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Lamb for sacrifice

“I assure you that unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”- Matthew 18:3

One of the most moving stories in the Bible is the story of Abraham’s offering of his son Isaac at Mt. Moriah (Genesis 22:1-14). Without any hesitation, Abraham brought his only son whom he loved so much to that mountain to be sacrificed as a burnt offering to God. It was on their way that Isaac asked his father a very disturbing question, “Father,” he said, “I see that you have the coals and the wood, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?”

“Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” This question of Isaac to his father was not a simple question. It was a question that addressed the whole patriarchal society at that time, its customs and relationships with other cultures that accepted child sacrifice as a form of pleasing the gods, calming their wrath, achieving their favor and justifying their domination.

Isaac’s disturbing question denounced an experience of God, a way of understanding God that accepts infanticide; a perception of God built on relationships of domination, among them the sacrifice of children. In other words, Isaac’s question was an expression of the weak and the powerless - the children - who are calling for justice.

“Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” This question referred to the promise of God to Abraham: the promise of land and of children. In order for the promise to be fulfilled, it was necessary to break with the infanticide of that time, to break away from what had been the experience of God until then. It was necessary to affirm a God who defends the life of children, a God who accepts something else as sacrifice other than children - the children who are supposed to be the guarantee for the realization of the promise of life.

“Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” This might have been the same desperate and silent question of the many children sacrificed by the Pharaoh in Egypt at the time when the Egyptians oppressed the Israelites and made them slaves. Children at that time were exterminated as a form of social control and to maintain power structures. This same question was raised by the children who were persecuted by the indiscriminate fury of King Herod, who was tormented by the possibility of a child who might be the liberating messiah.

“Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” This cry was heard throughout history until Jesus called the child and placed the child in the midst of his disciples and said that if anyone harms one of these “it is better that a mill stone were hanged around his neck and he were cast into the deep sea” (Mt.18:6). Jesus rejected and denounced a society and a religion that accepts and co-exists with infanticide or the domination and exploitation of children. But more importantly, he also proposed and announced the Kingdom of God that belongs to the child. In his announcement, Jesus made it clear that children are the criterion and the measure for participation in God’s Kingdom: “Unless you change and become like children”, he said,“ you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. 18:3).

Jesus proposed a new community with new relationships where the child has an important place. It is a community that rejects child sacrifice. It is a community that takes seriously the weak and powerless. For the establishment of this new community, Jesus offered himself as the Lamb for the sacrifice. In this new community, the disturbing question of Isaac does not exist.

The question of Isaac is repeated in various forms, from the mouths of various children in different moments in history, in different places in the world. The challenge that comes to us today is to listen to the question that comes from the children of our land; to listen and to understand that, like Isaac, they also cry out for justice; they also question the structures in which they live. They also ask us about the lamb that is going to be sacrificed.

New ears and new eyes are needed to listen, to understand, and to take seriously the truth that in the voice of the little ones is the strongest denunciation of the present system of human relations and the most radical demand for genuine change.

In our country today, millions of children are systematically sacrificed by the structures of social relations that respond to the interests of the powers-that-be. Children are sacrificed in the streets of our cities where they live, abandoned, and vulnerable to every form of exploitation and injustice. Children are sacrificed by an inefficient and elitist system of health care that condemns thousands of children to sickness and death. Children are sacrificed by hunger and malnutrition that create very high indices of infant mortality.

Children are sacrificed in the rural and urban areas as unskilled workers are deprived of just wages or any kind of protection or security. Children are sacrificed by a system of land ownership that concentrates the land in the hands of the few, destroys the viability of the peasant families, and demands a constant and chaotic migration where all suffer, especially the little ones. Children are sacrificed as their parents are forced to go to distant lands in order to earn a living. Children are sacrificed in the continuing conflict in the countryside, wherein children are often caught in the crossfire or even die of hunger and diseases in the refugee camps.

This has been the challenge we have to face as Christians in our country today: the challenge to listen and to understand, to take seriously and to commit ourselves to respond to the question raised by millions of marginalized children in our land. “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?”

This demands from us a commitment to life and for the defense of life. It requires from us the decision on what really needs to be sacrificed in terms of our church and social structures. Because the Kingdom of God is of children; because it is necessary to learn from them; because it is necessary to be like the children in order to belong to God’s kingdom.

The challenge before us is to transform our church and social structures and programs in a way that the voices of millions of poor children in our land may be heard in our Christian communities.

We are challenged to commit ourselves to projects designed to protect children from exploitation and to support their development. This, I believe, is the best response we could offer to the disturbing question Isaac asked to his father Abraham a long time ago, “Where is the Lamb for the sacrifice?”#

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