“THE LAMB, THE GOAT, THE GOD/MAN”
Saint Matthew 4. 1-11
Invocavit - The First Sunday in Lent: 5 March Anno Domini 2006
Fr Watson
You know, don’t you, that many people have jobs they dread, vocations that almost “eat away” their very soul. You are aware that many people struggle with academics in school, friends in social settings, and relatives at home. You have the suspicion that a whole lot more people are suffering -- mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, then you even want to admit.
Lent means desert, not literally, but effectually. Lent reminds you that you’re not in Eden anymore, and that you can’t get back to paradise by tapping together the “ruby slippers” of your works, your merits, your inner goodness, your…your anything. Something “ruby” was needed alright but not from your storehouse. Only the ruby-red, warm, salty, sticky blood of the Lamb would suffice to win back the Garden; to turn the sands of wilderness into the green grasses and still waters.
You know the designation which John the Baptizer had called Jesus just before this morning’s text takes place. John rightly designated Him by that title which all the Old Testament Prophets would have concurred with: “The Lamb of God.” But the Nazarene’s bloody sacrificial death for your misdeeds, non-deeds, and hypocritical self-deeds, was still three years away. Before His perfect suffering and death; before His atoning passive obedience to the Father, came the desert. And even before the “mini-Easter” breakfast, and the end of the wilderness ordeal, prepared and hosted by angels, would come Jesus’ own 40 days of Lent. His trials, His sweat in the heat of the day, His chill in the dead of night; His belly tied in knots from hunger and His ears aching to hear from His Father; Jesus submitted to this Active Obedience not for Himself --- He is without sin, perfect and holy and God of God --- but for you. His temptations and hurt at the hands of the wicked foe was all in your place. It was all in the place of your father Adam.
Adam did not do what the Lord had commanded. Adam did the very thing that God had forbid him. You follow your ancestor every day, countless times. Adam was exiled with his fallen nature into the waste land of a fallen world. Only the Word of God would sustain him and his. Only the Promise of the coming Messiah was good news. Jesus was that Lamb who would pay for the sin, but Whom in the meantime would be the Goat.
Adam wasn’t the only one who lived his Lent in the wilderness. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were wanderers. Even when the patriarchs thought they were safe at home a drought forced them out of Canaan. Joseph’s children, the wayward Israelites, the “children of God” were led by Moses…into the desert; the wilderness of Sinai. The Hebrews, Moses included, didn’t obey any better than Adam. They too tasted their bread in the sweat of their brows, sand grit in their teeth, and son scorching their eyes and heads.
If you don’t see your own daily problems, set-backs, and gut-wrenching tragedies in the light of Adam, Jacob, Moses and His Israelites, then the Law of God hasn’t yet reached you the way He wants it to. But Lent sooner or later gets everyone’s attention. We need Easter, we need Jesus’ resurrection so that we can eat and drink with Him His total victory. The victory of the Lamb was won on Calvary. The victory of the Goat in the desert was won, in the desert. Jesus is your Goat.
When you re-read Exodus you will remember that the sinful Hebrews were to bring to Moses and Aaron not only sheep and oxen to be slain for their blood; blood which would be sprinkled in the Tabernacle upon and around the altar; but they were also to bring a goat to be the “scape-goat.” This goat was poised on the outskirts of the Israelite camp where the High Priest and his sons would place their hands upon its horned-head and confess all the sins of the people (theirs included). Then this symbolic “substitute” would be driven away from the camp out into the wilderness all by itself. It would eventually be killed by wild animals, but it would “take” away all the sins of the people in a “type” which pointed ahead 1,400 years to Jesus.
The Lord too was “driven” into the dessert by the Holy Ghost. He too was surrounded by wild carnivores. He was in the desert because Adam was tossed out of the oasis. Jesus did what Adam wouldn’t do at the Tree; Jesus chased the snake away by trusting the Promise and Word of God. Jesus was in the desert because Moses and the other “children of God” wouldn’t obey when they were in the Lenten wastes. The Jews, like you, rebelled. The Jews, like you, murmured, whined, back-bit, cursed, and neglected the Word of God. Jesus chased the fiery serpent away by obeying, complying, and relying on His heavenly Father’s promise.
Jesus your “scape-goat” had all the people’s sins washed onto Him at the Jordan. Jesus the goat of God carried His fulfillment of the Law into the desert and withstood the infernal ones greatest tests. The Lord refused the temptation to doubt the Love of God even in the face of apparent silence and abandonment. Christ didn’t rely on power to make rocks into bread but instead trusted that His Father had not, and would not, abandon Him. The Lord refused the temptation to become a charismatic, emotionally driven doer of spectacular miracles when He refused to leap off the Temple parapet. Dangers, horrible accidents and trauma will certainly happen to you in this life of earthly woe, but you are not to court disaster and look for self appointed “life-ending excitement” expecting God to be some place for you where He has not promised you He will be. The Lord refused the temptation to mammon, i.e. He refused to be a God of Glory at the expense of doing first and foremost the things He had become incarnated to do. The Lord came to be the “Man of Sorrows” prophesied by Isaiah. He came to be the God of the Cross. Jesus also came to be the Goat in the Dessert, obeying perfectly, trusting solely in The Word of God; in His Father who art in heaven.
By His perfect obedience; by His loving God with all His heart, soul, mind and strength, Jesus reversed Adam’s fall. Jesus turned around the failure of the Israelites. Jesus has fixed all of your daily disobedience and disloyalty. The Lord by His work, His hot, sweaty, hungry, lonely, debilitating work “got the devil’s goat” and the tempter had to slink away defeated.
In Christ there is victory. In Jesus there is rest for the weary, balm for the wounded, food and drink for the hungry, and family for the solitary. There were angels that day, at the end of the trials, that ministered to Christ. There are angels this day, joining you at the Royal Feast as Christ Himself ministers to you His victory at the Cross, but also His victory in the desert.
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost