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Some years ago, the family and I spent a fascinating month in Alabama in the United States.  The purpose of the visit was for me to experience some interesting educational work that was being done there.  But I also spent the month as locum priest at St Matthias Church in a town that rejoices in the name Tuscaloosa, a name that always sounds to me something about an elephant that needs a dentist. I was given a couple of T-shirts while we were there.  One, from the church, had emblazoned on it, ‘We’re pious at St Matthias’: I know, dreadful, isn’t it? – and totally irrelevant to what I want to impart this afternoon.  The other was more relevant to some thoughts for this afternoon, but you’ll have to wait for that one till later on, So I hope you’ll stay till the end.

I expect you know the origin of scapegoating. In the days of Moses, his brother Aaron selected two goats. One was slaughtered and its blood sprinkled as a sin offering, to expiate for the people’s sins.  On the head of the remaining, live, one, Aaron laid his hands, confessed all the people’s sins to pass on the people’s guilt, and then cast it out into the wilderness, where it would certainly perish, to take away the people’s sins.  It’s all described in some detail in the ritualistic Hebrew book Leviticus, near the beginning of our Old Testament.

So it was the people who had sinned, but it was the innocent goat that was driven out to its death. This was the origin of the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur in Hebrew, to this day an important time for repentance and confession in Jewish practice – though without the goat.   Jesus was never, so far as I know, explicitly likened to the goat.  But from St Paul onwards he was certainly viewed as the means of Atonement. Atonement, a composite word, ‘at-one-ment’, restoring the relationship between humanity and God, between us and God.

But how exactly did Jesus, and does Jesus, bring about this at-one-ment?  There are many theological theories as to how this happens.  One of them is contained in the second reading this afternoon, from the Letter to the Hebrews.  This was never a real letter, but is a treatise addressed to first century Jews, to appeal to them about Christianity in ways they would understand from their own tradition.  It was probably written in about AD 50, some years before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, which happened in AD 70.  So the writer of this treatise can talk about the activities of the temple priests, offering sacrifices every day for their sins and the peoples’ sins. The writer says that now we have a new priest, Jesus, whose ministry is far superior to that of the temple priests.  The chapter that follows today’s reading includes this:

When Christ came as a high priest . . . , he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

Jesus did, of course, shed blood and die.  But how, we may ask, does this obtain eternal redemption for us?  As I said before, there are various theories, all with some background in the Bible, and often portrayed in some of the hymns we sing.

One is that God required some sort of physical sacrifice, akin to the killing of valuable animals, before he could forgive sins, and so his own Son had to die.  But is that really the sort of God that Jesus himself led us to understand: a vindictive God who demands retribution?

Another is the concept of ransom.  The theory behind is that our behaviour is so awful that we must be in thrall to Satan, held captive by the Devil.  Satan demands a ransom for us to be freed, and the only ransom acceptable to Satan is the death of a good man, the Son of God.  So God allows the ransom payment to be made.  The story is then later embroidered by Satan then finding he has been deceived, because Jesus proves not to be eternally dead after all.  All this probably a bit on the legendary side for most modern believers.

Then there’s a theory referred to as the penal substitution theory.  This is based on the notion that sin necessarily deserves punishment; more than that, punishment is actually required before God will forgive us our sins.  So Jesus voluntarily substituted himself for us, and was punished through his vicious treatment and death, so that God could forgive us.  But, again, is this the sort of loving God that Jesus portrayed and encouraged us to put our faith in?

All these theories have their origins in scripture, and were developed by theologians over the centuries.  Some persist today.  Jesus as the high priest who offers a perpetual sacrifice for us is a classic example.  But it’s a classic example that shows something about all these and other theories of the atonement.  And that is that they are based on writings that were probably never intended to be taken literally.  They are metaphors, picture-language to give some concrete substance and reassurance of God’s love and God’s ready welcome to us when we admit our failings.

So much of the New Testament is based on picture language to express what is otherwise impossible to express. Of course there’s much historical material about Jesus’s ministry and, for example, the journeying of St Paul.  But there’s much metaphor and picturesque symbolism too. Let’s not fall into the trap of literalism, of treating every bit of Scripture as literally true. That’s not how it works, and not how much of it ever did work.  Verbal pictures and poetic language can often convey the very deepest of concepts and of truth.   If our faith is to be mature and to stand up to twenty-first examination, it’s so important that we allow for non-literal descriptions of happenings and of ideas.  Much of our liturgy and hymnody is of this kind.  And that’s alright, so long as intelligent people understand it for what it is, and allow it to illuminate our understanding without compromising our intellectual integrity.

So let’s go back to where we came in and to where we have been.  Jesus the high priest, eternally offering sacrifice on our behalf.  Jesus the ransom being paid for us to be freed. Jesus taking the punishment due to us.  All worthy illustrations of the amazing contribution of Jesus, our Lord.  But more telling still is Jesus’s famous story of the prodigal son, the son who took his share of his intended inheritance, went off to live a life of carousal and waste, returned home in desperation and with a sense of disgrace, but then to his utter surprise, was met outside the family home by an embracing and forgiving father, who wanted no recompense except his son’s return home.  It is this and other stories that Jesus told, along with the example of his totally self-giving and caring life, that lead us to what is sometimes called the example or exemplar theory of the atonement, and the one that is probably easiest for us today.  This is that it is Jesus’s totally self-giving and caring life, and his own conviction of God’s utter love and forgiveness for penitent human beings that bring us back to God.  In other words, it is the effect of Jesus’s example that can bring about our atonement or at-on-ment with one another and with God.  Now, how simple is that? This is something relevant to us, and something we can understand and experience.  And I can tell you of one person known to most of us, who clearly shared an experience of God’s love, and demonstrated it in his own life and Christian ministry.  And that is our friend and pastor, Canon Gary Philbrick, who died so suddenly tragically just a few days ago.  This is not the time for a prolonged eulogy.  Others, better equipped that I am, will offer that as events unfold.  But Gary, with his smile, his humour, his wide skills and constant patience, certainly majestically exemplified the simple love of God.

Now, a change of subject, and back to the T shirts where I came in.  I promised to reveal the motto on the other T shirt from Tuscaloosa later on. That one had on it: ‘If you don’t like the way I drive, keep off the sidewalk’.  Very American, and a joke, of course:  I drive on the footpath, you get injured, I blame you for walking there. A classic case of scapegoating: I’m really the culprit, but you suffer as if you’re the one to blame.  But I really don’t think that was really, literally, the case for us and Jesus. It was God’s utter love what did it.