Have you ever been made a scapegoat for others some
time in your life? Most of us understand
the term scapegoat and perhaps we are familiar with the origins of the term,
but our modern understanding of this phenomena in human society is unavoidably
shaped by the thinking of a French Christian thinker, René Girard who died this week aged
in his 90s.
Girard made the observation
that human beings have an almost unavoidable tendency towards violence against
others, often directing that violence towards a single person or a particular
group of people. Very often this
tendency towards violence was a subconscious response to our own sense of
failure, so rather than allow others to see our failure or weaknesses we pick
on someone else – often whom we perceive as having weakness – and we even
incite others to participate in that violence.
Their willingness of others to collaborate in the violence makes our own sense of
personal guilt or failure even less.
So, scapegoating is fundamentally
about transferring our own sense of guilt for sin onto another so that they
will take it away from me.
The selection of Scripture
from Hebrews today (9:23-28) takes us straight into the annual ritual for the
Jewish High Priest on the day they call Yom Kippur, or the Day of
Atonement. In this day various animals
are sacrificed and prayers said confessing the sins of the nation over the past
year and in a final ritual act of passing on those sins, the High Priest prays
over a goat, transferring the sins of the nation to it and then it is chased
off into the wilderness. Once the temple
was built the practice was actually to chase the goat over a cliff to its death
– so that it could not bring the sins back.
Thus the nations had a fresh start – its sins were carried away.
The writer to the Hebrews and
probably other early Christians recognised some similarity between that
scapegoat and Jesus and he uses the imagery of the High Priestly rituals on the
Day of Atonement to try and explain the early Christian conviction that this
annual violence against the animals was no longer necessary – that God no
longer held our sin as a barrier between us because Jesus’ death had put an end
to it.
Girard goes so far as to say
that Christianity is the only exit way from these violent tendencies among
humans. He has a sociological way of
speaking about it. We have a theological
way of speaking about it. But at the
heart of both explanations is the death of Jesus which does away with the need
for further death.
What we understand about sin
is that in and of ourselves we have no way of getting rid of it – indeed of its
very essence it seems to keep us sinning even more. The Jewish Law and Sacrificial System
provided ways for the temporary alleviation of our guilt and shame – but it did
not free us from sin.
The reason we so often react
with fear and violence to others – perhaps who seem different from us – is a
failure to apprehend deep in our being that our sin has been dealt with. So we harbour this fear that the OTHER might
show us up to be as bad as we feel we are.
That leads us to do things that will lead others to see them as far
worse persons than we are – then we can relax.
The early Christians, looking
at what Jesus did, saw in him an extraordinary scapegoat. The religious leaders feared him and his
message because they could see that he had a clearer and firmer relationship to
God the Father than they thought they had – but they were the religious leaders. So they harassed him – ultimately to his
death. The Roman authorities feared him
because he seemed to make himself an alternative Lord to the Emperor.
So they harassed him to his
death.
Others would have fought back,
perpetuating the cycle of violence, but Jesus did not. And we stand with those early Christians in
affirming that in this death – once for all – the cycle of guilt and sin and
violence has come to an end.
Can you see how it
works? Jesus the scapegoat has taken
away the sin of the world – once and for all.
We no longer carry the stain of sin and guilt in our lives, so when we
stand alongside or in front of another fellow human being we don’t secretly
think “They are better than me; I had better throw some mud at them to make me
look good.” We stand proudly alongside
them saying “I know we are both less than perfect – but in Christ we have both
been cleansed of the stain of sin.” Thus
the cycle of violence is broken. Thus
humankind can be freed from its greatest scourge.
The letter to the Hebrews
give us a whole suite of theological imagery to explain this and perhaps we are
more familiar with that imagery and language.
But at the heart of it all is this fundamental truth that in the death
of Jesus, we are freed from the cycle of sin and violence that once imprisoned
us, and that we are freed from it once and for all. That is the good news we call the Gospel of
Christ.
