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Scapegoats
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 25th March 2007
Revd. Matthew Vernon
John 12.1-8.
Judas gets a rough ride at this time of year.
Actually he has a tough time all year.
But as we approach Good Friday we focus on the final days of Jesus' life.
Judas is a central character and his betrayal is the most famous in history.
The artistic license in John's Gospel doesn't help Judas' cause.
Did you notice the negative insinuation?
• Judas "said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it."
I've preached about Judas before – Judas the scapegoat.
Judas the dark, sinister character in Christian tradition.
Judas the scapegoat.
The one blamed for the death of Jesus –
• even though our faith says we are to blame for Jesus' death;
• it is our betrayal that lead to Calvary.
This morning, I'm going to focus on our tendency to scapegoat other people.
The horrible habit of picking on people who are different
• and persecuting them.
It's happened a lot in Christian history, and it continues today.
Judas could be the patron saint of these groups.
Jews .
Blacks – today is the anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of Parliament in England.
Homosexuals – the issue that is currently dividing the Anglican Communion, and many other churches.
Scapegoating is connected to my theme of 2 weeks ago.
If you were here, and you remember, I spoke about the dangers of self-righteousness and judging other people.
Religious self-righteousness was the one thing Jesus had zero tolerance for.
Because it kills the soul.
As I said 2 weeks ago, the early desert fathers show us a compassionate way.
I'll repeat just one story.
Moses the Black was an Ethiopian highwayman before converting to Christianity.
The story goes that a brother monk had done something wrong.
They called a meeting and invited Abba, or Father, Moses.
After first refusing to go he agreed to join the meeting.
But he took with him a leaky jug and filled it with water.
Some of the brothers at the meeting asked him to explain.
"My sins run out behind me and I cannot see them,
• "yet here I am coming to sit in judgement on the mistakes of somebody else.'
When they heard that, they canceled the meeting.
This morning I want to reflect on what this means for the church as a community of people.
Anthony the Great was one of the first desert monks.
He said "Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ."
"If we win our brother, we win God."
Anthony was not talking about winning our brother in the sense of us winning and someone else losing.
He's not talking about success in that sense.
Winning our brother means succeeding in connecting them with the divine,
• with the life-giving reality of God.
The church should be a place that does that:
• a place that connects people with the life-giving reality of God.
It's a wonderful goal.
All too often the church, the institution, puts barriers in the way of people connecting with the Divine.
Expectations of standards of behaviour and lifestyle,
• precise definitions of what to believe,
• only certain expressions of faith allowed,
• certain clothing expected -
• homogeneity rather than diversity.
I mention clothes because it was an issue our Committee discussed when we moved to Bethanie.
We hoped people would feel comfortable coming here in rugby shirts.
It was a feature of meeting in West Island School, in a less formal setting.
• People felt comfortable coming to church straight from mini ruby in Sandy Bay in their rugby shirts.
I hope people feel the same here.
I hope that people feel free to be themselves here in this more formal space.
What to wear to church is interesting.
When I was a boy, going to church as a family, we wore Sunday best.
20 years later, when I was a curate in Guildford in England, a member of the church observed that now we dress down for Sundays.
After a week in a suit in the office, people dress more casually for church.
In some church traditions, expectations of what to wear to church have been, and still are, very precise.
A friend has told me about their Plymouth Brethren background.
The expectation is your dress up for God.
We all have different backgrounds.
To get back to my main theme, clothing is a less serious example of the expectations the church can burden people with.
A healthy church is one which seeks to connect others with God
• and so stay connected with God
A healthy church connects others with God,
• rather than separating others from the hope of reconciliation and life
• by highlighting their fears and obsessions.
By focusing on the church's fears and obsessions.
Sadly, too often, instead of connecting others with God, the church has offered new and better ways to scapegoat others.
In Christian theology, Jesus is the final scapegoat.
The word scapegoat comes from the Bible.
Once a year a goat was sent into the wilderness.
The Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon the goat
• and the goat took the sins away.
In Christian theology, Jesus is that scapegoat, once and for all.
On the Cross, Jesus takes on the sins of the people.
You may or may not like that kind of theology for the atonement, as its known.
There are other ways of understanding Jesus' death.
But Jesus the scapegoat is part of our tradition.
And it helps us here.
Because the cross of Christ should have exploded scapegoating once and for all.
I'll explain what I mean.
Christ was the ultimate, the last scapegoat.
Confused, angry religious leaders and nervous, ignorant Romans nailed him to the Cross as a scapegoat for their fears.
But Christ, standing in for all scapegoats that ever were and ever would be, died, rose again and took them away with him.
Those scapegoats including:
• the mentally disabled,
• foreigners of the wrong colour,
• homosexuals,
• bearers of the wrong news,
• followers of different faiths,
• even the left handed.
I'm serious, left handed people have been persecuted down the centuries.
It's no coincidence that we talk of Jesus sitting at the right hand of God.
Jesus stood in for all scapegoats and took them away on the Cross.
Christian faith says there aren't supposed to be any scapegoats left to persecute,
• unless we want to persecute Christ –
• which is what we do when we persecute anyone.
This is of course disappointing news for those of us who love the taste of a good scapegoat.
And don't we love that taste?
But we are not supposed to hide behind them anymore,
• to hide from ourselves.
The terrible thing about scapegoating is it's dehumanising.
People are treated as less than human.
This was terribly illustrated in the slave trade.
As I said earlier, today is the anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of Parliament in England.
From the point of view of faith, dehumanising people is seeing them as less than children of God.
There's been plenty of scapegoating in the Anglican Communion recently,
• over sexuality.
Scapegoating on both sides.
Liberals and conservatives demonizing each other.
Both sides reinforcing the fortress on their side of the divide.
Stereotyping the opposition.
Failing to build bridges.
There isn't time to go into the details now.
That's for another sermon.
For today, I will say this.
From my liberal perspective, my fear is the church's dark history of scapegoating is being repeated in our treatment of homosexual men and women today.
This is explicitly true in Nigeria where recent laws have made homosexuality illegal,
Sadly, Archbishop Peter Akinola, head of the Anglican Church in Nigeria has been involved with that backward lawmaking.
In a kind of reverse colonialism, Archbishop Akinola and others are trying to force their views about sexuality on the whole of the Anglican Communion.
In the past, Christians have defended prejudice with Scripture and tradition.
The Anglican Church is in the process of doing the same in its attitude to homosexuality
• and in its treatment of its brothers and sisters in the United States who dare to treat homosexuals as real people with real relationships
• and as children of God like everyone else.
The church is a human institution so it has a chequered history.
Sometimes reinforcing prejudice and persecuting scapegoats.
Sometimes, thankfully, leading the way in the fight against prejudice;
• following the path of no scapegoats that Jesus has opened for us.
Today we remember the work of Christians like William Wilberforce who successfully fought for the abolition of the slave trade in England.
Let us hope there are prophets in our midst today who will free us from our prejudice and our scapegoats,
• the ones we are aware of,
• and the others.
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