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The Great Scapegoat Fraud Exposed

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 158

Reading 1  Daniel 12:1-3

In those days, I Daniel, 
heard this word of the Lord:
"At that time there shall arise
Michael, the great prince,
guardian of your people;
it shall be a time unsurpassed in distress
since nations began until that time.
At that time your people shall escape,
everyone who is found written in the book.

“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake;
some shall live forever,
others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace.

“But the wise shall shine brightly
like the splendor of the firmament,
and those who lead the many to justice
shall be like the stars forever."

Responsorial Psalm  PS 16:5, 8, 9-10, 11

R. (1) You are my inheritance, O Lord!
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
R. You are my inheritance, O Lord!
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld,
nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
R. You are my inheritance, O Lord!
You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.
R. You are my inheritance, O Lord!

Reading 2 Hebrews 10:11-14, 18

Brothers and sisters:
Every priest stands daily at his ministry,
offering frequently those same sacrifices
that can never take away sins. 
But this one offered one sacrifice for sins,
and took his seat forever at the right hand of God;
now he waits until his enemies are made his footstool. 
For by one offering
he has made perfect forever those who are being consecrated.

Where there is forgiveness of these,
there is no longer offering for sin.

Alleluia Luke 21:36

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Be vigilant at all times
and pray that you have the strength to stand before the Son of Man.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel Mark 13:24-32

Jesus said to his disciples:
"In those days after that tribulation
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from the sky,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

"And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds'
with great power and glory,
and then he will send out the angels
and gather his elect from the four winds,
from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.

"Learn a lesson from the fig tree.
When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves,
you know that summer is near.
In the same way, when you see these things happening,
know that he is near, at the gates. 
Amen, I say to you,
this generation will not pass away
until all these things have taken place. 
Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will not pass away.

"But of that day or hour, no one knows,
neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

It seems you're in another world, flying at 30,000 ft. Yet connected. I was clicking through the www.Catholica.com.au forum when the man beside me leant over and said: "Excuse me. You are a Catholic?" "Yes, and No," I replied. "I've been catholic all my life, fully involved, you might say, but now I'm standing a little outside and being critical, trying to discover the guts of it, the key that perhaps some of us have missed."

He was Asian, my enquirer, possibly Chinese, with a good command of English, so I enquired in turn: "Why do you ask?" Taking a folded sheet of paper from his pocket he said: "I came across this and I'm wondering what it is. Something about it tells me it is a catholic document."

At a glance I knew it was only a parish bulletin of the kind handed out in churches to guide the people in the Sunday liturgy and inform them of things going on in the parish. "It is of no special significance," I said, but my companion pointed to the readings, set out in a way similar to the way they're presented at the top of this page. 

"Oh, those," I said, too casually, "they are just the selected passages of the sacred writings they read in the service on that day." He read them silently for a time, and then said, "Excuse me again, but can you explain them to me, please?" 

Now there's a challenge, I thought to myself. To explain these readings I'll need to explain the whole of christianity, and I wonder can that be done in the next hour, or in our case, in the next three thousand words.  I smiled, and said, "Well, yes. Gladly."

"First, many christians follow a yearly cycle, as do some other religions. It starts in December with the birth of Jesus, reaches a peak around April when they commemorate his death and his rising from the dead, and this is followed about 50 days later by the coming of the Spirit. Then they settle into what they call Ordinary Time during which they study and reflect on the teachings of Jesus, most of which are similar to the teachings of other great religious leaders and philosophers. 

"This 33rd Sunday is close to the end of the cycle and these passages refer to the end of time. Some passages may refer to the end of the city of Jerusalem. The Romans destroyed the temple and the whole city 40 years after Jesus was killed, so it was a significant trauma for the early communities of Christians. It became for them a sign of the end of the world itself, which they actually expected to happen in their own lifetimes.

"These words of Jesus are about the end, and they saw a reference in them to the Book of Daniel which was less than two hundred years old at the time. It contains images of the end of time when the good and the bad will be sorted out. Jesus himself took up one of Daniel's images when he said:  'And then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds'. Actually during his trial before the religious authorities, he even claimed that this referred to himself, and he was condemned to death for blasphemy. So it's a crucial statement for him."

