Audio Recording
To understand Good Friday and the meaning of Jesus
death we have to take a dive into the sacrificial system of ancient Israel and
find our meaning for it there otherwise we are left with Medieval
Christianity’s over use of the metaphor of penal substitution, that Jesus died
our deserved penalty of death for our sins to appease the Father’s wrath. If you take a plunge into the Book of
Leviticus and look at what was done on the Day of Atonement, the day that
Ancient Israel dealt with its sin, you will find something there that is markedly
different than a sacrifice to appease God’s wrath or what is known as a
sacrifice of propitiation meaning going towards a god to beg presumably for
one’s life.
Yom Kippur was a very solemn day. Everyone spent the day prayerfully reflecting
on their walk according to the Covenant.
They fasted. No one worked. They knew the Lord God lived in the Temple
and that their sins and the resulting stain of sin which we call iniquity
(shame, guilt, regret, broken relationships) could drive him away. Therefore,
the temple needed to be cleansed from its contact with iniquity and the people’s
iniquity was removed far from them. Yom
Kippur was the day they did this in the way that God told them to do it. The sacrifices on Yom Kippur were sacrifices
of expiation through which the LORD God draws forth and cleanse us from our
sin.
On the Day of Atonement the High Priest would take a
bull and two goats from the people for this purpose. The bull was for expiating the iniquity of
the priesthood, those who stood representationally for the whole people and who
dealt directly with matters in the temple.
Their own sin dirtied hands and lives and the iniquity they incurred for
dealing with the sins of the people stained the temple, God’s abode, and
themselves. He would slaughter, or the
word is better translated as holocaust, the bull. He would then take a bowl of the blood and
some incense and go into the Holy of Holies, the room at the back of the Temple
where the Ark of the Covenant was. The
lid of the Ark was called the Mercy Seat and it was there that they believed
God sat enthroned on earth. The High
Priest would fill the room with the smoke of the incense, which represents the
prayers of the people, so that he would not directly see God. The he would dip his finger in the blood and
sprinkle it seven times on the Mercy Seat.
Then he would take one of the goats that was chosen by lot from the two,
as it represented the iniquity of the people, and return to the Holy of Holies
and sprinkle the Mercy Seat with it as well in the same way with its
blood. On the way also sprinkled some of
this around the rest of the temple to cleanse it. When he came back out he then took blood from
both the bull and the goat and sprinkled each seven times upon horns of the
altar upon which sacrifices were made and cleansed it of iniquity.
There is something significant happening here with
respect to the blood that we can’t miss.
Leviticus 17:11-12 says something that troubles me for I like my steaks
very rare: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you
on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes
atonement by the life. Therefore, I have said to the people of Israel, ‘No
person among you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger who sojourns among
you eat blood’.” The blood of the bull
and the goat represents life that has passed through death and as such it has
the power to cleanse what it contacts from iniquity and one more thing – it
unites God and the people. The High
Priest who stood in representation of the people gets this blood, this life
that has passed through death, on his hand and sprinkles it onto God sitting
one the Mercy Seat. Thus the people and
God are united in this life that has passed through death. That’s what Atonement is (At-One-Ment). I hope you see the foreshadowing here of
Jesus and his death and resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit to
us. By his death and resurrection Jesus’
human life passed through death and is given to us through the work of the Holy
Spirit. When you hear all those
metaphors about being washed in the blood of Jesus and so forth this is what it
means.
We still have on goat to
go. The High Priest then took the second
goat and placed both his hands upon its head and whispered the sins of the
people into its ear. Then somebody led
the goat out into the wilderness and set it free so that it could be utterly
destroyed by whatever befell it. You
have heard of the term scapegoat, when some innocent party takes the blame for
somebody else. This goat bears away the
sins of the people to where these sins may be destroyed in death.
There is something
significant we must note here as well.
The Hebrew word for forgiveness does not mean a simple release of guilt
from another. It is not a “legal” transaction where someone apologizes or not
for a wrong done to someone else and the someone else decides not to punish
them for it. The Hebrew word, nasa, (the Space Shuttle would be a good
metaphor here) means to bear, to pick up and carry. If you remember the story of the four men who
carried a paralytic to Jesus to be healed and how they had to tear through the
roof of the house to get him to Jesus because of the crowd outside. The Bible says that when Jesus saw their
faith or rather their faithfulness towards their friend he said to the man
“Son, your sins are forgiven.” These men
in love for their paralytic friend whom others would have called cursed by God
for some concealed sin picked him up and carried him to Jesus. That act of love and fellowship of friendship
with someone everyone would have called cursed is what forgiveness is.
Jesus, the Son of God become
human, does the same thing for us as the Scapegoat goat did for Israel on Yom
Kippur. He innocently shares our fallen
humanity with us and bears it away unto death removing it from us. This bearing away of our sin is what
forgiveness is and it is cleansing. Just
as you would put a tea bag on an infected wound to draw out the infection so
does Jesus death draw out sins infection from humanity so God can heal it with
the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Looking at our reading from
Hebrews Jesus has opened once and for all a new and living way to God. He’s permanently cleansed the living temple
of humanity and God the Holy Spirit now dwells in us and works to heal us from
the inside out. God has written his covenant
upon our hearts. And so as Paul writes
in our passage from Hebrews: “Therefore, brothers, since we
have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new
and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since
we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a
sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse
us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we
profess, for he who promised is faithful.
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good
deeds.”
God has expiated
our sin and iniquity by Jesus’ blood, his life that has passed through death. There is no longer any need for any sacrifice
of expiation or propitiation. We are in
union with the Trinity atoned by the Jesus’ life-giving blood, his life that
has passed through death. Moreover, he
has scapegoated our sins away unto death where they are utterly destroyed. The Trinity no longer counts anything against
us. There is nothing that can separate
us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
Amen.
