Scripture Lessons: Micah 6:6-8 John 15:12-13 THE LANGUAGES OF LOVE: #6 SACRIFICIAL ACTS (04/10/11) No one has greater love than this, to lay down one s life for one s friends. (Jn. 15:13) This morning we will be exploring what I believe is a sixth love language sacrificial acts. This past week, out of curiosity, I looked up the word sacrifice in Harper s Bible Dictionary. The reference directed me to look up the term worship. I was surprised to learn that the word sacrifice is only used in the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testaments, in connection with worship. It seems from this that a sacrificial act is essentially something that is offered to a God it is a sacred act, an act of worship. The term worship in the Old Testament is the English translation of the Hebrew word that means to bow down or prostrate oneself. This posture indicates an attitude of reverence toward either a human or divine Lord. The concept of worship is also integrally connected with acts of service. In Mesopotamian thought, worship was actually seen as providing the gods with the necessities of life. In ancient Israelite forms of worship, certain animals and grains were offered as a form of sacrifice to Yahweh. Leviticus 21:6 describes these sacrifices as the food of God. Israelite worship differed from Mesopotamian worship, however, in that, as the prophets pointed out, God could not be worshipped only externally. To truly honor God, it was necessary to obey his laws, the moral and ethical laws as well as the ritual laws. Isaiah 1:11-17 tells us that to appear before God with sacrifices while flouting his demands for justice was to insult him. Isaiah and the later prophets realized that God does not really need the sacrifices for food. This opened the people up to thinking of sacrifice on a much deeper level. As the prophet Micah tells us, He has told you, O mortal, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. It seems to me that the kind of sacrifice that Jesus calls us to perform, the kind of sacrifice that he would have us offer to God is the sacrifice of our ego, our self- 1
centeredness, in the service of a higher good. We do this when we take on the role of a servant, as Jesus did and as he directed his disciples to do. We do this when we share what we have with the poor, when we sacrifice a portion of our pleasure and possessions with those who have much less than we. We do this when we make the decision not to live unto ourselves alone, but become disciples of the Way. The act of true discipleship is a sacrificial act. Giving is a kind of sacrifice. I have something. It may be a thing. It may be money. It may be time or emotional energy. I sacrifice what I have when I give it to you, that is, if I give it to you freely and lovingly. If you take it from me, I did not give it. It would not be a sacrificial act. Last week we began to examine what C. G. Jung would call the shadow side of our various love languages. From this perspective, not all giving, not all acts of sacrifice are noble; not all are expressions of love. For example, co-dependent people are notorious for not being able to say no. Because they want to be wanted, they need to be needed, and they love to be loved, they will do just about anything to be wanted, needed, and loved. They will pay practically any price to hold onto the relationship. Because of this psychological dynamic, a co-dependent person s giving is not true or sacramental giving. It isn t sacrificial giving in the best sense of that term. It is essentially manipulative. If we are co-dependent in our relationships, we will neglect our own needs, our legitimate needs, our deepest needs to meet the perceived needs of the other. What we sacrifice in such a relationship is our true self. I believe this is contrary to the will of God for us in our relationships. Some sacrifices are good and healthy and loving. They are one of the deepest and most beautiful expressions of love. Such a sacrifice will build us up at the same time that it is building the other person up. It will deepen our soul. Other sacrifices are bad and destructive. They do not build us up; they tear us down. They may not even build the other person up in the sense of helping that person experience a meaningful and fulfilling life. Such a sacrifice can actually poison our soul. You might ask how we can tell into which category a specific sacrifice or a specific request or demand for a sacrifice falls. That s a good question. To be perfectly honest, I don t know. There is no litmus test for true, meaningful, or sacramental 2
sacrifice that will help us distinguish it from destructive forms. We probably just have to think it through the best we can and then see the effect that the sacrifice has on us. Just remember, if our actions tend to be guided or shaped by an unconscious co-dependent dynamic, we can give away a lot of ourselves and actually feel quite good about it. We might have to look deeper into ourselves to see what we are missing in the relationship. One of the litmus tests that I think can shed light on whether a sacrificial act is an act of love or an act of stupidity is whether the sacrifice is reciprocal. If we sacrifice something special for our partner, would our partner return the favor? Would he/she be equally quick to offer something to us that would require not only time and effort but sacrifice? If both people do this, it is much more apt to be a beautiful expression of love. If only one person does this time and time again in the relationship and the other person never does it, the relationship begins to take on the characteristics of a master-slave relationship. Despite what it says at various points in the Bible, I believe that God finds slavery abhorrent not only when this power differential is grounded in racial or gender dynamics, but in any human relationship. Let me just give you one example, one that I have encountered in my counseling practice several, if not many times. I have known people, once they became married, to ask, request, and even demand that their partner give up their relationship with their parents, siblings, and friends. I have known people who have pressured their partner to give up their religion, to give up their church. I have known people who have demanded that their partner give up a job, stop going to school, and terminate therapy. The bottom line is that you are asked to do this for me. And I have known people who have done one or more of the above when pressured by their partner or just to avoid being punished in some way: by coldness, distance, withholding, the silent treatment, or any other price that the person who refused to sacrifice these very important parts of his/her life is forced to pay. It also seems to me that such sacrifices do not really build up the person who is demanding them. If I can split you off from your parents, siblings, friends, church, and even your therapist, that does not make me a better person. It just makes you less of a person. At the risk of sounding like a Republican or a Libertarian, I would advise you not to give up any of your constitutional rights in a relationship. Remember, Jesus told us 3
