‘Mercy and Not Sacrifice’ - A Vegetarian Lent
“Mercy and Not Sacrifice” — A Vegetarian Lent
Lent, we are told, is a time for sacrifice, for repentance, and for amendment of life, for all sorts of puritanical drudgeries in the name of spiritual refinement. [Remember the old definition of a Puritan ñ someone who is obsessed with the fact that somewhere someone may be having fun?]. Now, donít get me wrong. Iím all for sacrifice. I have to talk about it for about four months a year during the three-week pledge drive every Fall. Given, too, that sacrifice made possible the salvation of us all ñ and not only us - but the entire world, we might indeed want to think of sacrifice well beyond the confines of Lentís forty days. However, this season, there is another nuance to Lent that also merits both our contemplation and our imitation. Mercy.
In 9:13, Matthew the bookkeeper hears Jesus tells a less-than-friendly audience that ìGod desires mercy, and not sacrificeî. The Lord quotes the Prophets Hosea and Micah in the context of His mission to heal the sinful, not the righteous [or, apparently, the self-righteous). His references are intriguing since both Prophets preach mercy in the context of a Hebrew society convinced that, no matter how badly you sinned, you could buy yourself back into Godís mercy by spilling enough sheep blood and piling up enough cow carcasses. Since only the wealthy could afford to stage such slaughters, they could ñ like Christís proverbial doctor ñ ìheal themselvesî. They could go on sinning, ìpay offî God on an installment plan of monthly animal massacres, and continue to oppress the poor. And besides, since the poor couldnít afford beasts to die for their sins, they remained defiled before the Lord and deserved to be treated like the cattle they were. Sort of a liturgical prefiguration of ìMad Cowî disease.
Jesus, however, is not buying into this cartoon of the class struggle gone cosmic. When He aligns declares Himself with the Prophets of mercy, we know exactly whose side He is on. He is on the side of those being sacrificedÖ.the sinners, the unloved, the distained, the disposable, the unwashed in a land where piety is measured by an obsession with washing your hands, the speechless in a society of interminable and self-assured wordiness. And in invoking Hosea, Jesus appeals to a Prophet whose visions of liberation from sin and oppression extend beyond the classes and kinds of humanity to the entire fraternity of blood, breath, and fleshÖto the animals as well.
In this context, Iíd like to ask you to consider making a vegetarian diet a part of your Lenten discipline. By so doing, we liberate ourselves from the gluttonies of modern consumerism and its destruction of the environment, of traditional farming, and the barbarities of the slaughterhouse and packing floor. In this context, too, we follow Our Lordís injunction to ìBe merciful even as your Father in Heaven is mercifulî (Luke 6:36). In so doing, we align our lives with what makes us image God most truly, our capacity to embody His compassion. Mercy, then, takes us beyond sacrifice that is denial into the sacrifice which is self-fulfillment.
Weston F. Cook, Jr.
[This page will eventually be included under "Writings and reflections by Weston F. Cook, Jr., TSSF", found on the story column on the right side of the screen.]
Tags: Lent