Biography
Fr. Robert Barron is a native of Chicago, Illinois, and was educated at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and the Catholic Institute of Paris. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1986 and is currently serving as Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Mary University of the Lake-Mundelein Seminary outside Chicago. Robert is the author of several books and conducts frequent retreats and workshops about spiritual life.

"Jesus and the Scapegoat" 
Friends, I would like to begin by reading from the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel, a story that we all 
know well:

This lyrical, beautiful, and magnificently crafted passage from the eighth chapter of John has at the center a violent mob, it’s victim, and then the divine person who breaks the violence. René Girard is a French social commentator and philosopher who has made it the centerpiece of his life’s work to understand the psychology and even the spirituality of the violent mob. Girard says that all human societies, from families to villages to nation states, are characterized by a tensiveness that is born of the conflict of desire. You and I want the same thing or I want it because you want it and this leads to tension, rivalry, conflict.

How do communities deal with this fact? Girard says in the course of human history there has evolved the scapegoating mechanism. A group finds a person or a group and they blame them for the crisis, they blame them for the tensiveness. What happens here is a kind of peace then reigns in the community because they have managed to vent their frustrations on this person or on this group.

But here’s the thing: it’s always an unstable peace. It’s always a phoney unity because it is predicated on violence. What will inevitably happen is violence will reassert itself and then more victims have to be found. Less this sound purely abstract, I think we can find loads of examples of this Gerardian dynamic, from the simplest and most local to the most complex and global.

Consider for a second something as simple as a coffee klatch. Here is a group of people around a table engaged in what seems to be amiable conversation. But if we are perceptive and we are honest, we’ll see that more often than not this group has formed itself around the verbal violence of gossip: "Did you hear what she did?" "Yes, I did and I heard something else. Years ago she did this." Look, we all know this from our experience. This creates an enormous cohesiveness, an enormous sense of fellowship in the group. We love to join a gossiping society. But it’s predicated upon verbal violence. Someone has been chosen as a victim and the phoney community of the group is founded upon it. Don’t we know, too, even as we join in scapegoating conversations, that the minute we leave the table we might well become the next victim.

Here is one drawn from my own world, the world of academics and scholarship. There is an adage that says: "What’s the one thing that two scholars can agree on? How poor the work of a third scholar is." At the local level and at the most global level we can see this same phenomenon.

It was a large part of Hitler’s evil genius to exploit precisely this scapegoating mechanism. Germany of the late 1920s and 30s was a very divided and tension filled society. There were economic problems, there were cultural problems, there were enormous political problems. What did Hitler do? He found the one group to blame: the Jews are responsible. All of your economic problems, all your political tensions, all your personal problems, they are the ones to blame. And what Hitler managed to do in this process was to unite the country. There was an enormous connectedness and fellowship, energy, power that Hitler managed to create. But he did it in a demonic way, precisely by exploiting this scapegoating mechanism.

Are we guilty perhaps of the same thing? Can we see the same dynamic even in our own country? Well, obviously. Look how long African Americans have been a scapegoated people in this country. My own ancestors, the Irish, just go back maybe one hundred years. "No Irish need apply" was a sign you would see in the big cities of New York and Chicago. When Irish were depicted in political cartoons they were often pictured as drunks or as monkeys or apes. Blacks, Irish, Jews. Maybe today: Muslims and Arabs. We tend to galvanize ourselves around scapedgoated people, scapegoated groups.

Now, friends, can we see these Girardian dynamics at work in this magnificent story from John’s Gospel? I think we can. There are beautifully on display. Notice first of all, and it says it twice, "they caught her in the very act of adultery." Imagine, first of all, the prurience of these people. Imagine the lengths they had to go to catch her in the very act of adultery. What does this bespeak? I think it bespeaks this deep hunger and need that we have to find the scapegoat. We will go to great lengths to find somebody to blame, as they find her as someone to blame. Then watch how this happens: gathering force almost like a storm, they draw into their circle all kinds of other blamers and this storm carries this poor woman right to the feet of Jesus. Notice something, too. They seek immediately a religious sanction: "Well, the law of Moses says that we are justified in stoning this woman. What do you think?" René Girard knows about this. He says that the scapegoating mechanism is usually backed up by a religious sanction. In fact, it becomes a sort of sacred violence. God, or the gods, approve of it. And here we see it: "Moses told us we could stone her. What do you have to say?"

Now, friends, notice what the Lord does here. Nothing. It’s very important to notice that his first opening move is to do nothing. A mob is like a hurricane which gathers strength as it moves over the water, so is a scapegoating mob. Whether it’s the coffee klatch or whether it’s Nazi Germany, it tends to gain momentum and strength as it moves, gathering more and more people into itself. What does the Lord do? At first nothing. He thereby stops the momentum of the mob. He simply bends down and he writes on the ground. When you feel yourself being drawn into a scapegoating group, sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing. Do not contribute to it. Do not contribute to its violence.

