Leviticus 16:1-34

04/03/11

Leviticus 16:1-34

Hudson UMC

If most people were to make a list of books in the Bible they have never read, or perhaps, have no desire to read, Leviticus would be toward the top of it.  For some reason, we have gotten it into our heads that the books of the law are boring.  I know that they are not as engaging as the well-known stories in the Bible, I know that it doesn’t have the same kind of passion that we see in Paul’s arguments, but if we forget to read the books of the law, we will miss some very significant stuff that is actually incredibly helpful for understanding the ancient Jewish mindset and the framework through which Jesus interpreted himself.

In particular, our text for this morning tells us the temple ritual that is to accompany the observation of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  This is a Jewish holiday that many Christians do not know much about.  Unless you live in an area with a high Jewish population, and so got school off for it, Yom Kippur often goes by without too much fuss.  This is actually very interesting because it is one of the most important holidays in the entire Jewish year.  The Jewish holiday that is closest to this level of importance that most Christians know about is Passover, because our own celebration of Easter is so closely bound up with it.  The only other Jewish holiday most non-Jewish people could mention is Hannukah, which is really a relatively unimportant holiday, it has just been incredibly publicized and emphasized in the last few decades because it takes place in December, so close to Christmas.

However, this is an amazingly important celebration and it is incredibly interesting in how it helps us to make sense of the human condition and the nature of atonement.  The whole passage is written in the dry language of sacrificial instructions, so we won’t go directly back to the text, but rather draw out the most important ideas.

First, the high priest is the one who has to make atonement for the people.  This is not so surprising in itself.  After all, who else would we expect to make such an important sacrifice?  However, what is interesting is that the high priest can’t simply walk into the Temple and get on with it.  Before he can even begin to make atonement for the people, he has to make atonement for himself.  This is incredibly significant.  Sometimes, we think of religious leaders, especially high priests, as being a little more holy than everyone else, a little closer to God.  However, the high priest has to make atonement for himself before he can make atonement for the people and, while it takes two goats and a ram to make atonement for the whole nation of Israel, it takes a bull to atone just for the high priest.  It is important to notice that the high priest has just as much need for atonement as everyone else, perhaps even more so.

After the high priest washes himself according to the ritual and offers a bull to atone for himself, he takes the two goats and lines them up and casts lots for them.  One of the goats is designated for the Lord and one is designated for Azazel, a term that is very unclear, but has traditionally been translated as “scapegoat” or “the goat of departure.”  We will leave the scapegoat for the moment, since the text deals with it second.  First, let us turn our attention to the goat that is set aside for God.

The first goat is slaughtered and offered as a sin offering, an offering that is intended to deal with the sin of the people for the entire year.  The people broke the covenant that God made with them over and over again.  If they had to make atonement for every individual violation of the covenant, nobody would be able to afford the animals that would have to be sacrificed.  God did not burden them with that kind of lifestyle.  However, it was extremely important that the Israelites understood the fact that God was not indifferent to their sin, that their sin was a big deal.  To this end, God instituted the single Day of Atonement, where all the sin of the people would be dealt with at one time, and it would be such an important day that everyone would remember that, because they as a nation were not what they ought to be, blood had to be shed, something had to die.

What really set this sin offering apart from ordinary ones was the fact that it was on this one day a year that the high priest would go behind the curtain, into the holy of holies, and step into the very presence of God.  We don’t read this in the Bible, but early tradition tells us that it was the practice of the priests to tie a rope around the leg of the high priest before he went into the holy of holies.  The reason for this is because, if the high priest got the sacrifice wrong and God struck him down, he would need to be retrieved and, as you might imagine, most people were not interested in going in themselves.

It is the scapegoat that I think we really need to pay attention to, because it is such an unusual aspect of this ritual.  The second goat was not killed as part of the atonement ritual; rather it was left alive and the high priest laid his hands on it and confessed the sins of Israel over it.  This is what we read.  “Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task.  The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.”

