by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

Good morning!

Holy and beautiful is the custom that calls us together,

To face our ideals,

To be strengthened,

To seek new life.

Come now, and let us worship together!

“Sacrifice” is not one of those words we like to hear.  After all, sacrifice suggests that we might have less of something, and we Americans think in terms of more, not less—a bigger house, certainly, than our parents had, a television with a bigger screen, a car with more power.  “Sacrifice” has the connotation of giving up or giving in instead of moving ahead or gaining.  It sounds lean and hungry; it reeks of scarcity.

And besides which, it sounds vaguely pagan and bloody, as in “animal sacrifice” or even “human sacrifice”—although we need to remember that both the Jewish and Christian traditions are very much steeped in blood, both animal and human.  Jesus, after all, as they say, died on the cross for our sins.  His death was foreshadowed by the Abraham and Isaac story of the Hebrew scripture in which Abraham is told by God to take his only son Isaac up on the mountain and bind him and sacrifice him—and at the last minute, if you know the story, just as Abraham is about to raise the knife to kill his son, God sends a ram as a substitute.  The lamb of God.  

(You know, I’ve always hated that story—it’s so totally patriarchial.  What if Sarah had been asked by God—what if this deep, sonorous voice said, “Go get your only son and bind him and take him up to the mountain top and kill him to prove that you are faithful to me”?  She would have said, “You’re out of your mind!  You’re not getting near that child!”  I’m convinced some celibate theologian wrote that story, some man who lived in a closet.)

The Christian faith has too often used sacrifice as a way of controlling the faithful, a way of keeping them in their place.  This has been especially true for poor people, minorities, and women.  How many times have the poor been told, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven . . . .”  In other words, your reward will be in the afterlife, so stay in line, accept your fate here on earth.  So often this teaching has been propagated, however, by those who were laying up for themselves treasures on earth—on the backs of the poor and minorities and women. 

Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist seminary, tells of an experience that came from her first ministry—she was then a Methodist serving a church in Seattle.  She writes that one afternoon a quiet knock on her office door interrupted her reading.  She opened the door to see a short, brown-faced woman bundled up against the chilly weather.

“Hello, pastor.  I’m Lucia,” the woman said.  “I live down the block and walk by the church on my way to the bus.  I saw your name on the church sign.  You are a woman priest.  Maybe because you are a woman, you can understand my problem and help me.”  Rebecca invited the woman in, and she sat down and continued her story, in a voice that was both warm and sad.  “I haven’t talked to anyone about this for a while,” she began, her smile fading and the sadness in her eyes deepening.  “But I’m worried for my kids now.  The problem is my husband.  He beats me sometimes.  Mostly he is a good man, but sometimes he becomes very angry and he hits me.  He knocks me down.  One time he broke my arm and I had to go to the hospital.  But I didn’t tell them how my arm got broken.”  She took a deep breath and went on.  “I went to my priest twenty years ago.  I’ve been trying to follow his advice.  The priest said I should rejoice in my sufferings because they bring me closer to Jesus.  He said Jesus suffered because he loved us.  He said, ‘If you love Jesus, accept the beatings and bear them gladly, as Jesus bore the cross.’  I’ve tried, but I’m not sure anymore.  My husband is turning on the kids now.  Tell me, is what the priest told me true?”

Rebecca was young, just starting out in her ministry.  She wanted to speak, but her mouth wouldn’t work—it felt stuffed with cotton.  Just that last Sunday she had preached a sermon on the willingness of love to suffer.  She had preached that Jesus’ life revealed the nature of love and that love would save us.  She had told her congregation that love never breaks relationship, that love places the needs of the other before concern for the self.  She knew that if she answered Lucia’s question truthfully, she would have to rethink her theology.  More than that, she would have to rethink choices she was making in her own life.  After a long pause, she found her voice.  “It isn’t true.  God does not want you to accept being beaten by your husband.  God wants you to have your life, not to give it up.  God wants you to protect your life and your children’s lives.”

Now all such stories do not have a happy ending, but this one does.  Lucia took courses at a community college until she had a marketable skill, and then she was able to move herself and her children to a new home.  She stayed in touch with Rebecca as she took each step.  Eventually her husband sought help for himself.  Lucia agreed to let him spend weekends with their children.  “They got their father back,” she said, “and I got my life back.”

Let me be clear.  I do believe in the necessity of sacrificial love.  And with the powers and principalities of evil at work in the world these days, sacrificial love is surely called for.  The problem with sacrifice is that we have to be sure who’s asking and for what purpose.  We have to discern, is this sacrifice in the service of life or in the service of death?

