“And Aaron shall lay both hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all
the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting
them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away into the wilderness; and the goat shall bear upon himself all their iniquities to a deserted place, and he shall let go the goat into the wilderness” (Leviticus 16:21)
Here is the traditional method for cleansing all Israel of their sins committed in a year. The ritual is carried out liturgically. The actions of religion performed ceremonially express in dramatic vividness what it is that the clergy hope to demonstrate. The high priest prays over one of two goats, pleading with the Lord to combine all the sins of the people, then to lay them on the animal, after which the goat is driven out of the community into the desert. Imagine how stunning it must have been, and how therapeutic. The children of Israel are cleansed, purified, and freed from their transgressions. Look! There all of your sins are embodied in the goat. Watch them go—off into the distant wilderness. Sins for them were communal, the personal wrongdoings afflicting the entire nation. How curious for us modern people. For us sins are a private matter. We well understand Cains’ retort: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9)
Thus we find in the Bible the historical precedent for the term scapegoat. It happened once more in the 2003 National League playoffs between the Chicago Cubs and Florida Marlins. In the last inning with the Marlins at bat, a Cubs fan did the usual. He watched as a foul ball hit its way in front of him. The Cub’s shortstop reached up and tried to catch the ball that the young man tipped, and the ball dropped harmlessly [for the Marlins] into the seats. This seemingly innocent incident brought out the worst in Chicago’s fans. The young man required police protection just to escape the ballpark. Later the media and the population of nearly all Illinois vilified him. He’ll be marked for life as the person who lost the pennant for Chicago’s Cubs. I for one, rooting for the Cubs until that event, now feel that they deserved to lose, given that despicable example of behavior.
Scapegoating rears its rude horns throughout history. Enemies invariably accuse minorities of being the cause of adverse circumstances, be they natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes, or invasions by foreign enemies. Legend has it that the emperor Nero had blamed the Christians for the fire that wreaked havoc on Rome in his day. St. Augustine wrote the lengthy apology City of God to dispel the accusation that Christianity was to blame for the downfall of the Roman Empire at the hands of the conquerors from the north. And to our great shame many Jews suffered at the hands of Russians during the pogroms, when they were accused of undermining the authority of the tsar during the imperial times. Today Copts and other Christians bear the brunt of radical Islam in the Middle East.
Some low, craven, cowardly and perverse aspect of our fallen nature comes to the fore when we surrender to the urge to pour out our anger onto another being or animal. God made each of us unique and in His image; but the expression of what appears to be a herd instinct would negate that noble Biblical description of what a human being is, or should be. In losing our reason and the grace that accompanies understanding and forgiveness, we have set aside the definition of a child of God.