to be made holy

"For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." -Hosea 6.6

"And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6.8

"For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." Matthew 9.13

One of the lessons I appreciated the most from our Sunday School study of The Last Week by Crossan and Borg was their reclaiming of the word "sacrifice." If you look it up these days you get lots of circular logic:
"1: an act of offering to a deity something precious; especially : the killing of a victim on an altar
2: something offered in sacrifice
3 a: destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else b: something given up or lost thesacrifices made by parents"

But to be fair to its original meaning, the context in which sacrifices happened one must understand that to offer a sacrifice was, in reality, to make it holy. It was a similar concept to sacrament in my church - an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace. The animal on the altar was the outward sign of the people's offering of themselves back to God. It was the place where God made Himself known. It was holy ground.

So when we hear language like "I don't require sacrifice..." we easily justify our not offering animals to God anymore, but I think we lose something. The call to a holy life remains. Is steadfast love a sacrifice of self? Does the knowledge of God bring one nearer to holiness? How do we act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with our God without first sacrificing our selfish desires to act for self to love self and to tell God how it is?

Jesus came for sinners because they could offer the sacrifice of self; the "righteous" for all of their good qualities can't offer themselves anymore; they have been made righteous. So for me, a sinner, today will be all about sacrifice.