"Scapegoat"

Well boys and girls, how about another history lesson with maybe a moral point?  Scapegoat has its beginning in Judaism, the roots of Christianity.  This referred to a goat upon whose head were symbolically placed the sins of the people after which he was sent into the wilderness as part of Yom Kippur (also known as Day of Atonement).  With that background you may want to think more about the 'atonement' of Jesus.  Is it such a big step in imagery when a faith community is defining for itself the death of Jesus-seems like I recall a bible verse about it 'being better that one man should die than a nation suffer.'  Indeed, one definition of scapegoat is "one bears the blame for others."  I wonder if we had only the Gospel of Mark if we would have this atonement view today (but that discussion is for another time).
"One that bears the blame for others." 'Jimmy, if you had made your free throws we would have won the game.' 'It is the European debt crisis that is the problem with the stock market.' 'The politicians in Washington are the problem with this country.' 'If we just got rid of the illegal aliens more Americans would have jobs.' 'Gay rights are the threat to the sanctity of marriage and morality in America.'  And a big one-how about those Muslims-which goes back at least to the 11th century.  A pope stirred the troops for the Crusades by naming all Muslims as infidels who were the threat.  Still threatened, mosques are burned in America.
You get the picture-blame others.  Two other definitions for scapegoat are: "one that is the object of irrational hostility" (picture some of the political landscape as we prepare for 2012 elections) and "move responsibility away from ourselves and towards a target person or group." Now it comes into focus.  Whether it is a basketball game, stock market plunge, jobs, morality, government, or even the church we seem to need to find a scapegoat-someone to take the blame for us.
Now if it was simply taking the blame it might not be too bad.  We find our scapegoats in the stormy sea of hurtful words and hateful actions and someone is always willing to take action to have the scapegoat pay for our sins.  All it takes is for someone to point out who is to blame for my life, societies ills, governments failure.  I wonder if it time to take back shared responsibility for what is happening in our society, our government, our moral climate, world affairs and stop looking for a scapegoat.  Then again, I think our troubles come from 'head-in-the-clouds' retired preachers-let's seize their computers!