An Altar for Outcasts--November 3, 2021
"We have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured." [Hebrews 13:10-13]
In Jesus, God sets up shop and goes to work in all the wrong places. Thank God.
From his earthly ministry, walking the dusty roads of Galilee in the backwater of the Empire, to the cross itself, Jesus put his body in the margins among marginalized people, among outcasts and outsiders. The writer of Hebrews here sees that as Jesus' conscious choice, not merely an accident of history. It's in one of the places that are overlooked, underserved, and treated as worthless that the world's salvation is accomplished. It's among people deemed unimportant, unworthy, and unlovable that Jesus does the saving. That by itself says something about the heart of God.
The writer of Hebrews draws this point from the details about how sacrifices had been handled in Israel's history, and how things were done in the Jerusalem Temple. Of course, everybody expected God to reside in the holy building--the Temple. You know, because that's the official headquarters of Respectable Religion. So while surely good and faithful Jewish people all knew that God wasn't "confined" to living in the Temple, like some genie tethered to a lamp, there was a sort of expectation that the place to meet God, or see God at work, was in the Temple. Almost like the Temple was where God's office hours were held. Sure, God could be active anywhere, but the place to "expect" God to work was in the official holy place where priests conducted worship, offered sacrifices, and made their prayers on behalf of the people. The Temple was like the throne room for a king, or the courtroom bench for a judge: it was the place where you expected God to exercise God's... you know... "God-ness" with power and authority. The institutional religion of ancient Israel and Judah were built around having that place as The Location Where God Held Court, with the royal palace conveniently just down the street. The Temple gave the impression that God was to be found in (and maybe also endorsed) the official, conventional seats of power--where the king (or Roman governor) was, where the religious professionals were, and where the Empire's occupying troops were headquartered.
So if there's an Official Grand Sacrifice to be offered, or some huge world-changing event where God's power and authority are on display, you expect it to happen there: in the center of attention, in the officially authorized places endorsed by the Association of Respectable Religious Professionals. But that's not where Jesus offers himself. The writer of Hebrews knows that the Romans don't crucify people in the town square, and the citizens of the city wouldn't have let their holy places be desecrated by an execution nearby. No, the crosses were set up outside the city, away from the center, outside of the view of Respectable Religion, on the margins. The victims of crucifixion were still on public display at the crossroads and along the streets leading into the city, but in shameful places associated with where they burned the trash and all that was too unclean or unworthy to be kept inside the city walls.
And that, of course, is exactly where Jesus goes to work offering the Last Sacrifice--the sacrifice that ends the whole logic of sacrifices once and for all. Jesus goes to work on the margins, in the unclean places, outside the city, and far from the halls of power or places of Respectable Religion, even when the work is a hard day's dying. The writer of Hebrews notices a connection between Jesus' cross, then, and the way the animals used in ritual sacrifice would have had their carcasses burned outside the city (or outside the camp in the wilderness days). So Jesus, this one crucified among the nobodies--as a nobody--in a place deemed godforsaken and unclean, offers his life for us like the ancient sacrifices of Israel's memory. It is an audacious claim, because it means that in Jesus we find God going to work in all the places a Respectable Deity isn't supposed to be, associated with all the kinds of people a Respectable Deity isn't supposed to be rubbing elbows with.
And that's just it: Jesus shows us that we don't have the "respectable god" we imagine in our minds. We have the living God, who can't be confined to the cathedral or the pulpit for an hour on Sunday mornings. We have the God who chooses to work outside of the center of attention, far from the places of power and respectability. We have the God who saves the world from a spot outside the city, far from the Temple and its altar, where a Roman death stake becomes the altar where Jesus offers himself and breaks open the logic of sacrifice once and for all.
And if God has chosen this kind of place to do the hard work of saving us, then we should not be surprised at all to find God intentionally working on the margins and among the marginalized people all the time. We should expect to find God slipping outside of the Offices of Respectable Religion to work where no one is watching, in all the places and with all the people we didn't think were worthy of God to go. And we should be prepared to see altars everywhere. That's why the writer of Hebrews calls the followers of Jesus to "go to him outside the camp" and to share the abuse and mistreatment he has endured. We're called to go where Jesus goes, and where he keeps showing up: in all the "wrong" places, among all the outsiders, outcasts, and people told they don't matter.
Keep your eyes out in those places today--there are altars set up in the wilderness all around.
Lord Jesus, lead us to find you outside of the respectable places and positions of power, and to make our place where you do on the margins.
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