Jesus, savior and sacrifice
At the School of Theology we were planning a liturgy in Frank House where non-seminarians hung out. A fellow graduate student said firmly, “He’s not my savior.” It was an electric moment for me. Not because I accepted the belief that Jesus died for our sins but because I didn’t and had not had the courage to say it. Her statement spurred me to be more honest. I see many, many religious people refusing to tell what they know for fear of losing their jobs.
For more than three decades I have studied Christian
doctrines in comparison with other traditions religious and non-religious.
Christians who can step out of our religion’s traditional mindset get my
respect. One such wrote an article that a member of our Mary Magdalene, First
Apostle, community found during her theological studies—“Sacrifice and Social
Maintenance: What's at Stake in the (non-)Ordination of Roman Catholic Women” by Joseph Blenkinsopp.
The matter rose when
we were dealing with a request that our liturgies employ the word “sacrifice”
as in “sacrifice of the Mass” and “Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.” Our newly-ordained priest Bernie explained
that many have a problem with the idea of a god who demands payment for
transgressions and asks his son to suffer for them. Jan reminded us that the
word sacrifice comes from Latin and means “to make holy,” enlarging the meaning
of “sacrifice.” Ruth reported on the Blenkinsopp article, which contrasts
expiatory sacrifice with sacrifice as abandonment to good. The first preserves
male ownership of the ritual.
Blenkinsopp informs
us that, historically, priesthood meant a male performing a sacrifice. Menstrual
and postpartum blood defiled the act, a belief that excluded women from the
status of priesthood. Women were outsiders used for reproduction, but they were
allowed no role in cultic acts except as spectators.
Sacrifice played a social
role essential to cementing male status and power between generations. It
preserved and passed on their material resources. [Let’s not forget that women
in the Old Testament were property.]
Continuing
Blenkinsopp’s analysis, the patriarchal frame assumes that Jesus chose 12 male
apostles [a myth unfortunately accepted as fact] and, this thinking goes, while
instituting the Eucharist at the Last Supper, Jesus deliberately expressed the
relationship between men and women willed by God.Therefore, gender inequality
is divinely ordained. [Let’s not forget that this belief system worships a male
god]
Blenkinsopp cites examples to illustrate this
mental frame through Christian history. 1) Apostolic succession was restricted
to male celibates, an effective a means of preserving the given social order.
2) The Second Lateran Council in 1139 prohibited marriage for priests to
protect church property [transmission of material resources]. 3) In the 1930s
women could not obtain degrees at Oxford & Cambridge even though they had completed
the coursework.
Finally, Blenkinsopp proposes a new way of
expressing sacrifice—abandoning the aim of maintaining boundaries and
restrictions to building communitas
or unclogging channels of communication and collapsing distinctions of status.
In a subsequent homily, Bernie suggested, “To
accept each other with all of our differences might be the greatest sacrifice
we are asked to give.”
For me, Jesus is neither savior nor
sacrifice. I add that Christians of the first centuries had no image of Christ
on the cross despite Paul introducing the idea of Jesus buying us back or
redeeming us (Romans 3:22-25). The cross pervades and dominates Christian life
today but did not enter Christian imagery or writing until the 5th
century.
I invite readers who have open minds to
browse information HERE about pagan precursors of Christ. The information has
been available in books for centuries, dug up by Christian researchers but not
given to ordinary people. I want more people to be informed.
* If anyone is interested, I can email the pdf
of Blenkinsopp’s scholarly article, summarized inadequately here.
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