We have so many new babies in this congregation, and so many on the way!  Anyone who has ever birthed a child knows what it is to sacrifice in the service of new life—in a pretty literal way.  When a woman knows she carries a child within her body, that she is participating in creation in such an intimate way, that her very flesh is unfolding by its own volition into new flesh each day, then the meaning of sacrifice in the best sense of the word becomes clear.  Her body is her body but is not her body—it is in service to something higher, in service to this new life growing inside of her—not that she is in control of what that life will be—the predilections and choices of that child will be the child’s alone—but the mother gives herself, her body, over to that process, in faith.  She knows the first trimester of the pregnancy may bring sickness, the end of the pregnancy for sure will be terribly uncomfortable, for she will not be able to find a place to properly rest that awkward body.  And what about the birth itself?  When the time comes, her body will absolutely take over—she will be able to control only her response—that baby will have its way, and it will come when it will come and how it will come.  This is an involuntary process.  There will be pain, likely worse pain than she had imagined.  In the past, many women died in childbirth.  She knows she probably won’t, but she could.  She puts her life on the line for this new life, and this birthing changes her.  She is transformed.  For once in her life, she cares about something more than her own life.  The baby is born, and she can hardly believe that out of the pain and the water and the blood this beautiful little critter exists, a new human being who will grow up to question the meaning of life, who will love, who will suffer, who will give of his gifts, and who will die.  She never asks if the process, if the pain, if the risk is worth while.  She gives birth, she gives thanks.  Over and over, she gives thanks for this child, this perfect child.

To sacrifice, you see, is not to lose, to give into, to give up.  No, if it is chosen well—and that is the key word, chosen, it must be chosen—a sacrifice is more like arriving at the place where you need to be, where you feel whole and alive and creative—it is like coming into your own.  The birthing that I described is an apt metaphor.  Out of some union of love, blessed by mystery, comes new life and transformation.

Birthing takes place in many different forms.  It is found in the Hispanic father who works two jobs so that his daughter can have a chance to go to college, for he never did.  It is the aging peace activist who through the long years has been there, in her own gentle way, saying stop this madness; it is the brilliant young lawyer who could take any path to success and who decides that he will work against the death penalty instead of taking that lucrative job in Manhattan.

Ultimately, when we do what is called “sacrifice,” we do what our own best self is calling us to do; we are far from “doing without”; rather, we are choosing a way that is true to the context of our living, true to who we are at this particular time and place in history, true to the gifts we have been given, and true to our values.  When we live with this kind of integrity, we may seem to do what the world calls sacrifice, but to us, it seems simply what we must do.  It’s the old story about the man who runs into the burning house and saves the child, and someone says, “You’re a hero!” and the fellow answers, “I just did what anyone would have done.”  Well, of course.  If you’re that man.  That’s how he sees it.  It was there to be done, and he did it.

Several of you have given testimonies about giving to our building project—this kind of giving is not a sacrifice.  Not if you believe as I do that this building has to happen.  We just have to do this.  We have to birth this building—are we having a few birth pains?  Well, yes, but so what?  Look at the baby!  Look at our witness in this community and what this building will say about that.

Last Sunday I spoke about that dastardly billboard of the half-naked woman that I saw for so many months every time I turned onto I-5 going south, just before the Broadway Bridge.  So I had this fantasy of another billboard to replace that one—it is a huge picture of our people marching and holding up a banner—all kinds of people—young, old, thin and not-so-thin—and underneath it reads “WE WALK OUR TALK IN THESE TROUBLED TIMES.”  www.firstunitarianportland.org.  Craig Towers, our membership staff person, who is a talented graphic artist, made a template of it, and it looks great.  I’m guessing we can’t afford to put it up in that spot by the Broadway Bridge, but by golly we are going to put it up on our building, right there on the 12^th Avenue side, so all of Portland can see it.  Because that’s who we are as a people: we walk our talk. 

Yes, the times are troubled.  We all know that.  And we’re here to say on Easter Sunday that new birth is possible.  We’ve seen it happen in our lives. I see it happen in this church all the time.  We’ve seen it happen in our nation, and we can make it happen once again.  Sacrifice?  It’s not a sacrifice.  It’s what we care to do, simply because of who we are.  So be it.  Amen.

Spirit of Life, we ask for newness of life on this Easter day; take the gloom away, and bring us light.  Remind us of who we are, of our values, of our goodness, of our commitment to a better way.  When we are tempted to despair, give us hope; when we are tempted to smallness, let us rise once again, to serve as we are led to serve, to give as we are led to give.  Amen.

BENEDICTION