Cross as Scapegoat

This week we’ve been looking at alternative ways to see the cross. While some have grown up in the faith hearing about how full of wrath God is at our wickedness and in our place God punished Jesus so that vengeance would not be poured out on us. But there are different ways to look at what Jesus’s death meant. That’s why we looked at solidarity on Tuesday and adoption on Wednesday. Today we look at a different approach: scapegoat theology (the fancy name for it is the Mimetic Theory of Atonement)

The goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat… [The priest] is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place. - Leviticus 16:10, 21-22

Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. - Hebrews 13:12-13

In the Old Testament, on the day of atonement besides a lamb being offered as sacrifice there was a goat offered as a scapegoat, sent out into the wilderness as part of the process of reconnecting God to the people. The New Testament author of Hebrews mentions how Jesus also suffered out in the wilderness to take away people’s sins.

The image here is of Jesus absorbing all the ways we’ve treated each other with selfishness and violence, and breaking the cycle by not returning evil with evil. On top of that, notice that God is not forcing this on us. Instead, Jesus as scapegoat simply invites us to recognize that this is what God is doing. We are not forced into reconnecting with God. But the way has been made. There’s no violence, retribution, or wrath in this image of what Jesus accomplished through his life and death, and yet it’s fully biblical.

Spend some time with this image of all the wrongs in the world being carried away by Jesus… and then him inviting you to come join him out in ‘the wilderness’ to live like he did.