The Cross: No Greater Sacrifice?

Another Easter has passed, and with it another round of homilies and articles about the “greatest sacrifice” of Jesus going to the Cross to die for our sins:

A 19-year-old Army gunner, Spec. Ross Andrew McGinnis, from outside Pittsburgh, was on patrol in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah neighborhood. A grenade was lobbed through his hatch and into the Humvee. Realizing the four soldiers inside would not be able to escape in time, McGinnis dove into the vehicle, threw himself on the grenade and absorbed the full force of the explosion.

McGinnis was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. “He had the opportunity to escape,” his father said. “He chose not to.”

Every story of sacrifice holds up a mirror to the greatest sacrifice of all, the one Christians around the globe commemorate this week – the sacrifice of Christ.

But really, assuming that Jesus was the son of God incarnate and did indeed die on the cross, was his sacrifice greater than that of Spec. Ross Andrew McGinnis, or of any other person who has given their life to protect others from harm?

Not hardly.

Jesus, according to orthodoxy, is not only the son of God, but God himself, omnipotent and omniscient. And while he may have wrapped himself in the limited cloak of humanity, no theologian ever suggests that Jesus didn’t know of his true nature when he went to the cross, or that he didn’t know he would “rise again” a mere three days later.

What did God—what did Jesus—really sacrifice? His life? Everyone dies, and millions of people have died agonizing deaths either through illness or at the hands of others, and unlike Jesus, not one of them had the comfort of being certain that they would “rise to glory” immediately upon their death. Reports say that Spec. McGinnis was a member of his local Lutheran church, and I have no reason to doubt that he was a Christian, but even if he believed that he was “going to be with the Lord” as he made the ultimate sacrifice, it’s still not the same as knowing.  There is still doubt, worry that you might be giving up the only life and existence you will ever have.

And what of the doubters, the non-believers or agnostics who makes the same sacrifice? They have no hope for an afterlife of eternal glory when they lay down their lives to protect others. They believe they are truly sacrificing everything. They have nothing more to give. There is no sacrifice greater than that.

Of course, the ultimate absurdity of it all is that God supposedly concocted the whole sacrificial lamb plan in the first place. It was entirely his decision to do it that way, and I am sure that an omniscient being could have thought of a billion other ways to go about “saving” a small portion of the human race that didn’t involve him being nailed to a cross for a few hours before ending up back in Heaven and entirely none the worse for wear for the experience.

No, unlike the real and noble sacrifice of Spec. McGinnis, there was hardly any sacrifice involved at all. In the grand scheme of things, Jesus’ sacrifice is much more the equivalent of the sacrifices made by the bosses who worked for a week in the most menial jobs in their company for the CBS show Undercover Boss.  In other words, it was voluntary, planned, self-inflicted, and the consequences were entirely temporary.