Towards Good Friday -- step 2 with Andrew Prior

Towards Good Friday: Step Two (with Andrew Prior)

What we regard as “traditional” atonement theology is built in part on the idea and practice of scapegoating as a means of social cohesion and healing. 

On the simplest level it means when things go wrong in any social group (e.g. family, tribe, nation) one avenue of redress that’s sought is to identify someone on whom the majority can (rightly or wrongly) pin the blame, guilt and sin that’s infecting the group, so that by excluding that person (or group of persons) from the community (e.g. shunning them, sending them into the wilderness, sending them back where they came from, imprisoning them, isolating them in a ghetto, or even killing them) the rest can feel healed of guilt, and feel free to go about being the good people left in peace that they want to be.

On a more complex, psycho-social level scapegoating is a way that a (usually) dominant group has of projecting (and thereby denying and avoiding) its own brokenness and complicity in whatever is going wrong, on to another person or group who is either so patently pure and innocent that their very existence is a reproach to the others, or whose behaviour, appearance, culture or mores are either so heinously criminal or deeply different that they can easily be demonized and disposed of by the dominant group without any added guilt – in fact often with a sense of rightness, being felt by the dominant group.

In the Old Testament scapegoating was practiced by the Hebrews in common with other people around them.  In the New Testament, the psycho-political-social practice of scapegoating is echoed in the words of Caiaphas in John 11:50 when he justifies the plot to kill Jesus to his fellow priests (of course it’s the priests who know about this stuff!) by saying, “it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”  In other words, “if the Roman government needs someone to sacrifice to get rid of the contagion of turmoil and restore peace, better that it be this one man than all of us; let him be the scapegoat who will save us all from losing our lives.”  (Exactly what is still said and practiced by governments about the poor, immigrants, refugees, minorities and any who are sufficiently “other” that we can get away with sacrificing them for the good of the rest.)

It is assumed that because scapegoating is mentioned and practiced in the Bible, this is what God wants and how God works.  That it’s a way God uses, too, to cleanse a community.  That in the Old Testament this is why God institutes the animal-sacrificial system (whereby animals are stand-in scapegoats sacrificed for human sin).  And that in the New Testament in the end it is Jesus who God puts forward as the final and greatest scapegoat – a scapegoat perfect enough to be a stand-in for all human sin, to allow all humanity (if they will only accept him as their scapegoat) to not have to confess and face their own sin, and be free to go their way in peace and be the good people they want to be.

But … is that the only way – or even a true way to read the Bible? 

Andrew Prior, a minister in the Uniting Church of Australia struggled with this question in the midst of a sermon some months ago about the reconciliation of white and indigenous peoples in Australia.  How, he asked, can reconciliation and peace be achieved for us all after centuries of scapegoating whereby one group (whites) sacrificed the life and well-being of whole “other” populations (the First Nations) for their own group’s greed, pride, and willingness to steal and then despoil what belonged to others for the sake of their own success and prosperity, if the only mechanism we have for achieving peace and forgiveness is the kind of scapegoating that was the white people’s sin in the first place? 

Does the Bible, he wonders, actually support scapegoating as God’s way?  Or is it our way that God at different times and in different ways is trying to lead us to see through and forsake?  Does God actually model something other than scapegoating as the way ahead?  For Prior, the question comes to a head in the identification of Jesus as the Lamb of God, and the question of why Jesus had to die. 

Does Jesus die at God’s hands and by God’s will to satisfy God’s need for a victim to bear the blame? Or does Jesus die at our hands and by our will to satisfy our need for a victim to bear the blame?  The way Prior puts it in his study notes before the sermon (which notes I regret I did not keep and cannot find), is that maybe Jesus was not God’s Lamb being led to God’s sacrificial altar, but our Lamb being led to our sacrificial altar.

And that it’s in God’s and Jesus’ response to that act of sacrificial slaughter that we really see God’s way – not appeasement through punishment and payment, but simply the freely chosen words, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” – spoken not because the sacrifice of Jesus makes forgiveness possible, but because the sacrifice of Jesus makes forgiveness necessary; makes it the only thing a truly loving God can say in response.

In other words, Prior questions whether God condemns Jesus to death so that by his scapegoat-death we can be forgiven and reconciled, or whether we condemn Jesus to death because of our own mis-guided need for a scapegoat.  And whether in forgiving us and offering us peace instead of punishment and a demand that we pay for that heinous act, God shows us maybe in the most miraculously gracious way we could ever imagine, what the way of peace and reconciliation truly is. 

At least, I think this is what he is getting at. 

I’ve included below a relevant little snippet from Andrew Prior’s sermon.  The whole of it (and I do recommend it) can be found on his website at https://www.onemansweb.org/the-lamb-and-the-day-of-mourning-john-129-42.html

Here’s the snippet:

“Well, in the text this week (John 1:29-42), when Jesus comes to be baptised, John the Baptist says, twice, "Here is the Lamb of God."  He means the sacrificial Lamb.  The first time... he says "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"  That is, here is the Lamb of God who heals a nation which is built on a terrible foundation of massacre and murder.  We are, in the end, no different from anyone else.  Civilisation, which begins when Adam and Even leave the garden in Chapter 4 of Genesis, begins with a murder.  Some theologians call it the founding murder.  Jesus is the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world.

“The question is how.

“I was taught that Jesus was sacrificed by God to pay the price for my sins.  That is, God, who forbids child sacrifice, and who stopped Abraham from sacrificing his only son, then sacrificed his only son for me.  And somehow that saved us from the violence that was still going on 1800 years later in our country, and still continues today.

“But no, it's not God who wanted a sacrifice from us.  It's God who came to us in love, despite our violence, in Jesus the Christ.  We... insisted on sacrificing... him.  We murdered him, an innocent man, because we thought God demands that we kill people we don't like when they upset our plans for society.  It is we who think violence will heal violence and that murder will bring peace.  Do you see the difference between the two ways of understanding the Lamb of God?

“When Jesus is raised from the dead, when the man who is the son of the King of the Universe comes back, we know what to expect.  We know what will happen.  When you try to get rid of the king or his son, and it doesn't work, then you get killed in revenge.  Except that this didn't happen.  Jesus, who says in Matthew that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, says: "Peace be with you, and do not be afraid."  That's how to live.  That's how the sin is taken away, and disarmed, and neutralised.

“Jesus shows us how to live.  He shows us the way to live which means that we are raised up even from death.  Forgive.  Be compassionate.  Sit alongside.  Suffer with those who suffer.  This will heal our sin.”