Then there is that lovely detail of the writing. It’s the only time, by the way, that Jesus is ever described in the Gospels as writing something. Scholars have long wondered what did he write. The church fathers say this: he was writing in the ground the sins of each of the people surrounding that woman. All those who were holding stones, we was writing their worst sin in the ground. Next time you feel yourself being drawn into the dynamic power of a mob imagine the Lord Jesus writing in the ground your worst sin.

Then, of course, he rises and delivers what is probably the best known one-liner in the scriptures: let the one among you is without sin be the first to cast the stone at her. What does he do? He takes the violence of the mob that was directed outward and he turns it inward. And in the process he transforms it into contrition. Instead of focusing on her sin, instead of focusing on her problem, I now can look within. I now look within and see my dysfunction and my sin.

Friends, here is the magnificent detail. Having said that, Jesus effectively breaks up this storm cloud. He breaks up this mob that was once a tight circle and now each one drifts away back home. He stopped it with his silence, he didn’t cooperate with it, and then he broke it by turning its energy inward.

St. Augustine said magnificently that at the end of this story there are two things left: miseria et misericordia. Misery and mercy. The woman and Jesus. It’s one of the great literary virtues of John’s Gospel that each particular scene calls to mind the scene. I’m talking about the cross, the moment when Jesus is raised up and glorified on the cross. Christ himself was the victim of a scapegoating mob. Christ himself was the victim of those who gathered around and blamed him. The wonderful truth that is revealed in Christianity, it seems to me, is that God does not sanction such violence but rather God stands with the victim. This is no longer sacred violence with God, or the gods, sanctioning our scapegoating, but now the true God identifies with the scapegoat. In that a new world is born. A world predicated not upon violence, not upon hatred of the other, but a world predicated upon compassion and forgiveness and non-violence. I think the deepest truth of the Christian message is we are now invited into that new world.

Interview with Robert Barron
Interviewed by Floyd Brown

Floyd Brown: A marvelous message, Fr. Barron. We are delighted to have you as part of our 30 Good Minutes program. Let’s talk about mob action a little bit. Right now we are hearing stories about people hating the United State of America around the world. Is this a kind of mob reaction to a circumstance?

Robert Barron: It can be. I think one of the marks of a mob is irrationality. We drop our real critical capacity and we become irrational in our hatred. Another mark of it, of course, is violence. That is the give away. Does it mean that people can’t legitimately criticize the United States? No, as long as the critique is a reasonable one, it’s a critical one, and it’s non-violent. The two great signs of it are irrationality and violence. When that sets in I think we are taking about a mob dynamic.

Brown: Talk about that just a little bit. Expand on it. You talked about Hitler and his control and what he did to have people focus against the Jews. And we have seen what has happened in this country with prejudice and it is happening around the world today when we talk about human rights. How do you requite this and target it? Are there certain leaders who seek out these things to consolidate their following?

Barron: Absolutely. If René Girard is right, the man I was referring to in the talk, this is a universal phenomenon and it’s behind almost all human culture, all human institutions in one form or another. Most communities are formed around scapegoating violence; therefore, as those Pharisees in the Gospel are looking for a scapegoat, very often leaders of different societies do look for them. It’s the demonic side of all institutions, of all communities, of all families. Looking for the scapegoat to blame. A sign of decent and good leadership is precisely the willingness not to do that and to form the community around forgiveness, around compassion, and non-violence. But more often than not, in our sinful world leaders do just the opposite.

Brown: We need spiritual leaders. This is where persons such as yourself redirect us.

Barron: I’m not sure how effective I am! I think that is absolutely true, that all communities need a spiritual heart, a spiritual core. In the great rose windows in the gothic cathedrals, Christ is always in the middle of the great wheel. And then around it all are the different pictures. It stands for the well ordered soul or the well ordered community. As long as Christ, the Divine, is at the center of your community, then your economic life, your political life, your social life, your material life, and so on, find their proper place around it. When the spiritual center is missing that’s when societies do become quickly dysfunctional.

Brown: Would you equate a mob and a gang? Are they the same thing?

Barron: They are similar. I think gangs in the great cities have a lot of the characteristics of a mob. One of them, you know, is the attractiveness of it. I talked about the coffee klatch, the gossip community. It’s attractive. We all feel drawn into its dynamics, we feel connected when we can join that. That’s what gang leaders take advantage of. Often for kids who’ve had a bad family experience or society is not luring them in healthy ways, the gang is very attractive. The gangs define themselves over and against them, necessarily. There is no gang dedicated to non-violence. All the gangs are dedicated against them or against this group. So there is this Gerardian dynamic clearly on display.

Brown: How do we defuse this though? Jesus wrote in the sand, what do we do?

Barron: I think a first step is what I talked about: non-cooperation. Gandhi talked about it, King talked about, John Paul II has exemplified it. You battle evil by not cooperating with it, not being drawn into its power. You speak the truth to it and you refuse to live in the world that it assumes. You open up thereby a whole new space. That’s where the truth of the Gospel comes in.

Brown: Thank you very much. It has been enlightening and we are delighted to have you with us.

Barron: My pleasure. Thank you.