The End of Scapegoating

The End of Scapegoating--April 10, 2019

"And very priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, 'he sat down at the right hand of God,' and since then has been waiting 'until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.' For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified." [Hebrews 10:11-14]

Harry Truman was right--the truest mark of leadership is the refusal to pass the buck to someone else.  There was always something admirable about President Truman's style of leadership as the Commander-in-Chief in that regard--he had difficult decisions to make, and he owned responsibility for making them without blaming others when things were unpopular, unsuccessful, or uncertain. In that sense, Truman's motto, "the buck stops here," gives good guidance for all of us who are simply trying to be decent human beings.  And being decent human beings will require that we own responsibility for dealing with the world in which we are living, no matter what messes we have been handed to deal with.

But maybe we could even go a step further.  To hear the writer of Hebrews tell it, the cross of Christ is what it looks like when Jesus says, "The buck stops here."  It is a sign of Jesus' unique divinity that he will not pass the buck, shirk responsibility, or shrug off his need to lay down his life for us.  Jesus literally brings the end of scapegoating--the end of the need to try and ritually place the sins of the people on some other animal that would be sacrificed or driven into the wilderness.  Jesus brings the end of all that, because he ends it in himself.  

That's the big idea that the writer of Hebrews taps into when he says that Christ "offered for all times a single sacrifice for sins" in himself, thus ending once and for all the need for us to blame someone else, cover up our failings and wrongdoing, or point fingers.  The cross is where Jesus says, "The buck stops here--I will take responsibility.  I will stop the vicious circle of passing blame and shirking ownership."

There is still this deep-seated impulse in us to run from responsibility, to avoid blame, and to look for someone else we can make into the villain.  It is in our spiritual DNA, so to speak, tracing back as far as the old line, "The woman YOU gave me made me eat..." as the old storytelling goes.  And it is still in the headlines every day, too.  We have not outgrown the old familiar patterns of running from our responsibility, so we find all sorts of new ways to run from our mess-ups or pin them on someone else.  

How many times have we heard variations on, "It wasn't me--it was the guy who came before me who made such a mess!" or "It was broken when I got here!" or "Everybody else is acting like an immature jerk. THEY (!) are being so difficult and hard to work with, the losers!" or "Well, I didn't actually do anything so terrible; I just sat quietly and watched it happen without speaking up and reaped the benefits of terrible things that others have done--you can't expect me to take responsibility for that, can you?"  The sad old refrains are getting kind of threadbare, but we still trot them out.  It is what we all retreat to when we are feeling cornered and insecure.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus has brought an end to the need for all of that.  At the cross, Jesus voluntarily says, "I didn't cause this mess of sinful humanity, but these are my people, whom I love--so I will bear responsibility for putting things right.  The buck stops with me."  And if we can dare to believe that is true--that there is no longer guilt to be doled out, or shame hanging over our heads waiting to fall like an ax, then the cycle really is broken, and we really are free.  We don't have to find someone else to take our blame for our mess-ups. We don't have to find some group of people to make into the cartoon villain and reimagine as the source of all our problems. We don't have to deny (unsuccessfully) the ways we are complicit in systems of sin and rottenness that have been hurting other people for generations, and hurting ourselves for just as long.  We don't have to play any of those games, because Jesus--both the divine Son of God and the authentically mature and grown-up Truly Human One--has brought and end to scapegoating anybody else by absorbing all of that buck-passing into himself.  That frees us to own our mistakes, confess our sins, claim responsibility, and let go of old insecurities.

As popular as it still is from the talking heads on television to find someone else to make into the villain, the scapegoat, or the boogey-man of the day, we don't have to fall for it anymore.  The cross means the end of our rotten habit of dodging responsibility, because it assures us we don't have to be afraid of telling the truth about our mess-ups.  They have been buried with Christ in a rock-hewn tomb and left there--Jesus made sure to leave them behind when he stepped out into the early Sunday dawn and left to go sit down at the right hand of the Father.

Lord Jesus, free us again from our old patterns of ducking responsibility and getting defensive.  Help us to own our responsibilities and to trust that you have taken away our condemnation.