that he came that we might have life and have it abundantly. Jesus would not want us to become less of a person in and through any relationship. God does not want, does not value human sacrifice. At the end of the worship service last week, one of you asked me why I didn t refer to one of the greatest stories ever told about the importance of gifts, the use of gifts to express one s love. The minute you said it, I knew which story you meant. It is a Christmas story about gifts, about sacrifice, and about love. It is one of the most famous stories that were written by the American writer O. Henry. This story, which I first read in high school, is entitled The Gift of the Magi. I remember being deeply touched by this story the first time I read it. I still can t read it without having it evoke very deep feelings. For those of you who may not know it, let me tell you the story. It is a wonderful story not only about gifts as an expression of love, which was the theme of our reflections last week; it is about the most beautiful kind of sacrifice. The two characters in the story are Jim and Della. They are a young couple, in their early twenties, and they are newlyweds. They live in a humble flat. Actually, it is a little more on the poverty side than the humble side. The rent for the furnished flat is $8 a week. The place is run-down. The furniture is shabby. The mailbox won t open and the doorbell doesn t ring. Next to the doorbell, however, is a card bearing the name Mr. James Dillingham Young. The Dillingham part of Jim s name had been affixed to the card when its possessor was paid $30 a week. Now that his income had shrunk to $20 a week, he considered contracting his middle name on the card to a more modest and unassuming letter D. When he came home from work, tired and discouraged at the end of the day, he was known as Jim and was, as O. Henry says, greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, whom we know as Della. Now there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim s gold watch that had been his father s and his grandfather s before him. The other was Della s beautiful long hair. O. Henry says, Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty s jewels and gifts. 4
With regard to Jim s watch, O. Henry says, Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck his beard from envy. It was the day before Christmas. The problem was that neither of them had any money to purchase a gift for their beloved. To be more precise, Della had scrimped and saved one dollar and eighty-seven cents, sixty cents of which were in pennies. Jim, we assume, had nothing in his wallet. What made their poverty particularly poignant was that each of them knew what the perfect Christmas gift would be, just exactly what their loved one would treasure. Jim wanted to get Della a set of combs for her hair. They were a set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway store. They were beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell with jeweled rims just the shade for her hair. They were expensive combs, as both of them knew, and Della s heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. Della knew just what she wanted to get for Jim: a chain for the watch that meant so much to him. Jim kept the watch in his vest pocket. How much more would his pleasure be if the watch were attached to his vest button by a beautiful gold chain, a chain that would be seen by others and which he could use to extract his beloved watch from its resting place. But the chain was expensive, probably about as expensive as Della s set of combs. They each would cost approximately twenty dollars. And all they had was one dollar and eighty-seven cents. It is Christmas Eve, the time when this young couple usually exchanged gifts, that is, when they had anything to give to one another. Jim is coming in the door from work. The supper is on the stove. Jim stops dead in his tracks. His eyes light upon Della s face. At first it doesn t register what is different about it, what had changed. Then suddenly it dawns on him. Della has cut off all her hair. As he stands there, stunned, Della runs up to him. Jim, she says, don t be angry with me. Look what I got for you. Jim opens the package that has been wrapped with humble paper. Inside it is a fob, a golden chain for his beloved watch. Della had had her beautiful hair, the source of her pride, cut off at a hairdresser s. She sold it to the hairdresser for twenty dollars to buy her present for Jim. 5
You probably can guess what comes next. Jim gives his gift to Della. It is a set of beautiful combs for her hair -- not just a set of combs but the set of combs. Della looks at him quizzically. How could he have gotten the money for such an extravagant gift? Yes, Jim had pawned his watch, his beloved watch, to buy his present for Della. It was probably an awkward moment for both of them. Della had the combs, but she had sold the hair that they would have adorned. Jim had the fob, but had pawned the watch to which it would have been attached. In a way, they each had nothing. On the other hand, they each had something incredibly beautiful and meaningful. I think this story is about the giving of gifts, but on a deeper level it gives us an example of sacrificial love. It is the most beautiful kind of love. In the closing lines of his Christmas story, O. Henry writes, The magi, as you know, were wise men wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the act of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasure of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi. Next Sunday, Palm Sunday, we will enter into Holy Week. An integral, a central part of Holy Week is the theme of sacrifice. The symbol of this sacrifice is the cross. As Jesus tells us, No one has greater love than this, to lay down one s life for one s friends. This is what he does for us. This is his gift, his expression of love. This is his sacramental sacrifice. As we prepare our hearts for the experience of Easter, let us remember that one of the greatest expressions of love, one of the greatest love languages, is a sacrificial act. If we do this in love, we will get back much more than we have given. A sermon preached by the Reverend Paul D. Sanderson The First Community Church of Southborough April 10, 2011 6