2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 15 January 2023
“Scapegoating” is a term we are well used to. We know the tendency of a group being assailed with problems to shift blame onto one individual. He or she must wear the group’s guilt and is sacrificed accordingly. Ordinarily, this person is ironically innocent of the group’s crime. That is also of the nature of scapegoating: there is an inherent injustice about its use -an innocent party is made to be responsible for the group’s woes. How we saw this play out in the extraordinary miscarriage of justice in Victoria in relationship to Cardinal Pell’s conviction in 2018, and indeed continuing to be played out in some of the media commentary since his death.
Scapegoating is an easy way out for the group: the group does not have to embark on the more difficult task of assuming responsibility for its difficulties and of changing. It is never easy for a group to change: a group would rather die than change and most usually do. It is much easier to blame someone and have them carry the load. We know how well scapegoating works in politics and in business. But it can also work in our families and in our Church: in fact, it works wherever people are together.
Scapegoating has its origin in the ancient custom of ritually casting the community’s sins on a goat or lamb and sending the animal out into the wilderness to die. As the goat or lamb, ritually carrying the people’s burdens, perished so was the community released from the burden of its guilt. The animal was a sacrifice of atonement. We no longer have this custom, but we retain the need, and the need manifests itself in many varied and subtle ways. We no longer have the ritual custom, but we retain the question of how can we be released from our burden of guilt and sin? Who will release us from our burden of guilt?
Guilt is an ordinary human emotion. It is the feeling we have in response to the knowledge of a wrong committed. As with every human feeling, there is a constructive and a destructive side to guilt. Constructive guilt is a sign of maturity and fruit of a developed conscience; it becomes the basis from which we repair any damage that we bring about particularly in the lives of others. There is also a neurotic guilt which paralyses us, which does not lead us to constructive action but simply has us spiralling into darkness.
For the moment let us stay with the mature kind of guilt. We do wrong, or we damage our relationships. Our guilt motivates us to repair and redress. We grow through the process. But there is also another more difficult guilt with which we are burdened that is not as easy to redress. Sometimes redress is not possible, particularly in the failure of relationships, and our guilt lingers with us and takes permanent residence with us. What of the guilt we carry if we have unintentionally hurt someone in a car accident, for example, and that person faces years of difficulty henceforth? And then there is the issue of social guilt, of the guilt of history. We know that we are part of systems, and contribute to the maintenance of systems, that damage or have damaged others. Indigenous reconciliation is a point here.
Unless guilt, whether it be personal or social, is addressed, contained, and processed its natural energy begins to eat away at us. It begins to destroy us. It builds into a self-loathing, a self –hate, a great self-doubt. How can we be delivered from this guilt about which we might be powerless to redress? The question clarifies itself even further, “what or who can save us from the destructive side of guilt?”
Our response to guilt can be varied: we can deny it, pretend it doesn’t exist, we can scapegoat others or sections of our community or families, or we can hear the word of Jesus to us today which cries out to us: No need to scapegoat others. I will be your sacrificial lamb. I will take your guilt upon myself. I will bear it. I will atone for it. And why? So that you may be free, unburdened, to work for better relationships, a better world. I will assume the burden of your guilt so that you may create again and renew your life again. Yes, you can begin again. I give you a new beginning.
Jesus is the Lamb of God. Someone has taken on themselves the burden of our guilt. Someone has transformed the self-hate of our guilt into a humility which has the power to make new beginnings in life. Someone has transformed the self-doubt of our guilt into a confidence to start again. We have this humility and this confidence because the entire story and pattern of Jesus’ life assures a picture much bigger than our own effort and our own mistakes.
To declare Jesus as the Lamb of God, as the scapegoat who voluntarily takes away our guilt, is not a justification for laziness or a carefree attitude to the mistakes of our life. It is rather a reason to never lose hope about starting again, making new beginnings. In Jesus, our guilt is transformed into a new freedom. We are broken free from the tombs of our own despair.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy indeed are we who are welcomed to his table.
