Scapegoat Jesus

I drove a couple of hours to the Philly Metro area last night from Amishland. Being from the Philly 'burbs, I know to add about an hour to the commute that Google Maps lists due to Rush Hour. I can't see how people do that day in and out. My work commute is a brief time on Route 30 and then I jump onto side roads. The drive took 2.5 hours. Without traffic, it should have been 1.5 hours.

Stupid EZ Pass failed to work. Can't wait the wrangling awaiting with the Pa Turnpike overlords on this one.

I traveled to Landsdale for a funeral. My buddy Kevin Day, only one of two people who I keep in touch with from high school, passed away last week from cancer. He fought bravely until the end, he demonstrated an amazing grace throughout the long process of illness. Kevin also attended Millersville University. He was one of only four kids from my high school to go to Millersville right after graduation, it wasn't a typical route at our wealthy and privileged Main Line high school graduating class of 600 hundred some kids. Millersville was decidedly proletarian.

What brought us back together was the ubiquitous Facebook. A couple of years after we reconnected, he got cancer. He always called it "little c." For Kevin, his "Big C" was Christ. I never saw him blame God for his cancer. I am sure there were many dark days where the cancer and chemo may have not only ravaged his body but also his soul.

I can't say that I was a close friend to Kevin in high school or college...but as time went on, I came to appreciate what a good guy he was. His qualities and character are the types of thing people value over time. He was loyal, trustworthy, a hard-worker. Low-key.    

He leaves behind three college-aged kids and a loving wife. His affectionate family is something that I will probably never have. But his suffering was elsewhere. Life damages us all, just in different ways. Not that family life is always idyllic. Yet his kids and wife clearly loved and respected him. Kids without their Dad leaves a gaping hole. He cared deeply for his family and I am sure that he felt more concern for their lives after he was gone rather than his own.

Kevin's Memorial Service was at Calvary Baptist. This is a Gospel-preaching Church where platitudes in the face of tragedy is not the modus operandi. The Pastor preached the Gospel pure and unadulterated. Very non-PC and he himself acknowledged, He called Kevin a sinner from the pulpit, saved by grace. I am pretty sure this is what Kevin told him to do.

I have been at many funerals over the years where a Pastor downplayed the Truth to try and console troubling questions about eternity, heaven and hell, the whole shebang. Once at a funeral for a childhood neighborhood friend who shot and killed himself, the Priest stated on the virtue of his baptism as an infant in the Catholic faith, that he was with God.

Maybe he was but I thought it to be questionable because the deceased never professed faith in Jesus. Better to not make pronouncements if it is at least debatable in regards to eternal destiny. That is why I have such issues with Catholicism and its assumption of the sole authority of faith and morals.

I read this morning about the Old Testament role of the Scapegoat. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, one goat was sacrificed by the High Priest. The other goat was sent out of Jerusalem into the wilderness to die. The Scapegoat became the object of the wrath of God on sin. I also read that there was a time when the Scapegoat returned to Jerusalem one year and that was taken as a very bad omen that God had not accepted the Scapegoat's atonement for sin. After that the High Priest would push the Scapegoat off a mountain, breaking its legs, making sure that the Scapegoat would never be able to walk back into Jerusalem.

Jesus became our Scapegoat as well as the Passover Lamb. He was forsaken. He walked to Golgotha and offered up his sinless life as the pure and spotless sacrifice. Both goat and lamb, some commentary on how the Creator can be more than one creature all at once.

Kevin, I know that you now know God as you are known. You are face-to-face with Jesus, No more peering into eternity in eager expectation. John Wesley made a comment along the lines one time that "Our people (Methodists) die well." Kevin, you lived, and died well.