No More Azazels

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.  Hebrews 10:14

Steve Bartman was sitting in Seat 113, Row 8, Aisle 4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago, wearing his ball cap, during the sixth game of the NLCS between the Florida Marlins and his beloved Cubs.  The Cubs were up 3-0 in the eighth inning with one out when Marlins batter Luis Castillo hit a fly ball into foul territory in the direction of Steve Bartman.  Focused on nothing else but the ball coming his way, Mr. Bartman, along with others, reached over the rail to attempt a catch only to deflect the ball enough to spoil left fielder Moisés Alou’s chance of catching the ball for the second out of the inning.

What followed was a series of fielding errors by the Cubs in an apocalyptic meltdown, with periodic camera shots of Mr. Bartman, leading to an 8-run inning and eventual win for the Marlins.  Cubs fans jeered Mr. Bartman and grew increasingly more hostile, throwing drinks and other items at him until he was eventually escorted out of the stadium by security guards.  After the Cubs loss of their next game, disqualifying them from the World Series, Mr. Bartman and his family became a target of threats as his personal information was spread in various media.  The governor of Florida even offered him asylum.

It seems there is a human need to place blame on someone for society’s woes.  When bad news strikes, or events turn tragic, we apparently want to find a scapegoat to take responsibility, to be the victim of our anger, our fear, our despair.

In the early 1930’s, Germany was still struggling to reconstitute itself after World War I.  Adolph Hitler took advantage of the societal unrest to blame their woes on the Jews.  The more he raged, the more unified the population grew in their common distrust and suspicion of the Jewish people.  Their utter annihilation was Hitler’s ultimate solution, as they became the victims to satisfy Germany’s need for a scapegoat to blame for the nation’s troubles.

The Old Testament outlines a ritual practice on Israel’s Day of Atonement in which two goats would be chosen - one to be sacrificed on the altar to God (YHWH), and the other to be the azazel, to be destroyed after the priest had laid hands on it signifying the transfer of the people’s sins.  That goat was then led into the wilderness with a red thread tied on its horns.  It was the azazel, the scapegoat.    

Maybe having a scapegoat to bear the blame for our sins, our ills, our troubles, is cathartic - releasing us from some existential burden.  Or perhaps having a victim to blame helps unite society around a common purpose.

After 9/11 the U.S. was united in grief, but also in our suspicion of Islam.  Middle Eastern, Arab, and Muslim people became targets of U.S. anger.  Our national hunger for a scapegoat coalesced around a common enemy, stereotyped in ethnic and religious terms.  Our country’s mourning turned to hatred and the victimization of entire peoples regardless of their innocence.  Travel bans and public humiliation of people from certain countries or who fit a certain profile became common.  The nation was united in its destructive prejudice and perverse hatred.

We have seen this repeated throughout human history.  Black men have been targeted for lynching, declared guilty without being tried, providing a scapegoat for community anger.  There is a phenomenon of police arrest known among African-Americans as “driving while Black,” which attests to the tendency of Black people to be considered guilty of something regardless of the facts.  Before Anthony Spearman was elected President of the North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP, he was a pastor of an AME-Zion congregation in Hickory, NC.  He tells of arriving in Hickory driving his car which he described as a “hoopdie.”  This is a car that, when new, merited some status, but which is much older, yet retaining some of its original cachet.  For no reason whatsoever, Reverend Spearman was pulled over by Hickory police because he had obviously been profiled.  Not the first time he, and many other African-Americans, had been stopped for driving while Black. 

This victimization and stereotyping of people happens to minorities on a regular basis:  Latinos often blamed for job losses, or Asians blamed for the pandemic.  These scapegoats often experience violence at the hands of those who blame them.  White supremacy feels justified in its desire for an azazel, just as the Nazis felt justified in their extermination of the Jews.

Christianity has often been hijacked by the supremacists, the victimizers, and blamers, to serve their self-justifying needs.  However, there is no theological foundation to do so.  Indeed, the Christian gospel suggests the exact opposite of scapegoating.  The doctrine of Christ’s atonement, in which he became the crucified one, the victim, the azazel, heralded the end of all scapegoating.  As Paul writes in Romans 6:10, “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.”  And as Hebrews 10:14 expresses with even greater clarity, “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”

The priests of Israel offered sacrifices routinely for the redemption of the people.  Day after day, the sacrificial victims - sheep, goats, turtledoves - were slaughtered and offered up.  But Jesus, the Son of God, helps us see the futility of these sacrifices and by offering himself as one final victim, he essentially declares all further scapegoating as both unnecessary and destructive.

In today’s political climate this is particularly relevant.  As people on the Left and Right castigate each other we splinter into factions of victims and victimizers.  Rational, civil conversation is forfeited in favor of self-righteous ranting.  Both extremes cancel each other, scapegoating the “other” while turning a deaf ear to one’s own complicity in our current problems.  Is there no humility left?  Whatever became of the common good?

How ludicrous to think that when Steve Bartman reached for that foul ball at Wrigley Field he caused the Cubs to lose.  No, the Cubs lost all on their own.  Whenever we assign blame to anyone person, or peoples, for society’s ills, we are participating in destructive scapegoating which is a distraction from what we need to do - engaging in community action for the common good.  That’s what politics was supposed to be about.  There’s more than enough blame to go around for the troubles of the world.  Let’s stop making people into victims, including acting like ones ourselves.  Let us clasp hands together to join in with what God is doing in the world - a world with no more victims.