Romans 6:9 – Paul says:
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. . . .God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
In our Christianized culture, this idea of atonement is so familiar that it’s easy to stop being curious about it. We listen to Paul and think, Yep, that’s atonement theology, that’s what a lot of Christians mean by “Jesus saves us,” but most of us prefer to focus on his life and teachings, not some metaphysical transformation that is supposed to have taken place because Jesus accepted death on the cross. The standard atonement theory asks us to see this Jesus as a sacrifice, the “Lamb of God” who freely offered himself to God to redeem humankind from the original sin of Adam.
I spent time these last couple of weeks looking into the concept of sacrifice, and its role in religions and cultures. It’s not just some ancient practice. We still have a robust idea of sacrifice as being ethically important. Much of what we today understand as sacrifice involves a willing, even eager giving up of our own selfish interests to help others in need. We sacrifice our time, our money, our leisure. It’s even enshrined in our sports – consider the sacrifice bunt in baseball, where the batter commits suicide, so to speak, in order to advance another player and help the team. But ritual sacrifice is largely absent from our culture, at least on a conscious level.
I was intrigued to learn that sacrificing to a god or gods is one of the oldest and most consistent features of human culture. There’s good evidence that ritual sacrifice may have been practiced by Neanderthals, pre-dating Homo sapiens. It shows up in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe. The only religions that don’t have a sacrificial tradition are Buddhism and Islam.
So what is this all about? Why is the practice of sacrificing to a god so widespread? There is no scholarly consensus on this. You can try to answer the question from two angles. You can ask why the practitioners did what they did, according to their own beliefs and desires, which assumes that the god or gods are really there to be sacrificed to. Or you can take an anthropological or psychological point of view, and ask what deep human needs or emotions are being expressed in the act of sacrifice and propitiation of a non-existent god.
I only have 15 or 20 minutes, so I’m going to stick with the first angle. What I want to understand better is what those who believe in sacrifice as an effective atonement or propitiation think they are doing. I want to understand it in their terms, not from the outside viewpoint which assumes their views are part of a false picture. And by the way, I’m going to use the masculine pronoun for God when I describe this picture, not because I personally believe it’s accurate, but because I think it better helps to express the views of traditional sacrificing cultures, including Christianity.
It appears that there are two major theories to explain how sacrifice is supposed to work. The first is probably the most familiar. To quote E. B. Tylor: “Sacrifice can be understood as a gift to the divine, either valued by the divinity on its own merits, valued as an act of homage, or valued based on the hardship of the sacrifice itself.” Mauss and Hubert expand on this: “Sacrifice is a form of gift directed to the gods with the social expectation that the gods would offer a greater gift at a later date.”
So a picture emerges that is familiar. The priest sacrifices a lamb to God, with the expectation that God will find value in this act, and perhaps return the favor with a gift of his own in the future.
I found it interesting that none of the sources I consulted offered an explanation of why God would be pleased by sacrifice particularly, understood as the death of a living being. As an act of homage, it seems grotesque, as if Abraham-like obedience could be mistaken for love. As for the hardship of the sacrifice itself, I guess we’d have to believe that God feels good, or approves in some way, when he receives evidence of how important he is to humans, as shown by what we’re willing to give up for his sake. I would call that also grotesque. And this leaves out entirely the fact that God is supposed to be a god of the living, a god of love, who does not delight in death.
Just a quick personal reflection: I’ve sometimes wondered why, when I first became a Christian, I didn’t find atonement theology troubling at all, whereas now it causes me great discomfort. Writing this sermon, I came to understand better why that was. I began my Christian life with a strong understanding of the Holy Spirit, and a growing love and admiration of Jesus. But I didn’t think much about God. My unconscious picture of God was good enough for the time being.
And that God was very much a father figure. He loved me, but he was also wrathful, powerful, and must be obeyed. He must also be pleased by me, even placated. I had to “get right with God” in order to be a good Christian. So I needed to atone for all sorts of wrongs. When I heard the story that Jesus had stepped in to do this on my behalf, it made sense, and it was a relief. I never stopped to think why this kind of God was even worth worshiping.
I mentioned that there were two main theories to explain why sacrifice is supposed to work. The first I’ve just described – sacrifice as a kind of giving to God that demonstrates certain important attitudes, and perhaps will result in a return gift. The second theory is less familiar, and I think more intriguing. William Robertson Smith and Emile Durkheim both emphasized the idea that the sole function of sacrifice was for humans to achieve some kind of communion with the divine. It is a symbolic act that establishes a relationship between humankind and the sacred order.
The difference between this theory and the more traditional theory of sacrifice is that the entire ritual is understood symbolically by those who participate in it. The sacrifice creates a bond, a relationship, that allows communication between the human and the divine. We don’t seek gifts in return from God; rather, the gift is the relationship itself, the sense of being brought closer to God.
Now of course this picture still leaves unexplained why sacrifice – the taking of life as a symbolic act – should be the chosen method for communion with God. But I think it’s interesting to imagine that the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews might have been aware that this was all a kind of theater whose purpose was transcendence, not propitiation. It’s food for thought.
