Today you meet the Day of Atonement: one day a year, one man, behind the curtain with blood, and two goats, one dying for sin, one carrying sin away into the wilderness, never to return.

Every ache in the human conscience, the wish that guilt could be taken somewhere and left, God answered with a ceremony first and a Savior finally. Watch the goat go.

The scapegoat answered a question every heart asks: where can the guilt go? Not managed, not minimized, gone, confessed onto a living carrier and walked out of sight. It was theater with a promise inside, because sins cannot really ride goats. They can, and did, ride a Substitute outside the city, once for all.

Jesus' teaching in Mark explains why the ceremony aimed at the heart all along: defilement is homegrown, so the cleansing must reach the interior. Let it. Name what is within, envy, deceit, pride, the whole hard list, lay both hands on the Carrier in confession, and watch the horizon. What He takes, He does not bring back.