Holy Offering

In this past month of exploring Genesis, we've learned some pretty surprising things, I think. Genesis taught us to look at the entire world, not as just any ordinary place, but as a temple God built for his own habitation. God indwells his universe to rest and rule and reign. This God beyond the world fills and claims the world, down to each and every subatomic particle, field of energy, measure of space-time. And in planting a garden as a special kind of sanctuary on earth, there, after a long process of anticipation, he set up material images of himself so that he could properly be reverenced by his creation. But no mere statue could represent the liveliness of the God who is pure act, the God who's all life. No, only a thinking, perceiving, feeling, moving animal, a body animated with rational mind and spiritual soul and breath of life, would do the trick. So he created humanity, alone among all species of his material universe, to be his active images, holy icons of his life and love.

Not only that, but God ordained these humans – and therefore every human – to a priesthood, giving humanity a special priestly calling, to be the priests of all creation. It is our most fundamental work, as human beings, to be the mouthpieces and messengers of all the visible creation's worship to God. We were put in the garden for the sake of serving the Lord in worship and guarding the holiness of his temple, which leads us to work on his world in his name and to tend it carefully and lovingly according to his vision for the flourishing of its beauty.

As those who share in the common priesthood of humanity itself, we were made to bring to God all manner of praises and prayers, all sorts of oblation and adoration, and to turn back toward creation with instruction and benediction. These worshipful actions weave together in a liturgy, an orderly pattern of worship that shapes our hearts through our bodies and bears witness to the holiness of God. And the liturgy was meant to vary from morning to evening, from day to day, in accordance with the calendar God wrote with the sun and moon and stars. Through the varieties of ritual and celebration, there in the garden we were meant to worship our Maker in feasts of day and week and month and year, season after season, in holy communion with the Holy One.

And part of those liturgies, at least some of the time, would have been the worship action of oblation, offering some kind of gift to God. What kind of exterior oblation Adam and Eve could have given, we can only guess. Maybe they would have gathered the finest firstfruits of all the trees of the garden which God had made so lovely and so tasty, and, before eating any of it themselves, would've brought it to the LORD when he descended in the breeze of the day (Genesis 2:9; 3:8). Could there have been any higher offering than to pluck fruit from the Tree of Life, just to lay it at the feet of the Life of Life as a holy offering?

Outside the Garden, where the wrong tree put us into this torn-up world, the same LORD God came to once more dwell with humanity. He replanted the garden in their midst, and called it the tabernacle. He gave them once again a chance to worship before his very face, and that meant oblation – offerings and sacrifices. Through a holy offering of food and drink, it was possible once again to encounter God.

In the humble tribute offering we read about this morning, an Israelite would bring a bowl full of oiled-up flour seasoned with fragrant frankincense (Leviticus 2:1-2). One handful with all the frankincense would be burned up, its aromas rising toward heaven; the rest was added to the food of the priests (Leviticus 2:2-3). The tribute offering showed personal love and loyalty to the LORD in a gift, but the one who brought it couldn't eat from it.

But then there's this peace offering we read about. And its purpose wasn't merely a one-way expression of love and loyalty. It moved beyond that to declaring peace between God and man. It was an opportunity for actual fellowship, for festive communion with God.¹ Unlike the tribute offering, this one had a bloody cost. In order to declare peace with God, to enjoy fellowship with God, something would have to die. In Israel, an animal received the laying on of hands, being set apart for this special purpose; and only then was its life laid down as a victim by sacrifice (Leviticus 3:1). Its fat and organs were taken out and burned up, barbecued into smoke that could ascend to heaven (Leviticus 3:3-5), while its lifeblood covered the sides of the altar (Leviticus 3:2).

And in the case of a regular peace offering, that was enough. For everyday fellowship with God, it was enough that the life had been laid down, that Israel have peace with her Lord on the back of that harsh surrender. But there was a special version of the peace offering that took more. That was the special case of the thanksgiving sacrifice, the thank offering. And here, the body of the victim had to be augmented by holy bread – unleavened wafers, unleavened loaves, and even leavened loaves of bread (Leviticus 7:12-13). Leavened bread seldom had a place in Israel's worship, and the inclusion of both leavened and unleavened bread together was strange and rare, suggestive of “rich communion between God and worshipper.”² One of each kind was given specifically to the priest who had slain the sacrificial victim (Leviticus 7:14). But the rest of the holy bread, along with the body of the victim that was slain, was shared and eaten on the very day of the offering (Leviticus 7:15).

This wasn't just a meal for the ordained priesthood of the sons of Aaron. This was a meal for every Israelite who would come, so long as they came in a state of cleanness. “All who are clean may eat the meat, but... if anyone touches an unclean thing... and then eats meat from the sacrifice of the LORD's peace offerings, that person shall be cut off from his people” (Leviticus 7:19-21). This communion was not common. And yet, to the clean, the table was no less open, the invitation was no less universal. All who were clean in the sight of God were free to receive, free to fellowship, free to feast with the Lord of Love.

And then Christ came, the true “high priest appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices” (Hebrews 8:3). And what he gave was nothing less than his whole self – Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest. “He appeared once for all, at the end of the ages, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26), “a single sacrifice for sins” on the cross (Hebrews 10:12). He is the flesh of an eternal sacrifice; he paid the bloody cost. So “through him, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (Hebrews 13:15). 'Sacrifice of praise' was how Greek-speaking Jews translated the term for a 'thanksgiving sacrifice.'

From the beginning, Christians brought Christ's sacrifice forward, week after week, as part of their holy liturgy of worship, and they laid down their lives with him, and the fruit of their lips, on the altar. And we've done that by bringing there the holy bread – the bread of peace, bread of fellowship, bread of communion.³ Israel had her thank offering, her sacrifice of praise; and so do we now in Christ. He already offered his body and blood; we offer it up with holy bread and wine in thanks. We do it because we are, in the words of one early Christian, “already, without a doubt, conscious of [our] own salvation.”⁴ And because we know the salvation we have in Christ, we crave to taste that salvation on our tongues, to taste and see the infinite depths of the Lord's goodness – to consume and be consumed by that glory of holiness that burned before the first dawn of creation.

And so we raise this holy offering to the Lord – the thanksgiving sacrifice in Christ, the eucharist, in which the Lord Jesus Christ is himself the flesh and the blood. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” no peace and fellowship with God (John 6:53). But in this holy offering, all of us may have the joy of eating and drinking our holy communion with God and with his holy people. And all we must do, all you must do, is believe and come in cleanness. Thanks be to God!

1  Matthew Levering, Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Christian Eucharist (Blackwell, 2005), 64-65.

2  Nobuyoshi Kiuchi, Leviticus, Apollos Old Testament Commentary 3 (InterVarsity Press, 2007), 138.

3  Matthew Levering, Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Christian Eucharist (Blackwell, 2005), 82-90.

4  Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Leviticus 2.2.6 (third century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 83:43.