My friend studied the readings again for a long time, and then he said: "So do you believe the end of the world is close?" 

"Actually," I said, "that's one of the puzzles that seems to have no answer. Perhaps it is just telling us to be always ready for the end. Even now. Planes do fall out of the sky, and of the millions of travelling passengers a very small number do not reach their journey's end. It could be our turn today. But rather I think the deeper meaning is that in Jesus, in his life and death and rising, there is a turning point in the course of all human history."

"Really!" he said. "For everyone? For all peoples? Jesus is the key to human destiny: a turning point of history?" 

"Yes," I replied. "But it is something that we still find hard to grasp, and almost impossible to explain, even after centuries of scholarly work by holy men and women reflecting on the sacred writings. It's what  intrigues me most as I keep searching now, and I ask myself, Is Jesus that significant, and in what way? What does it mean?"

"You must be able to tell me what you're thinking at present," my neighbour insisted. "Where are you up to in your searching?" He had the gentle humour of the truly sincere, and this induced me to have a go at it, in spite of thinking this can only end in confusion. Here we go! I thought, taking the plunge.

"It's about conflict among humans. Why is there always conflict. The pervasive sin in which we hurt one another. It never ends. The theory that I'm attracted to at the moment comes from a Frenchman recently deceased, Rene Girard. His thought is new to me but there have been many tributes to him in this past week, and his ideas seem to make a lot of sense. He says conflict comes from our desires, and we develop desire when we imitate others. We learn to want when we see someone else with something. It happens in children. It may be a coat they're wearing, or a toy they have: 'I want what he's got!' 

"Among adults, it often turns violent, even to murder. Then, Girard says, as society developed in primitive times it had to come to grips with this violence and find a way to defuse it or we would have destroyed ourselves. So the scapegoat was invented. The idea is that an animal is loaded with our sins, our illicit desires, our uncontrollable passions, the hurts we've done to others, and our guilt, and the animal is killed. This may be done in ritual form by the religious officials, the priests, or it may happen almost subconsciously when we project our negative feelings or our hidden guilt onto some hapless victim. Usually the human scapegoat is a misfit, whether it's a person with a disability, or a racial minority, or generally a different class from ourselves. In some cultures scapegoating the politicians is common, including murdering them.

In belittling the victim or even killing the scapegoat we feel we rid ourselves of our guilt, and we have peace - at least there's a semblance of peace after the fighting, and the ritualised killing of the scapegoat. 

"Now, of course, this violent resolution of differences is what does happen, it's the way societies work, but it is neither true nor valid. It's a system built on a lie.  It is a lie to claim that our guilt can be removed from us and placed on some poor animal, or some other person, and that killing the animal or murdering the person destroys our guilt. This doesn't really fix anything, does it! All nations, throughout human history, in primitive societies and in highly developed ones have worked on this idea that peace can be achieved, violence overcome, through the murder of some scapegoat. The idea is embedded deep down in the human psyche, and is very elusive. I'm not at all sure about what I'm telling you now, but it seems to make sense, and I'm working on it. "

"But why would this Jesus be the one to change all this?" he asked. "He was killed as a scapegoat - yes. I have heard that his execution was 'arranged', as they say. But how can you claim this has significance for the whole of humankind?"

"We do believe - I believe - he was a man with a special mission. He was sent! He appeared as one living in very ordinary circumstances but he became aware of a special purpose to his life. He lived an exemplary life, that's not in dispute, and he taught a way of living that cuts through all the fakery that we commonly indulge in. Being true, living with integrity, and love expressed in practice towards one another in the way that any 'god' would be pleased with: that sums him up." 

"But it was his death, you say." he interrupted again. "And then there's this unique claim about rising from the dead. I've read that ancient religions in that part of the world had gods who became human, or humans who became gods when they died and rose again. There's even a word in Greek for it, isn't there: 'apotheosis' which means to deify, doesn't it?"

