Feast and Sacrifice

The levitical blood-bath of slaughter and offering seems to barbaric
reading at times, whole joints of cow hefted and waved, bowls of sheep
blood collected and poured, the bleating wheeze of dying animals with
their excrement and fur filling the courtyard of worship. But there
is no feast without sacrifice. In Bundibugyo, the connection remains,
less sanitized. This morning I passed a crowd of people around a just-
felled cow, pangas at work to divide the flesh for the nourishment of
tomorrow. No butchery, no paper and plastic, no steel counters, no
wrapped portions in gleaming freezers. Just hide and hoof and
dripping meat, piled on banana leaves, the killing as proximate to the
consumption as possible.

We are temporary carnivores, we humans, between the exile from the
garden and the return to the New Jerusalem, we wander in this world of
killing. And we wander thoughtfully. The killing tells us
something: that life has a cost, that sustenance of one requires the
giving of another. That this is a serious business, living. I'm sure
there are vegetarians who disagree, but for most of the world over
most of history, animals have provided a small but essential portion
of our dietary fuel.

So the feast-day of Christmas is preceded by the killing-day of the
24th. Just as in the big picture, the bleeding, pushing, effort of
Mary; the uncounted lives of the innocent children slain by Herod;
and later the outpoured blood of Jesus precede our feast of salvation,
an expensive spread of grace.