Isaiah 53:1-5, 10-12; 1 John 3:1-11
April 18, 2021
- Receiving Christ’s rightness in a broken world
Believe it or not, this sermon is not a tribute to that significant person in your life who is always right. You know, that person who knows best and is always right and has no problem informing you of their rightness. And, of course, they think they are doing you a favor by making you more right, too. For some, that person is a parent or sibling, maybe a friend or coworker. I was once told that every teenage daughter had the gift of always being right. Then, I lived it. For some people, this is the spouse who keeps everyone else informed. But really when you get down to it, there is only one person who can make us right, and that is the person I want to talk about today – Mr. Goat. Yes, I said “Mr. Goat.”
You may have expected me to say someone else’s name there. That’s OK. I’ll come back to that in a minute.
Mr. Goat is the one who can help us get right. Specifically, I’m thinking of the idea of the scapegoat. We have all at some point in our lives used the word “scapegoat” for someone who is given the blame of something for others. We think of the scapegoat in a situation as someone who is not actually guilty but who will take the fall, anyway, and save other people from facing the burden of their guilt. The classic scapegoat for children is that dog who ate their homework. If you are guilty of not doing your work, blame the dog, even if you don’t have one. Nowadays, though, with so much being done on computers, I guess the dog needs a tougher stomach or kids start blaming computer viruses for eating the homework.
This notion of a scapegoat goes way, way back, maybe to 2500 BCE. The Jewish people took up the ritual later as laid out in Leviticus 16 and practiced thereafter. When the people need to have their guilt removed from them as a people, the priest takes two goats. One is sacrificed at the altar to God and the other has the sins of the people placed on it, and that goat is sent out into the wilderness bearing the sins (so-to-speak). That goat is literally the scapegoat which is never seen, again, and this gives us the Jewish holy day associated with this practice, the day of Yom Kippur – the holiest day of the Jewish year, the Day of Atonement. Giving your guilt away and becoming right by God is foundationally vital to being able to be whole as a person and a people. Being able to put our sin aside makes us right or whole, so that seems to be the job of the goat in Jewish tradition. Does not really seem all that fair to the goat, though. This practice is not very practical, nor is it very enduring or very relatable, especially as I don’t know anyone who evens owns a goat today, let alone a goat we can send off into the wilderness to be eaten.
What if the goat has a choice? It is remarkable how God seems to use things and infuse them with new meaning. Isaiah paints this seemingly troubling and dramatic picture of a poor soul who just does not seem to be any kind of contender for the most lucky list: he is basically unattractive, without any real stature, full of sorrows, sick, and seemingly cursed by God, and as if that is not enough, the final blow is that this poor and despised figure is laden with all of our sinfulness. This suffering servant is horribly beset by the transgressions and evils and sin of us all. That sounds like the most pitiable scapegoat the world has ever seen.
Of course, there is a point. You probably already guessed that we identify that person with someone who lived and died and rose, again, for us hundreds of years after Isaiah. The clear reason for it all is that this was God’s design for our safety and security and welfare and wholeness. God wanted us to be made right in Jesus.
Out of love for God and love for us, the Suffering One took our brokenness and healed our ties to God. And, he opened the way for our healing here. See, that’s the thing about what Jesus did. It is so tempting to simply believe that everything was fixed that first morning of the resurrection 2000 years ago – as if Jesus came back and the world was restored and everything made right. After all, Jesus’ resurrection was the greatest gift the world had ever received. It did change the whole world, and it gave us a life greater than death.
But death is still far too ominous. Since the mass shooting in Atlanta last month there have been 45 mass shootings in America. As I was listening to an Axios news story on this, I could not believe my ears. I had to rewind it and listen again. Surely, that was not what I heard but it was. A mass shooting is when four or more people are shot, and they literally happen all the time in our nation.
Somewhere between Jesus taking the hurt of this world, all of it – past, present, and future – somewhere between taking all of that hurt and making us right in love AND the fact that there is still so much wrong with the world is where we need to go as people in faith. That is where this journey in faith needs to go. The rightness of what Jesus gives us has to mean something more than things are OK between us as God. The rightness Jesus suffered everything to give us has to be more than a free ticket to heaven, but where do we see that?
We begin to see it in our children among other places. The other evening one of my children pulled a pretty major surprise with bringing home a puppy that she rescued from the woods. I could not help but reflect on the fact that she did not call first to check with us on the wisdom of such a decision, i.e. she did not ask. She just showed up with this adorable, sweet bundle of puppy love and her promises to be the complete and responsible caregiver. I know better than that; you know better than that. But why do we tend to view the actions of our children in a different light? I could not be angry with her really. What is it about this relationship that makes us more willing to work with them in their struggles?
If we look back at John’s letter that I just read, you heard something else going on. Because of God’s love for us, we have also been named children of God. We have been given the rightness of Christ Jesus. We have been made whole in God’s love and restored in the mercy of God, but we have also been given a home and a family, all of us. You heard then how the key to living becomes practicing the good stuff. We need to practice what Jesus has given us. Because we are children of God, we have the opportunity and joy of representing our Heavenly Father. Why should we embrace this opportunity? Because Jesus has made us the right people for it.
Our world is crying out for some sign of what is right. People look to all kinds of answers to what is wrong with the world. We try to eat the right foods, do the right activities, legislate the right laws, associate with the right people, look the right way, say the right things, buy the right stuff, believe the right things, whatever we think is the answer to helping us feel better about living in a broken and sinful world. It is like trying to build a wall with bubbles, though.
Because the answer all along has already been given to us. It is all about the heart. Your heart already has already been made right by God’s love, in God’s love, if you realize you are a child of God. Those who understand what Jesus has done and what Jesus gives have no desire to spread pain, suffering, and brokenness. Those who know the rightness of Jesus have no love of spreading sin.
Sure, we still struggle with sin, but sin is not our joy. Our joy is in the life of love that we have been given in Christ Jesus. Our joy is in the blessings we see all around us when we open our hearts. Our joy is in the gift of being made perfectly right in the grace of God through the love of our Savior.
This is a gift that lives and grows with us. This is a gift that is always better shared. This is a gift that never lords over another or tries to impress. This gift does what is right because it is what is right. It always come from the heart of God. To God be the glory. Amen.