Scapegoat
So what does Peter do?, he wants to show he is one of them, and the only way to show you are part of the crowd is to join in scapegoating, If I have the same enemy you have, I am one of yours.
You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies.
The Gospels not only disclose the hidden scapegoat mechanism of human cultures, but witness to the God, who stands with the Innocent Victim and is revealed through him.
God did not inflict pain on someone else, but rather on the Cross absorbed the pain, violence, and evil of this world into Himself.
Is it necessary to refuse this mimetic anthropology in the name of a given theology? Is it necessary to see in the gathering against Jesus the work of God the Father, who would move humankind to act against his Son in order to exact from him the ransom that they themselves could not provide? To me this interpretation appears contrary to both the spirit and the letter of the Gospels. There is nothing in the Gospels to suggest that God causes the mob to come together against Jesus. Violent contagion is enough. Those responsible for the Passion are the human participants themselves, incapable of resisting the violent contagion that affects them all when a mimetic snowballing comes within their range.
God is not the one demanding the crucifixion, He is the one being crucified.
We cry "scapegoat" to stigmatize all the phenomena of discrimination — political, ethnic, religious, social, racial, etc. — that we observe about us. We are right. We easily see now that scapegoats multiply wherever human groups seek to lock themselves into a given identity — communal, local, national, ideological, racial, religious, and so on.
Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.
Jesus stood up to defend those who were being damaged by those who were standing up for what they think is right.
Christ took away humanity’s sacrificial crutches and left us a terrible choice: either believe in violence or not.
But go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.