Our Scapegoat :: Genesis 3:1-21, Matthew 4:1-11
There is no day in Israel’s calendar that is more important than the Shabbat, or shall I say, the Sabbath. It is the first holiday mentioned in the Old Testament, the day God finished his work. He blessed the Shabbat. He made it holy. And He rested from all his work. Remember the Sabbath Day. It is Holy.
Although Shabbat is the Most Important Day ... the most holy ... is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In Leviticus chapter 16, we read how God established a statute forever, that on this day, the 10th day of the seventh month of every year, atonement may be made for the people of Israel, and their sins forgiven.
It is a day rich in ritual, yet drenched in blood.
In a sequence of divinely ordered steps, the high priest would carefully wash himself, dress himself, and prepare himself and the people to receive the blood-bought forgiveness of sins. The Lord designated three animals to be part of Yom Kippur. The high priest would sacrifice a bull, offering its blood and life for his own sins and for those of his household. Next, he sacrificed a goat as a sin offering for all the people of Israel. Finally, the high priest placed both his hands on the remaining goat, confessing and conferring Israel’s sins upon it before a chosen man led it out into the wilderness, where it was undoubtedly devoured.
This poor, abandoned creature came to be called the scapegoat, and it still stands as a symbol of one who is blamed for the crimes or sins of another.
In today’s readings, we meet the true Scapegoat as we discover that ...
WHILE SINNERS LOOK TO BLAME OTHERS, THE FATHER PUT THE BLAME ON CHRIST, AND WE LOOK TO THE ONE WHO TOOK THE BLAME UPON HIMSELF.
Sinners look to blame others, shifting responsibility and consequences.
We have learned to find plenty of convenient scapegoats in our lives. As children, we learn quickly to point fingers somewhere else ... at our siblings, our teachers, our parents ... and if those aren’t available, even the imaginary. Just ask my wife some time to tell you the humorous story about the time she found our youngest son with chocolate frosting all over his face.
Chocolate frosting, you say? What chocolate frosting?
I’ll leave this here. She tells it better than I can. But you parents know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? We -- the parents -- are masters at shifting responsibility and consequences. And we teach our children too well.
It is no wonder why. We have been doing this from the very beginning.
Adam and Eve perfected the tactic of finding a scapegoat at the dawn of time ... in the Garden of Eden ... and then they passed poison on down to their children, who began killing each other and declaring ... Blood? What blood? This dodge and denial tactic is just one of the more obvious clues to the scriptural truth that we are born sinners. We are born with an incurable disease. It poisons everything we think, say, and do.
How have you been dodging and evading, pointing your fingers?
Our Old Testament reading illustrates this for us perfectly today.
As soon as Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil ... they discovered evil, shame, death, despair. And they passed it on to their children. As Paul wrote in his Epistle to the Romans: Sin came into the world through this one man and death through sin. And we have been dying ever since.
Sin is not a static thing in our lives. Sin is not simply something that happened to you or against you in the past. Sin is not harmless. Shifting blame is not harmless.
Sin has a life of its own. Sin leads us to doubt God, to doubt his Word. Did God actually say, the Tempter whispers in our ear. ... Is there really chocolate frosting on our face? ... You will not surely die, the Great Liar declares, as long as you have health care. It’s not even your fault, our Adversary convinces us. She made me ... He made me do it ... the Devil made me do it, we cry.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the wages of sin is death, a complete separation from God. It is shameful. It is darkness. For in the day you eat of it you will surely die.
And Adam and Eve did die ... that day ... in the garden. They ran away from the light of Christ. Scurried into darkness. Tried to hide themselves in their proverbial closet. The curse of sin consumed not only their lives but it continues to consume our lives as the world groans under the weight of sin.
So thank God we have entered the season of Lent, a holy season of prayerful and penitential reflection. This is not a season for you to cherry pick your sins and vices and make a decision for Christ to eliminate this one or that one. It is a time to lament all of your sin .... whatever it may be ... sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalry, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness. Repent of all of it. As Paul told the Galatians, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we were not created to live this way. We were created before the foundation of the world in the image of God, the image of righteousness, the image of purity, the image of joy, the image of steadfast love, the image of nurture. We were created to live forever, without pain, without death, without disease.
And today, we see that perfectly in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Father sent his Son into our world, into our flesh, and put the blame we deserve upon Christ, making him the scapegoat.
Our reading from Matthew’s gospel takes us to the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry on Earth. You could say moments after his baptism, moments after the heavens open and the spirit of God descended upon Jesus in the Jordan and the Father declared for all to hear who his beloved son really was, Jesus was led up ... or maybe we should say, blown or thrown ... by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Jesus became a scapegoat in the wilderness.
There in the wilderness ... the new Adam, as Paul calls him in our epistle from Romans ... overcame all the temptations of the devil, the evil one, the tempting one, the one who is still whispering in your ear that your hunger for knowledge isn’t killing you. Did God really say the heavens and the earth were created in six measly days?
Well, as a matter of fact, yest God really did. But more importantly, God said ... Man shall live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. ... That you shall not put the Lord God to the test.... That Satan has no power over you. For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.
Then the devil left Jesus, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus has overcome every temptation of sin, death, and the devil for you ... not because he had to, but because he longed to be with you.
As True Man, Jesus experienced true and genuine temptation. As True God, He overcame true and genuine temptation. Jesus shows us how he lived a life of active righteousness. He shows us that he is the sinless one, that he is the perfect Lamb of God.
He has stared down sin, death, and the devil, and overcome them all. He understands all the trials and temptations you face. He understands in ways you will never understand.
This passage isn’t about Jesus showing us how to resist temptation, as if Jesus is trying to be the Good Example. Jesus is not telling us that if we just speak the right Bible verse to combat temptation. Rather, brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus is showing us who He really is. That He is the Son of God, the New Adam. Even Satan recognizes that. More than that, it shows us that He knew no sin and that he could be the Goat of God.
Now we can look to the One who took the blame upon himself.
Our Lenten Gradual calls us to
fix our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame,
and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Knowing that we should have carried our own sins until we met hell’s destruction, we celebrate, knowing that God laid all sins on Christ, and made him the Scapegoat. Through the work of Christ, our Great High Priest, he has released us from the debt of our sin by making perfect atonement for all of it, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
But during our lifetimes, he also did this thoroughly through Holy Baptism, which indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.
More than that, today God reminds us that he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He has laid on Jesus, his beloved Son, the Lamb of God, the iniquity of us all.
Now when our Scapegoat approaches us in Word and Sacrament, we don't flee from him, terrified that he might be bringing our sins back to accuse us. COme to the altar, with joy in your hearts, knowing that the Lord himself is calling you to receive the fruits of forgiveness .... his body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins.
We can be confident that no sins, no shame, and no blame remain. God blotted them out on The Day of Atonement, the day Jesus became your scapegoat, the day Jesus was escorted out of the city, taking your sins with him to the cross, the day Jesus saw to it that your sins were atoned for once for all.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, your sins have been erased, they were buried with Christ so that they will never be heard from again. In exchange, for your sins, he has given you his righteousness. He has made you right with God. He has delivered you from original sin that maims, kills, and destroys. He has delivered you from death in your baptism, and he is raising you to new life now through your baptism. And finally, one day soon, Christ will come to take us unto himself, to bring us to our eternal dwelling place, where we will live in bliss forever.