March 21: The Scapegoat
♫ Music:
Day 21 - Tuesday, March 21
The Sacrifice Lamb
Scripture: Leviticus 9:7, 16:8-10 & 20-22
Then Moses said to Aaron, “Draw near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering and make atonement for yourself and for the people, and bring the offering of the people and make atonement for them, as the Lord has commanded.” And Aaron cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron presented the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and used it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel was presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it might be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel. “And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he presented the live goat. And Aaron lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confessed over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who was in readiness. The goat bore all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he let the goat go free in the wilderness.
Poetry:
"A Purification"
by Wendell Berry
At start of spring I open a trench
in the ground. I put into it
the winter’s accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read
again, useless words, fragments,
errors. And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun, growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise;
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth. Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.
THE SCAPEGOAT
I first became fascinated by the biblical representation of a scapegoat upon reading Sweet Violence: the Idea of the Tragic (2002) by literary theorist Terry Eagleton. Eagleton uses the Greek term Pharmakos rather than the Hebrew Azazel to represent the tragic hero, or heroine, as a sort of outcast, upon whom the sins of a community are laid. This approach does work well when Eagleton applies it to literary works, such as William Shakespeare’s tragic play King Lear or Samuel Richardson’s tragic novel Clarissa, and notably Eagleton also brings it to the figure of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Terry Eagleton turns to Christ as the model Pharmakos, or scapegoat, by presenting Christ’s crucifixion as truly tragic and by emphasizing Paul’s assertion that God the Father made Christ “to be sin” (2 Cor. 5:21) on our behalf. For Eagleton, the monstrous inhumanity of Christ’s death on the cross, as outcast scapegoat, triggers in us both the compassion and the fear so essential to tragic pathos as defined by Aristotle. According to the biblical representation of a scapegoat, in Leviticus 16:20-22, the priest Aaron remarkably performs a communal act of confession by laying his hands on the goat’s head and giving voice to all the sins of his entire community. The sins are thus put “on the head of the goat” (16:21). This is a heavy weight for a goat to bear; it functions as a visceral Hebraic prefiguring of the heavy weight of our sins as Jesus Christ bore them on the cross. The goat carries all the iniquities of the Israelites into a remote wilderness, in effect freeing the community from the weight of its communal past. This idea of human transgressions being swallowed up by a natural wilderness resonates with another statement on release from sin found in the Hebrew scripture: “… You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).
But there is a cost to be paid for such freedom, and while reading Leviticus 16:20-22, we cannot help but sympathetically imagine the suffering of the outcast scapegoat. Artist William Holman Hunt expresses such sympathy through his painting The Scapegoat. In Hunt’s image the goat appears to be hunched over or bent down. He is stumbling under the weight of the people’s sins. The posture evokes Christ stumbling under the weight of the cross as he carried it on his back towards Calvary. The expression Holman Hunt has represented on the goat’s face conveys weariness and even confusion. The red decoration on the goat symbolizes the sin that has come upon his head, as placed there by the priest Aaron, but it also suggests the crown of thorns that bloodied Christ’s forehead. The carcasses and bones on either side of the goat depict the wilderness as a place of death, desolation, and despair. This is the level to which Christ had to descend, even into Hell itself, for our redemption.
PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us, for we are sinners.
Amen.
Natasha Duquette
Associate Academic Dean and Associate Professor of English,
Tyndale University College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
About the Artwork #1:
The Scapegoat
William Holman Hunt
Oil on canvas (1854)
National Museums, Liverpool, England
About the Artist #1:
William Holman Hunt (1872–1910) was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – a group that rejected the classical movement that started with Raphael, and wished to paint directly from nature. Of the group, Hunt remained the most devoted to his ideals throughout his career. His paintings are best known for their detail and vivid color. In 1855 Hunt completed The Scapegoat which remains one of the best known religious images of the 19th century. His interest in religious subjects culminated in his first trip to the Holy Land in 1854-6. He bought a rare, white goat in Jerusalem then spent about ten days in Oosdoom on the Dead Sea working on the distant mountains and lake and making sketches of the goat. When poor weather forced Hunt to return to Jerusalem for the winter, the goat died on the journey home. By early 1855, Hunt had purchased another goat for use as a model. In his diary he describes standing the long-suffering goat in a tray of salt and mud to create the dried and cracked lake shore beneath his hoofs. He also bought a camel skeleton and borrowed an ibex skull from a friend to add these grisly details to the painting. Biblical inscriptions at top and bottom of the frame read as follows: “Surely he hath borne our Griefs and carried our Sorrows, yet did we esteem him, stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.” “And the Goat shall bear upon him all their Iniquities unto a Land not inhabited.”
About the Artwork #2:
The Sacrifice of the Old Covenant
Peter Paul Rubens
Oil on canvas (1626)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
About the Artist #2:
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was one of the most famous and successful artists of the 17th century. Rubens became known as "the prince of painters and the painter of princes" during his career, due to his frequent work for royal clients. He produced a tapestry cycle for Louis XIII of France (1622-25), a series of 21 large canvases glorifying the life and reign of Marie de Medici of France (1622-25) and the allegorical "Peace and War" for Charles I of England (1629-30). Rubens's skill at arranging complex groupings of figures in a composition, his ability to work on a large scale, his ease at depicting diverse subjects and his personal eloquence and charm all contributed to his success. His style combined Renaissance idealization of the human form with lush brushwork, dynamic poses and a lively sense of realism.
About the Music:
“The Sacrifice Lamb”
Lyrics:
[Verse 1:]
Have you ever heard, Messiah has come,
It says in His word, to cleanse everyone,
Atonement He made, iniquity He bore,
That we can find life, with Him evermore.
[Chorus:]
The Sacrifice Lamb, has been slain,
His blood on the altar a stain,
To wipe away guilt and pain,
To bring hope eternal.
Salvation has come to the world,
God's only Son, to the world,
Jesus the one, for the world,
Yeshua is He.
[Verse 2:]
The prophets of old, speak much of Messiah,
His death is foretold, the purpose is clear,
Isaiah did say, 'twas for an atonement,
To give us a way, that leads not to death.
[Chorus]
[Verse 3:]
So brother of mine, look not to yourself,
For we are but one, we all need His help,
We've broken the law, be He paid our debt,
That we can find life, by Yeshua's death.
About the Composer/Performers:
Joel Chernoff is an American Messianic Jewish singer-songwriter and founding member of the music group LAMB. LAMB, whose recordings have sold over 600,000 copies, has produced 14 Messianic Jewish recordings many of which have reached “Top 10″ status on the contemporary religious charts. LAMB is considered by many to be the music group responsible for pioneering and popularizing Messianic Jewish music. Many of LAMB’s classic songs have become anthems of faith in the Messianic community that are sung in congregations and homes where believers in Yeshua gather together in praise and worship.
http://www.lambmessianicmusic.com/
About the Poet:
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
http://wendellberrybooks.com/
About the Devotion Author:
Natasha Duquette serves as Associate Academic Dean and Associate Professor of English at Tyndale University College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is author of Veiled Intent: Dissenting Women’s Aesthetic Approach to Biblical Interpretation (Pickwick, 2016).