Easter 2023

A Letter from Josh Heikkila, serving in West Africa

Spring 2023

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Dear friends,

It’s common in Ghana before setting off to travel to ask for God’s protection for the journey and to hear prayers for the blood of Jesus to cover the roads for safety. I once witnessed a European visitor to Ghana shriek when hearing this petition, inquiring why we would ever want Jesus’s blood on the roads. Looking more closely at the biblical concepts of blood and sacrifice can be an interesting way to see how this shared Christian faith of ours sometimes resonates with others very differently from how it resonates with ourselves.

Many of the traditional festivals in Ghana, including the Odwira in Akropong and Afahye in Cape Coast, include aspects of cleansing, purification and asking for protection.

A woman from the north of Ghana who grew up in a household that practiced traditional African religion once explained to me how in her culture, it was common to sacrifice animals to cleanse the family from sin and make peace with divine power. It was normal during the sacrifice to collect the blood of an animal in a calabash and keep it in the household compound as a symbol of God’s power and protection. When this same woman came to know Jesus, she saw the authenticity of what her family had been doing, but she now rooted the practice in her Christian faith.

She looked, for example, at the Passover story, where the blood of a lamb on a home’s doorposts marked a family as loyal to God and therefore deserving of safety from harm. The New Testament, furthermore, spoke to her theologically about what she understood to be happening. As Hebrews 9:22 explains, “Under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” The blood was a sign her family was humbling itself before God, asking for forgiveness, and seeking reconciliation.

At the same time, Hebrews explained why the traditional way of sacrifice needed revision. “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins,” Hebrews 10:4 declares. Rather, it is the blood of Jesus that brings about reconciliation. As Colossians 1:20 explains, “Through Jesus, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” First Peter 1:2 adds, we “have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood.”

From what I notice, these are aspects of scripture that deeply touch West Africans. Westerners, though, who have become distanced from and even repulsed by the practice of animal sacrifice don’t know what to make of them. It seems to be generally reflective of how in our current context progressive Christians are struggling to make sense of the crucifixion.

Afahye Festival in Cape Coast.

In A New Climate for Christology the Episcopal theologian Sallie McFague, for example, talks of Jesus’s sacrifice and our salvation, not as something which happened on the cross but rather “is patterned on Jesus’s life and action.” She continues, “…we join Jesus in living lives of sacrificial love for others and, as such, attain deification.”[1] More and more, we seem to be turning to the birth and life of Jesus to give meaning to our faith. After all, the idea of a light shining in the darkness and the darkness not overcoming it is beautiful and gentle, and easy to embrace. The cross, and sacrifice, and blood – not so much.

Baptist theologian Miguel De La Torre goes one step further in questioning the cross in “What if Crucifixion is not Salvific?” “The ‘salvific-ness’ of the cross,” he writes, “creates a Christian way of being that glorifies pain, humiliation, and abuse as the means of imitating Jesus.”[2] He finds it especially harmful to people of color, who have been forced to suffer in Western cultures and have often been told they should embrace their suffering, just like Jesus bore the cross. De La Torre explains, “The cross is what it is: a symbol of sadism and evil. Jesus’ death is no more redemptive than his birth, life, his teachings, his miracles or his parables.”

Rather than being redemptive, De La Torre explains that the suffering and death of Jesus should simply be instructive for us. He writes, “Crucifixion is an act of radical solidarity, specifically, Jesus’ choice to accompany in solidarity those dying on the crosses of religious and political oppression.” All of this seems to be saying, Jesus worked to rid the world of injustice, all the while standing in solidarity with the suffering. We are being called to go and do likewise.

While these contemporary reinterpretations have tried to resolve what we Westerners find problematic about the crucifixion, perhaps they also bring back other long-standing theological conundrums. They call us to be the saviors of the world inspired by Jesus’ teaching. Unfortunately, there is a certain Western arrogance in believing that we can be the real saviors!

We need to recognize that we’re not. Furthermore, as anyone who has tried to make the world a better place knows, we can’t do everything ourselves. If we try, we can easily get burned out in the process. Recognizing Jesus as the unique savior of the world, once and for all, can be a great relief.

While I’m sympathetic to what McFague and De La Torre write, I find myself wanting to learn more about how our friends in West Africa interpret scripture and practice and understand their faith. We in the West don’t have a monopoly on Biblical interpretation, so it’s important for us to learn from them as well. We can’t be outright dismissive of how they experience the Bible, including how they see Jesus’s sacrifice and his blood.

I don’t have an answer on how to reconcile all the different interpretations of the Bible. But I know there’s a great richness that can come through discussing scripture across cultures. It’s a practice I don’t think we do enough. As we engage with our partners in Ghana and West Africa, I hope we will take the time to do more of it, because I think our faith will be greatly enriched and deepened when we do so. It can help us all to be a wonderful gift to each other.

Thank you for your faithful prayers and support, and I wish blessings to all of you this Easter season! 

Josh

[1] Sallie McFague, A New Climate for Christology. Fortress Press, 2021, p. 11.

[2] Miguel De La Torre, “What if Crucifixion is not Salvific?”, April 5, 2023, see https://goodfaithmedia.org/what-if-crucifixion-is-not-salvific/.