Loading the Goat

For its first 15 chapters, Leviticus generally addresses proper worship—how to approach a holy God. In chapters 17-27, the issue is proper ethics—how to be a holy people. We’re all familiar with the deep distance between the two. This distance is what we label sin. The Old Testament provides a varied vocabulary to describe it: rebellion, infidelity, disloyalty, getting dirty, wandering, trespassing, transgressing and missing the mark. But because sin remains a perversity that pollutes God even more than it pollutes us, amending our lives and promising to do better isn’t enough. The only way to span the distance between our worship and our failure to live as we worship—between God’s expectations and their implications is with atonement. Leviticus 16 is the bridge. Atonement takes away our sin and makes us into holy people—people whose ethics can square with their worship, people who can preach what they practice. Yet somehow the distance remains. How is it that people made holy by Christ still act so unholy? Part of the problem may have something to do with a flawed understanding of atonement itself. To experience atonement is more than to be declared “not guilty” before God. To experience atonement is to be changed by God. Our tendency is to embrace the former while resisting the latter. We read “Jesus loves you just as we are” as permission to stay that way. But one look in the Levitical mirror and you realize that if forgiveness hasn’t made you a different person, then maybe you’ve not been forgiven.

In Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement involved loading a goat with the (unintentional) sins of the people and chasing it off into the wilderness. (There’s also a second goat involved in this process as a sacrifice). The need for atonement was so palpable that we were tempted, as an object lesson, to rent a couple of goats for our church services. We thought that watching our sins get killed and carried away might make grace more real. Of course renting a couple of goats is one thing. Finding somebody to rent us a goat to sacrifice is something else. And even with the goat that draws the lucky straw, you still had the problem of bringing back to the later service a scapegoat loaded up with the sins of those at the first service. The suggestion was made that perhaps we could have one of us dress up like a goat. But you still have the same problem: Who in their right mind would give themselves for the sins of everybody else? I mean, except for Jesus.