The road to Blackberry Hill

Symbols. I’ve not got a doctorate in communication studies, but I reckon when you create one of these things, you’re aiming to maximise recognition, and the understanding of what they’re meant to convey. On any objective basis, McDonalds is beating God hands down.

I’ve seen research that showed, at the age of four, 98% of American children recognised the Golden Arches (this not being an academic piece of work, I don’t have to cite the source, which I’ve forgotten. In fact, I may have just made that up). However, sitting in my first lecture surrounded by 21 year old Irish Catholic girls, you would kind of hoped that God had this audience sown up.  Not a bit of it.  None of them on my table got the Lamb of God, and it was left to my recollection of singing Jerusalem in the local pub as England won the rugby world cup (yes, it was a long time ago) to come up with the Lamb of God- well, this is RE, and there is a sheep in the middle of it, it’s not rocket science (that’s next week). Of course, they all know the Golden Arches. McDonalds 2, God nil.

For anyone who’s interested, check out this site, which has the pretty pictures, and relevant bits of the bible (Gen22:19).

http://home.att.net/~wegast/symbols/symbolsa/symbolsa.html#agnusdeireclining 

I don’t mean to get all heavy, but it wasn’t until this lecture that anyone in the room really got this whole sacrifice thing – symbolised by the flagpole like thingy (not quite) spearing said sheep. And when I say sacrifice, I don’t mean the giving up ½ a slice of your toast because your youngest (Mini-Mini) is hungry kind of sacrifice, I mean real, spilling blood to appease your God kind of sacrifice. If you read that website you’ll see that the Old Testament is full of it. In fact, the term scapegoat comes from one particular sacrifice where a goat is burdened with all the sins of goat owner and sent into the desert as food for vultures (or whatever ate stray goats in the desert in those days), to compensate God for their sins. And there is a direct link between this and Jesus dying on the cross, he is God’s son, he died for all our sins, it is the ultimate and last sacrifice, no more were needed after this (obviously a goat-friendly God). It is the context that people reading the bible in those days would have understood.

So how are you meant to teach/discuss this with primary school children? It kind of freaks me out, no idea what it is going to do with a bunch of pre-teen children. I can see some of them taking this concept on board a bit too literally and assorted pets disappearing (come to think of it, there have been a lot of notices on lampposts recently about lost rabbits).

Working in the city this would have been no problem, I can almost see how the conversation would go. “I’m sorry to have to have to tell you that we are re-engineering the team to better align it with the critical needs of our business sponsors, and your role is no longer required. There will be a 28-day consultation period, but you should also be aware that the banks redundancy package has been replaced with human sacrifice. Have you got any questions?”

I just can’t see it working in school. Looking at the symbol a bit more closely you will see that there appears to be what looks like the cross of St. George. I think a bit of re-interpretation is what is required, and Jerusalem is my inspiration. The Lamb of God does indeed make the ultimate sacrifice, it’s the England Rugby team’s last supper before a world cup final. But there is no need to worry, it happened once a long time ago, and isn’t going to happen again.