Day 3 in Arequipa! I’ve had a chance to catch up with several brothers and sisters in the Lord who are faithfully bearing spiritual fruit (more on that later). I’ve also taken some time to walk through the city my family and I called home for over five years back in the early 2000s. Since that time, the Lord has continued to shape my understanding of who He is, His work in the world, and what it means to be human—created in His image (Gen 1).
One theme that has grown significantly clearer to me over the past decade is the role of sacrifice and its place in the spiritual life. The idea that sacrifice is foundational to the human experience is often misunderstood or not engaged with in a serious manner in our modern world of “human rights,” technological advances, etc. But Walter Burkert, who wrote extensively on classical civilizations, went so far as to define our race as Homo Necans—“man the killer.”
I’ve engaged with the works of dozens of anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, pastors, and theologians on this very subject. What we know historically and biblically about the act of offering something—or someone—through the taking of life, is that it has been universally understood as an act of transcendence; from the material world into an unseen realm of divine beings. In doing so, it somehow alters our experience of the world.
As I made my way down the centuries-old cobblestone streets of Arequipa, I stopped to visit an archaeological exhibit displaying the remains and artifacts of a young girl, known as Juanita or the Inca Ice Maiden. She was sacrificed approximately 500 years ago on Mount Ampato, a high dormant volcano in southern Peru (less than 100 miles from Arequipa). Her offering—after an exhausting ascent into the thin Andean air, under the direction of Incan priests, made to drink intoxicating potions, and ultimately brought to completion by a priest’s mace striking her right temple—is a striking example of a practice both ancient and, I would argue, not so ancient: the ritual sacrifice of humans to the gods of the nations.
Juanita, aged around 12–15, was led by Incan priests to Ampato to appease the mountain god said to threaten volcanic eruption. But she wasn’t alone—two other high-altitude sacrifices were found with her, a young boy and a young girl, all selected from the elite, “fattened” on the best the empire could offer, then transformed into living divinities through their willing (?) sacrifices.
This ritual—known as Capacocha (or Qhapaq hucha)—was practiced not only on Ampato but at many Andean peaks throughout Inca and earlier periods. Similar child sacrifices have been found across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The human story, it seems, is less about giving life and more often about taking it in a sacred transaction.
Juanita’s story – and the innumerable others who have suffered a similar fate in the service of the gods – ought to give us pause on a number of levels. For followers of Jesus, his sacrifice is the Ultimate Human Sacrifice; in one sense the sacrifice to end all sacrifice. But in another, Christ and his Way are the doorway into communion with God. But only Christs sacrifice- and our lives lived in the shadow of his – doesn’t end in the taking of life, but the giving of everlasting life: Resurrection. This is THE distinction of the Christian faith: sacrifice doesn’t end in an appeasing death, but in the communion of the life-giving Spirit.
We Christians ought to reflect deeply on how our modern cultures and societies continue to sacrifice the lives and well-being of others in order to sustain our comfort within the empire—appeasing the gods of scarcity and desire, hidden beneath the shadow of material wealth and human progress. There is always a cost. There is always a sacrifice. And it is worth asking whether we the Church—by our actions or by our silence—are aligning ourselves with Homo Necans or with the Imago Dei.
Christ Tribe 