What about the sacrifice of Jesus? This particular sacrifice is importantly different from what we could call the “normal” sacrificial practices of other cultures and religions. For one thing, the sacrificed being, Jesus, offers himself willingly. He may be called “the Lamb of God,” and likened to a traditional sacrifice, but he isn’t really like a sacrificial lamb, because the lamb has no choice. Jesus volunteers. His act is described by Paul in terms of “righteousness” and “obedience.”
For another thing, Christian theology teaches that God and Jesus are two aspects of the same divine being, best understood as father and son. So when Jesus sacrifices himself to God, he is offering himself to himself, in some manner that remains a mystery.
And finally, this sacrifice is not meant to be merely pleasing to God the father. It is meant to work a metaphysical reversal, saving humankind from the sin of Adam, and giving humans eternal life. So it is more like the old idea of expecting a gift back from God if we make a proper sacrifice. The doctrine of “vicarious atonement” assures Christians that God does accept this bargain, allowing Jesus to stand in for humans, and we will in turn be given salvation. Jesus, as they say, pays the price for us, who are unable to do so, and the result is “complete acquittal.” In the words of Jesus, as reported in Matthew 20:28, “The Son of Man came to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
To round out our understanding of the Christian sacrifice, we need to add one more element: A major tradition in theology teaches that the sacrifice of Jesus is in fact not enough to save me from sin, and grant me eternal life. God doesn’t simply do this for me, thanks to the atonement of Jesus. I myself have to take an additional step, which can be described in many ways in different Christian traditions. But it has to do with acceptance, belief, worship. In order to receive the gift that Jesus has purchased for me, I must accept his divinity, and vow to enter into a certain kind of relationship with him. Only then will I be able to benefit from the sacrificial work Jesus has done.
So these are very significant differences from traditional sacrifices. Does our Christian theology make better sense of the concept of sacrifice? Is it easier to accept the idea that the death of Jesus on the cross was necessary for humankind’s salvation, not merely an offering to please God? I can’t tell you what to think about that. It is so central to traditional Christian teaching that anything I say would be inadequate. I was describing my difficulties with this sermon to a fellow Seeker, who commented, “Why don’t you just say that Paul was wrong?”
Well. I do think he was wrong, and that the centuries of atonement theology present a misguided and often harmful picture of the light of Jesus in which we place our hope. But I really don’t want to challenge anyone’s faith here; as I said, the atoning death of Jesus is simply too central to the traditional Christian message to be waved off with, “Paul got it wrong.” In a few sentences, then, here’s where I am at the moment with this very hard doctrine.
I can accept, easily, the idea that humankind has gone off the track, that our civilizations have missed the mark and that the message of Jesus and the other great religious teachers is still unheeded. So if salvation means a turning away from this anti-progress, a reversal of course, then I’m all for it. And I can accept that this metanoia, this being born again, has to happen at the individual level, for each one of us, in order for humankind as a whole to be redeemed. So far, no problem. Where I depart from Paul and other traditionalists is that I see this rebirth, this redemption, happening through the life and teachings of Jesus, and through a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit, not anything to do with his death. I find it extremely hard to worship, or even respect, a god who would “send his only-begotten son” to die because that was the only way to set the stage for a kind of miracle for humans. The problem, it seems to me, is that if God was prepared to receive us back into grace, why not just show us mercy? Why require a death, a sacrifice, in order to do this?
OK, two things. First, this is not a knockdown argument against atonement theology. You can find plenty of theologians who’ve spent their careers refuting my argument. Again, time doesn’t permit me to go into detail, but the basic response is that God could not simply let us off the hook; it requires a choice on each individual’s part. God could no more do it for us than he could make me wise and good without my doing anything; being wise and good means having had certain experiences. There’s no short cut.
And, even more briefly, my response to that: Sure, but again, why death as the method? My picture focuses on the life of Jesus, not his death. I absolutely need to work out my own salvation, but what allows me the chance to do this is the living Christ, not his death on the cross.
But . . . however . . . The other thing I want to emphasize is that there is an enormous symbolic weight to the idea of death and resurrection. Not atonement, but resurrection. I may not believe that the death of Jesus atoned for anything, but I can and do believe that there is a deep spiritual pattern being revealed in what happened to him, and to the early Christians. The process of dying to the old life, dying to “sin” if you like, and being reborn to a new way, is something I believe with all my heart. There is no growth without death. Watch the seasons for a year and you’ll understand.
Can I keep the idea of death and resurrection without also having to keep the idea that Jesus’ death and resurrection were a kind of sacrifice, a bargain struck with God on my behalf? Can I keep the idea that a relationship with Jesus, understood as the living Christ, is central to my Christian practice, without also keeping the idea that my eternal life depends on one moment of acceptance, of repentance? And that that moment was made possible by the death of Jesus?
I think so. I hope so. I’m on the journey, still very far from arriving. I’ll just close with the words we began our morning with:
In the midst of an imperfect world,
Jesus is the light of hope.