My Personalized Sacrifice

My maternal grandfather, a farmer, had a very strict rule—do not name or play with the animals. Farm animals serve two purposes, to reproduce and to provide food or income for the family. Naming and playing with livestock personalizes the relationship between human and animal in a bond that will be severed in a cruel way. The hog you name “Piggy Sue” today can become breakfast tomorrow morning. When the family becomes attached to an animal, it is increasingly difficult to let the animal go.

Keeping an emotional distance from farm animals is sound advice, but the Israelites found themselves taking an opposite approach when God instituted the Passover. Each household was required to select an unblemished lamb from the flock and keep the lamb from the 10^th to the 14^th of the month, when it would be slaughtered, eaten and its blood used to mark the doorposts for that household to be passed over.

For four days, each household kept their own lamb. Each household would have an opportunity to develop a relationship with their sacrifice before it was killed. This seems at odds with my grandfather’s wise counsel, because the purpose was different. My grandfather wanted to prevent his children from having a bond with the animal destined for death, while the Israelites were positioned to experience time with the animal before putting it to death for their own salvation.

The Passover sacrifice wasn’t some faceless lamb from the flock, but one you had gotten to know. This was a personal sacrifice; it came at a cost to both the lamb and the household. Being acquainted intimately with what you are sacrificing makes the act of sacrifice truly meaningful. It is no longer a remote, unattached offering; it is truly a sacrifice. When Abraham was told to sacrifice his son Isaac, it was an exceptionally emotional attachment being put to the test. Even more, personalized sacrifice is at the heart of God giving Jesus, the only begotten Son, to be the sacrifice for the sins of humanity.