"Yes," I said, "his death is the key. He was murdered as a scapegoat: some say he paid the price of sin through his suffering and death. They say he bought our freedom, redeemed us the way you redeem a captive, and he did that by taking on the punishment, the physical pain that sin deserves. But of course that would mean that the god was pleased to see him suffering, and satisfied enough not to punish us any more. This doesn't work, especially since Jesus called his god 'Father' in a very special way. He trusted his Father and put himself in the Father's hands. His teaching was of a forgiving parent, not of an angry one who would demand human sacrifice to balance the account.

"So, the point Rene Girard makes is this: the Good News proclaimed by the followers of Jesus says that this particular scapegoat was not guilty, could not be guilty - that he was innocent, and to prove this Jesus was raised up and given a title. That's what the quote from Daniel is about: 'The Son of Man coming on the clouds.' Jesus is vindicated. It's as though they were saying: You tried to pin your guilt on him, but it does not work like that. He exposes that whole system as fraudulent."

I showed him a passage from an article by Girard: 

...he dies, paradoxically, because of this perfect innocence. He becomes a victim of the process from which he will liberate mankind. When one man alone follows the prescriptions of the kingdom of God it seems an intolerable provocation to all those who do not, and this man automatically designates himself as the victim of all men. This paradox fully reveals “the sin of the world,” the inability of man to free himself from his violent ways. (http://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/04/002-are-the-gospels-mythical)

"Your author thinks the whole world runs on this scapegoat system, does he?" my friend asked. "It would appear to be perhaps an extravagant claim."

"Well," I replied, "I can only give you a sketch of his thought, but it is reassuring to know that he is an anthropologist. As I understand it, he had studied these matters in depth and developed his theories about cultural practices long before he applied them to the Christian religion."

We stopped talking for a while when the cabin staff served the usual refreshments. 

"Let me put it this way," I continued. "The death of Jesus does not fit the classical profile of the scapegoat. He lived a life of integrity, doing what he called 'the Father's will' - which we might say is 'doing what is right and just'. When his time of radical teaching came to its predictable end and he was arrested, he did not try to escape. He stood his ground on the truth of his mission, of his teaching, of his own self. The truth of his love. And when they could not break him, they killed him. And then God raised him up.

"This, according to Girard, lays bare the lie that sits at the foundation of all society, the lie that says peace can be achieved by settling differences through violence. People are convinced that scores can be settled by the destruction of a scapegoat whom they designate as the guilty one. Our guilt is supposed to die with it. This, in fact, is not true. We merely bury our guilt, suppress it in our psyche where it festers, and later bursts out again with more violence. In Jesus, God-in-man takes on our guilt, but willingly, and after he is killed he is raised up as proof of his innocence. Guilt can only be forgiven by our parent God. It cannot be repaired, repaid, redeemed or resolved by us, not through any sacrifice we might make. It is fixed only by God's forgiving."

"Yes, I think I can follow some of that," said my companion gently. He was a kind man, for sure. "So, you believe Jesus was that important, that significant for all the world? And yet you say you are a fringe Catholic? This I do not understand."

"Oh, that's not unusual," I replied. "In all religions, down the ages, there have been people deeply involved and committed, and others on the fringe. Faith is a personal thing. You commit your self in faith and trust. We are all different as persons, and faith too is a different experience in each person. 

"For myself, I believe Jesus was sent into this world. He comes from God. Some like to think of him as really 'god', one substance with the Father. I have no trouble with that except that I feel it may be a formula of words I don't really understand. But I can say he is divine, and in a way beyond what we mean when we say we all are 'children of God'. He is of God in some way that we can't explain. God's Spirit is upon him. I'm content not to push it any further.

"I do trust him, however, as the one in whom we have hope of salvation from this mess, this endemic sin of violence against each other. I believe he died for sin, but being sinless he was not a victim in the way a typical scapegoat is made a victim. He was free every step of the way. He went into it with eyes wide open, willingly, 'doing the Father's will' as he said. I think this means that in conscience he had to do what was right and just, being true to himself, to his friends, to his mission, and to his destiny - which he called his 'Father's will'. 

