The Day of Atonement

A heavy curtain hangs in front of the holiest room on earth. No one goes through it. No one, except one man, on one day of the year. And today is that day.

Israel is camped in the wilderness around the tabernacle. Inside the tent there are two rooms. The first is the Holy Place, with the golden lampstand and the table of bread. Behind a thick curtain is the second room, the Most Holy Place. In it stands the ark of the covenant, a gold-covered chest, with a golden lid called the mercy seat. This is where God said he would meet with his people. After the death of Aaron's two sons, God speaks to Moses. Tell your brother Aaron he may not come behind the curtain whenever he likes. There is one day for it, and one way.

On that day, Aaron does not wear his splendid robes of blue and purple and gold. He bathes his body in water. Then he puts on plain white linen: a linen tunic, linen undergarments, a linen sash and a linen turban. The greatest priest in Israel dresses simply, like a servant. He brings a young bull as a sin offering for himself and his family. And from the people he takes two male goats. He stands them before the LORD at the entrance of the tent, and he casts lots over them. One goat is for the LORD. The other will be sent away into the wilderness.

First Aaron offers the bull for his own sins. Then he takes a firepan full of burning coals from the altar, and two handfuls of sweet incense, and he goes where no one else may go. Behind the curtain. He puts the incense on the fire, and a cloud of fragrant smoke fills the room and covers the mercy seat. Then he sprinkles the bull's blood on the mercy seat and in front of it, seven times. He comes out, offers the goat chosen for the LORD for the sins of the people, and goes in again with its blood. Year by year the people had done wrong, and the holy place itself had to be cleansed. On this day, all of it is made clean.

Now the second goat. It is still alive. Aaron lays both his hands on its head, and he confesses over it all the wrongdoing of Israel, all their rebellion, all their sins. He puts them, as it were, on the goat's head. Then a man chosen for the task leads the goat away. Out of the camp. Past the tents. Into the wilderness, to a land where no one lives. The whole camp can watch it go, smaller and smaller, until it is gone. Whatever they had done, God was carrying it far away. God tells them this day must be kept every year, on the tenth day of the seventh month. No one may work. It is a day to humble themselves, a day of rest. On that day, God says, atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you, and you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD.

This day is still kept. Jewish communities around the world call it Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and it falls in the autumn, in the Hebrew month of Tishri. It is the most solemn day of the Jewish year, a day of fasting, prayer and confession. Around eighteen hundred years ago, the Mishnah, an early collection of Jewish teaching, gave a whole section to it. That section is simply called Yoma, which means the Day.

The Day of Atonement. You'll find it in Leviticus chapter sixteen. Once a year, a priest in plain white went behind the curtain, and a goat walked away into the wilderness carrying the people's sins. So here is a question to carry with you. What would it feel like to know that your wrongs had been carried far away?