The Fruits of the Earth
It is an old story, and you know how it goes. There was the farmer, and there was the shepherd; brothers they were, and men of faith. And the time came for them to make obeisance to the Lord, and the shepherd brought the first and finest of his lambs, and the farmer brought the first and finest of the fruit of the earth.
And the Lord looked with favor upon the shepherd’s sacrifice, and upon the farmer’s sacrifice he looked with disfavor. The fruit of the earth are not a suitable sacrifice. There must be blood.
There was blood. The farmer, enraged that his hard work was not enough, slew his brother. This is the third sin recorded: fratricide.
A little while later, and the High Priest of the Lord comes out of nowhere and greets the chosen of the Lord, Abram, with a sacrifice of bread and wine. The Lord has not yet established His people; He has not given the Law; the Levites are nowhere to be found; Levi himself is three generations hence; still, there is a High Priest of the Lord.
So much is made of the identity of this High Priest that little mention there is of this: he greets Abram with an offering of bread and wine — the fruits of the earth. Indeed, it seems from the text this may be the very act that marks him as High Priest.
The offering of bread and wine is unusual in ancient times, for the reasons we have already seen, and yet here, it marks the mysterious High Priest as a man of the Lord, and is seen in the context of the Lord blessing Abram. The covenant with Abram was later consummated in a ritual in which — per the legend — God bound himself to Abram, but Abram fell asleep partway through.
Yet little while later, and another High Priest of the same order institutes a ceremony with his followers: he takes the bread and the wine and he identifies these fruits of the earth with the sacrifice he is about to participate in. This sacrifice involves the murder of an innocent man and — by some accounts — the redemption of all mankind.
The parallelism strikes me: the farmer offers the fruits of the land — an unworthy sacrifice — and then kills the innocent shepherd. The shepherd offers the fruits of the land, and then, though innocent, is killed by those who oversee the offering of sacrifices under the law.
And the followers of the shepherd, from that day forward, have made a sacrifice in memorial that yokes the unworthy to the worthy; the grape and the grain — fruits of the earth — to the flesh and blood of the lamb.
gauche
16 Jun 10