"I can see you are a man of faith," said my companion. "You know, there is still a grave problem in all this: if Jesus is a saviour, why are christian nations still so violent? Has anything improved in these two thousand years? Other religions don't make these claims and don't have to answer this question, but I feel Christians must face it."

"Actually, Rene Girard says that as the scapegoat process is exposed as a fraud, we all become less innocent. Primitive people might have believed in it enough for their violent tendencies to be controlled, but since Jesus died and was raised up, no Christian can claim ignorance of the truth. Gradually we all recognise that our use of the scapegoat process is not right. We know we lie to ourselves. We know our politicians lie to us when they tell us war is necessary, or some refugees must be locked up in concentration camps as an example to the rest. This leaves us in worse tension than before, he says. And the gospels speak of world-shattering trauma, which may refer to the persecutions and genocides and wars that go on from century to century. 'The end is not yet,' Jesus said.

"When we learn, all of us, individually and as nations, when we eventually develop a culture of truth, of doing what is right and true, no longer pushing our guilt onto others and making scapegoats of them before we murder them, then humankind will be getting somewhere. It's a big ask, isn't it, but this is why I think the death of Jesus and his being raised up is the turning point for the whole of creation."

The Seat Belt sign came on and we heard the engine tone change, indicating we were slowing, gliding smoothly down to re-enter the world of ruthless competition. "Thank you," my friend said. "That has been interesting." I noticed he didn't say enlightening, and I wonder still whether all this could possibly make sense in one tight package, or should I have talked to him about church and community and sacraments and missions, or about bishops and popes. I wonder will he keep in touch.

References: to google Rene Girard is to uncover a variety of tributes, interviews and some articles written by himself, from which some idea of his theories may be gleaned. Even to google Catholica under that name reveals it is not unknown to this Forum. In particular, an article by Dr Andrew Kania (2008) http://www.catholica.com.au/andrewstake1/087_ak_120808.php

This thread from 2010 contains some different expressions of Girard's theory:  http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?mode=thread&id=49974#p50035 

This is a chapter taken from "I see Satan fall like Lightning" (Girard 2001) http://girardianlectionary.net/res/iss_12-scapegoat.htm

Some selected quotes from an article in First Things: "Are the Gospels mythical?"

The image of Satan—“a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44)—also expresses this opposition between the mythical obscuring and the evangelical revealing of victimization. The Crucifixion as a defeat for Satan, Jesus’ prediction that Satan “is coming to an end” (Mark 3:26), implies less an orderly world than one in which Satan is on the loose. Instead of concluding with the reassuring harmony of myths, the New Testament opens up apocalyptic perspectives, in the synoptic Gospels equally with the Book of Revelation. To reach “the peace that surpasseth all understanding,” humanity must give up its old, partial peace founded on victimization—and a great deal of turmoil can be expected. The apocalyptic dimension is not an alien element that should be purged from the New Testament in order to “improve” Christianity, it is an integral part of revelation.

Jesus’ death is a source of grace not because the Father is “avenged” by it, but because Jesus lived and died in the manner that, if adopted by all, would do away with scandals and the victimization that follows from scandals. Jesus lived as all men should live in order to be united with a God whose true nature he reveals.

Obeying perfectly the anti-mimetic prescriptions he recommends, Jesus has not the slightest tendency toward mimetic rivalry and victimization. And he dies, paradoxically, because of this perfect innocence. He becomes a victim of the process from which he will liberate mankind. When one man alone follows the prescriptions of the kingdom of God it seems an intolerable provocation to all those who do not, and this man automatically designates himself as the victim of all men. This paradox fully reveals “the sin of the world,” the inability of man to free himself from his violent ways.

The true Resurrection is based not on the mythical lie of the guilty victim who deserves to die, but on the rectification of that lie, which comes from the true God and which reopens channels of communication mankind itself had closed through self-imprisonment in its own violent cultures. Divine grace alone can explain why, after the Resurrection, the disciples could become a dissenting minority in an ocean of victimization—could understand then what they had misunderstood earlier: the innocence not of Jesus alone but of all victims of all Passion-like murders since the foundation of the world.

(http://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/04/002-are-the-gospels-mythical)