This is the ritual of the burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, the offering of ordination, and the sacrifice of well-being….
Leviticus 7:37 (NRSV)

I like to keep score at baseball games. I’ve always been fascinated by the scorebook since I was a regular benchwarmer in the minors at Beaverdale Little League. I would sit on the bench next to the coach’s wife and watch her mark the book as a record of was taking place in the game. I never lost my curiosity for it.

Scoring a baseball game is relatively simple if the game follows a simple story line of strike outs, fly balls, and base hits. But when run downs involving multiple players take place and the pitcher’s mound becomes a turn-style of pitchers called in from the bullpen with runner’s on base, things get incredibly more complex in a hurry. Then layer over it the official scorer’s role of making subjective decisions of whether the batter reached on a base hit (he gets credit for it, and any runs he batted in, and the run gets charged to the pitcher who gave up the hit to the player who scored the run [unless the player who scored the run reached on an error – then the run doesn’t get charged to the pitcher]) or an error (batter doesn’t get credited for the hit, and the error must be charged to either the fielder who should have caught it, the fielder who didn’t throw it effectively, or the other fielder covering the base who didn’t catch it). You get my drift. It gets arcane in a geeked out way.

On our coffee table sits a copy of Major League Baseballs official rule book. On occasion, when a play raises a question about a play or how it is to be scored, I’ll pick it up and try to find the rule. It’s a small book, but it’s a labyrinth of regulatory text. There’s an entire section on how to score. Sometimes it’s hard to find what I’m looking for in rule 4.2 paragraph two, sub-section C line six. The game is still going on. I don’t have that much time if I’m going to keep up with my scorecard.

As I read the chapter this morning I was struck by the way it read like baseball’s rule book. The rules for sacrifice were so complex. It’s a labyrinth of offerings and sacrifices of different kinds for seemingly every occasion. It made me think that the ancient Hebrews had a different sacrifice for every emoji:

“I’m feeling thankful today. How do I make an offering for that according to the Levitical rulebook? That’s section 2, offering 3.4, paragraph three.”

“Oops, I accidentally dropped my neighbors pint glass and a shard cut my wife’s foot causing her to jerk her foot back and kick the neighbor’s cat. To whom do I charge the error and who  has to make the guilt sacrifice? Is that a blood sacrifice or just a burnt offering? Burnt offering? Can I do that on the neighbor’s grill?”

It’s overwhelming just to think about living under the weight of that system. I can’t imagine it. Which was, I believe, part of the larger point God was trying to make in the grand theme of the Great Story. “You want to try and do it on your own?” God says. “Okay, here’s the rulebook. Have fun.” Trying to keep score in life, recording errors and then make up for every wrong doing, unintended injury, and moral oversight is impossible.

“Then who can be can be saved?” Jesus’ followers asked when the subject came up.

“It’s impossible for human beings,” Jesus replied, stating the grand lesson of the Levitical law. “But it’s not impossible for God. God is the one who can and will do it.”

Jesus becomes the sacrifice, once for all.

Suddenly, keeping score becomes quite simple. Charge the errors to Jesus. All of them.