Apparently, atonement is not complete with just a sacrifice.  Apparently, something more than just the shedding of blood must take place for God to be reconciled with his people.  This is odd because we don’t see anything like this anywhere else in the Old Testament.  A goat is made to bear the sin of the people, but is not killed.  What is going on?  Perhaps the goat is released with the idea that it will be killed in the wilderness, likely in an even more brutal way than at the hands of the priests.  Perhaps it is to remind us that we cannot put God in a box, that we cannot even decide what has to happen to be redeemed.  God reserves the right to do whatever he wants to do with that goat.  It could die, but it could also live.

In any case, it symbolizes for us the fact that sin, even sin that was atoned for, could not stay in the camp, but had to be driven out entirely.  It was not enough to simply make the sacrifice; after all, the first goat was killed before the second goat was involved at all.  Sin not only meant that something had to die, it meant that something had to be driven out, had to be removed from the community, had to be exiled for the sake of the others.

So what, you might ask?  We in the Christian church do not observe Yom Kippur and we go on our daily lives without giving it a second thought.  Does it even matter if we understand it?  While it is true that we do not observe this holiday, it is equally true that this passage and this incredibly important tradition needs to play a significant role in our understanding of what Christ has done.  Early in several of the Gospels, Jesus receives baptism.  Immediately after that, we read that he went out into the wilderness.  Mark’s account is particularly clear.  We read, “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.”  This idea, of being driven into the wilderness, is a clear allusion to the ritual of the Day of Atonement.

There is a tendency to think of the atonement as if it could be boiled down to this kind of summary:  We have a debt because we sin.  By his death, Christ paid that debt.  Now we get to go to be with God.  There is certainly an element of truth to this, but there is much more.  The biggest problem I have with this is that it doesn’t seem to take the Old Testament into account at all.  All we have to do is apply the idea of secular law and debt to the death of Christ and we can come up with this.  This is probably also why it is so popular; it is easy to understand because it doesn’t challenge our understanding of atonement and sacrifice.  However, we have seen over the last several weeks that how we understand sacrifice and atonement is radically challenged and transformed by the Old Testament.

What we learn from this passage is that our atonement and our reconciliation with God is more dynamic and powerful than we often think.  We cannot collapse the atonement to just the death of Christ.  Before he even began his ministry, Jesus was driven out into the wilderness like the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement.  The atonement began at least at his baptism.  In fact, it seems that, when we take the fact that we do not only need a God who dies for us but a God who lives for us seriously, we realize that all of Christ’s life is involved in the atonement.  Jesus does not just bear our sins on the cross, he bears them away, being ejected from the community, driven out into the wilderness.  Our faith is in a God who provides atonement in a holistic and complete way, not limited simply to our understanding of the payment of a debt.

It is remarkably appropriate that we come across this text on a Sunday where we celebrate Holy Communion.  Yom Kippur is a celebration that emphasizes that God has made the atonement, God has made the first move, God has provided, not only for the debt of sin, but has actually taken the sin away from them.  It is a holiday that, to those on the outside, might seem like a somber time, but, though the people spent the day in fasting and prayer, it was a day of tremendous celebration.  After all, God has made atonement, God has reconciled his people to himself.  Though the people could never have made the atonement themselves, God demonstrates his love and grace by redeeming the people and reminding them of this every year through the two-fold sacrifice of the Day of Atonement.

And so it is with Holy Communion.  There may not be a time when the people of God are more seriously at prayer and devotion than at the Lord’s Table.  I have heard that there are people in the world who will deliberately avoid their church on the days that Communion is celebrated because they are overwhelmed by the gravity of the meal.  And yet, the seriousness of the ritual and the focus of the people should not make us think that this is in any way meant to be an intimidating thing.  Rather, it ought to be the most joyful of times.  After all, what do we celebrate at the Lord’s Table?  We celebrate the fact that our God has come among us, taking our brokenness upon himself and nailing our sin to the cross.  We celebrate the fact that our God has reconciled us to himself, all at tremendous cost to himself, just so that he might not be without us.

And so, as we gather together around the table, let us remember the fullness of God’s atonement that has been worked out completely in Jesus Christ.  God has made atonement, God has reconciled us to himself, God has provided the sacrifice, God, indeed, was the sacrifice, on our behalf and in our place.  Let us rejoice that, in this one meal, we are one body, joined to God the Father through God the Son and in God the Holy Spirit.  Let us pray.

AMEN