It is a sad commentary on the state of our world that we are far too familiar with those who have shed their blood ... for noble and ignoble causes. The media has been reminding us of the bloody sacrifice that thousands of our soldiers have made in the war in Iraq. Our country is still bitterly divided over whether that sacrifice has been worth it or not.

The last two summers I have had the privilege of visiting two of our national cemeteries: Jefferson Barracks on the shore of the Mississippi south of St. Louis and Arlington Cemetery on the shore of the Potomac across from Washington DC. Visiting those cemeteries was a moving and sacred experience. The beautiful hills in both those magnificent places are covered with thousands of white crosses marking the lives of those who shed their blood to save our country. It seems inevitable in the course of human events that blood must always be shed if lives, if countries, if the world is to be saved.

We remember another bloody sacrifice: Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, carpenter from Nazareth in Galilee, one who was acclaimed by his followers as Yeshua ... the Messiah, the Son of God. The lesson for today from the letter to the Hebrews is filled with such sacrificial imagery. Because we are not first-century Jews, the imagery seems utterly odd and strange to us. On the one hand we do not live in a society and world where all of life is ordered around visits to a temple and making bloody sacrifices to our God. On the other hand, as the bloody soils of Gettysburg, Normandy, and Baghdad testify, we live in a world in which the bloody sacrifices are still very much required, if not to appease the gods then at least to appease the forces of evil and wickedness, which always seem to be terrorizing our world.

The letter to the Hebrews centers on the bloody sacrifice that Jesus made not in the temple of Jerusalem but on the Place of the Skull outside of Jerusalem. His sacrifice, unlike the sacrifices made by the priests in the temple, did not need to be repeated day after day, year after year. It was once and for all, for all time and every place. What is so surprising about this bloody sacrifice is that it was not a holy sacrifice offered in a sacred temple or a noble sacrifice offered on the fields of battle, but it was a bloody sacrifice offered in an utterly unholy and ignoble place — the first-century equivalent of the gas chamber, the gallows, the guillotine.

It was the execution of a criminal, at least in the eyes of the first-century religious and political establishment. There was nothing noble or sacred about this bloody sacrifice. This was a sacrifice that was intended to rid the world of a cancer. It saved no one. That is what a crucifixion was supposed to accomplish. There was nothing glorious or redeeming about it.

Yet, with the author of the letter to the Hebrews, with all the sacred writers of the New Testament, with all the Christian believers of every time and place, we believe that this crucifixion of this common criminal was more than what it appeared to be. This crucifixion, this execution, saved the world.

A missionary in Kenya wrote of an experience he had thirty years ago, the closest thing he ever saw to a crucifixion. It happened one day at a government outpost in an isolated rural region of that wild and untamed country.

I happened to be leaving the small frame office building which also served as the police station, when I saw a lot of people running toward the office. Leading them was a man running from a woman holding a knife in her right hand as she chased him. A crowd was running alongside them.

She chased the man around the building before the police came out and caught hold of her. They took her knife away and pushed her to the ground, where they started kicking her with their boots. She didn't try to defend herself. She just lay there and took it.

I was at the road then, getting into my Suzuki jeep. When I saw the policemen start to kick her, I got out of the jeep. I flinched each time they landed a kick on her defenseless body. But I didn't do anything more. I was afraid. They were armed. I was an outsider. Whatever, I drove home feeling sick.

Years later, as I reflect on that moment, I imagine the concentric circles of guilt for the evil I witnessed, with pain at the center.

At the center, the woman and her husband. I have no idea what the man had done to his wife to make her so angry with him. I don't know who started it all, or when. I'm sure there was enough blame for everyone.

The first circle, the police who broke their rules to kick her, and seemed to enjoy it. And the police who stood by. The next circle, the neighbors-become-spectators, some of them snickering.

The expanding circles of sin and guilt included me, too, for not helping. And then the tribe and its culture, for allowing this type of thing. And other nations, for the tragic byproducts of colonial rule. The dark circles of guilt get thinner as they get farther out, maybe ... but in a way they come all the way to include you. Where were you? What were you doing to help her?

Of course, the woman being brutalized by the police in Kenya was not the only thing in the world that went wrong that day, thirty years ago. Or since. The world is awash in sin and guilt. If you don't see it, it's because you are not looking. You cannot opt out.

When I read that, I felt very uncomfortable. You see, the repercussions of each episode of sin are more episodes, whole chronicles, whole cultures, whole civilizations, a whole humanity afflicted with inhumanity, infected with sin. It is like a stone hitting the surface of a pond and then concentric circles of waves inexorably rippling across the surface. There is no place in that pond that escapes its impact.

God sees it all!

And God says (and this is where Good Friday comes in), "Let me be the one who takes the kicking, so we can stop this. And instead of guilt and blame, let forgiveness radiate from my crucifixion, to heal the past of the nations, the past of cultures, the past of families, the past of individuals. Let righteousness ring! Let peace swell around the globe, to stop the kicking and the knifing."

They say, if you want something done right, do it yourself. So God sent himself to the government outpost in Jerusalem, hounded by his enemies, cut by whips, and hung finally on a cross. And because God says, "The buck stops with me," it does! We do not carry the burden for Jesus' dying. No, his dying carries the burden of our sin, so we can stand up and be at peace with each other.

Then husbands and wives can love each other. Parents and children can hear each other. Communities can pull together. Nations can work together.

They snickered, while Jesus hung on the cross. He heard it. They said, "You can't even save yourself!" They were right. He was too busy saving you and me with his bloody sacrifice, the most holy and noble sacrifice ever!

Thanks be to God! Amen.