In our second reading tonight, from the Gospel of John, we heard how John the Baptist, telling the story of the baptism of Jesus, begins by calling Jesus “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”. The Lamb of God: quite a strange thing to say. And what we find here is that at the very start of our Lord’s ministry, Jesus is accorded a title intimately connected to the way his ministry will end. It’s a title moreover that links him to the salvation history of the Jewish people, and to the event of the Passover, the festival that would be taking place at the time of his death.
Each year the Passover festival was a celebration of the nationhood of Israel, for it called to mind the events that led to their journey to the Promised Land. Here in a mighty act of salvation, God brought his people out from slavery in Egypt, following a series of plagues that culminated at the first Passover with the last and most terrible of these: the slaughter of the first born of Pharaoh and the Egyptian people, both their own children and even the animals of their flocks. The people of Israel were told they must insulate themselves from this disaster by killing a yearling sheep or goat and smearing some of the blood on the lintel and doorposts of their homes. And then as the angel of the Lord rampaged through the land wreaking havoc on Pharaoh and his people he passed over the places marked in this way. You can read the story in chapter 12 of the Book of Exodus.
“Behold the Lamb of God,” says John the Baptist. So we can think that in Jesus God is preparing a new exodus, a new escape from bondage: the forming of a new people of God, a new holy nation. The sacrifice of a lamb in each Jewish home at the Passover Festival reminded them of the Lord’s work as he acted to save his people from their suffering and slavery. And now Jesus is hailed by John not as a new hero like Moses to lead the people to freedom, but as the Lamb of God, the lamb to be slain, the sacrificial beast whose blood will deliver his people.
From start to finish the Gospel road is one of self giving and self offering love, the Gospel story throughout is cross-shaped and cross-centred. Here are some words from the medieval mystic writer Mother Julian of Norwich, her imagining of the words Jesus was saying to her: “It is a joy, a delight and an endless happiness to me that I ever endured suffering for you.” The lamb sacrificed at Passover was plucked unknowing from the flock to be put to death; but Jesus is the Lamb who offers himself. He goes freely and with loving intent to sacrifice, taking the way of the cross; and that way begins with his baptism by John, and the sign there of his Father’s blessing.
Now since we know from Luke’s Gospel that John the Baptist was the son of a temple priest, it’s fair I think to assume John would have known all about the rituals and sacrifices performed there day by day. Every morning and every evening a lamb would be offered in sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people. The instruction to do this dates back further than the building of the first temple, all the way back to chapter 29 of the Book of Exodus, where Moses tells the people to offer at first light a yearling ram, and to offer a further yearling straight after sunset. And this continued to be done until the destruction of the temple in AD 70. It was done even when the city was under siege, it was done even when the people all but starving to death themselves. So it was understood as very necessary, this thing that had to be done every day, to maintain the right relationship between the people and their God.
But now John says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” And maybe here John the Gospel writer is pointing up the useless insufficiency of the sacrifices that had to be offered again and again in the Temple, because they didn’t really work. Was God really placated by such offerings? It can be hard for us to relate to the idea of a wrathful God being bought off by repeated offerings of blood - the idea can even revolt us.
John the Baptist had in any case turned away from the organised religion of the Temple to live and to preach in the wilderness: and there he spoke of a new beginning, a new thing that God was about to do. He spoke to call the people into a new relationship with God, and he spoke to prepare the way. John the Baptist can be thought of as standing in the line of the great prophets of old; these were men who were looking for the day when God would act to save his people, these were men angered by the way in which God’s people had been so often and so sorely betrayed by those who should have guided and tended them, their kings, their priests, and even their prophets. Leaders who had betrayed their trust, and had let down both the people and their God.
But now comes the one who, as we read in chapter 53 of the prophet Isaiah, will “be brought like a lamb to the slaughter.” Again, that difficult image of the blood spattered altar and the beast that has to die there. But perhaps we should turn that thought on its head, so that we’re thinking not of God demanding from sacrifice from us, but instead of God giving freely to us. For the Lamb of God gives all of himself, and makes of himself the sacrifice our sin demands, under the old law, the old covenant. Now there is a new covenant and a new holy nation. And the cross on which the Lamb of God dies convicts us of our sin and our rebelliousness, while at the same time we are drawn to him, drawn to kneel at the foot of the cross, there to offer our lives for his life, our love for his love.
So in calling Jesus the Lamb of God, John is identifying him not only as the Christ, God’s chosen one, but saying something vital about what kind of Christ this is, how he will work to save us, what he will do. He will not be the superhero who zaps the Romans and restores the old kingdom. This is new, and this is, as our first reading tonight reminded us, not just about the saving of Israel, but the saving of the world. The Christ is given as perfect sacrifice, the sacrifice that draws us and changes us, for he is also our great Example, the perfection of love, the one we set ourselves to follow.
We read in Acts chapter 4 the apostle Peter saying that salvation is found only in the name of Jesus. No other sacrifice will work, only the one who offers his self that we might live, and who says to us, “Follow me” - which means, be like me. So the marks of the Church of Christ should be a sacrificial ministry and lifestyle which reflects his - not an empty round of sacrifices to placate the anger of God and buy our way back into his favour, but a thank offering for the gracious sacrifice by which we are saved despite ourselves.
Having already quoted Julian of Norwich, here are some more of her words, with which I’ll close, reflecting on Christ the wounded healer, whose love for us is like the sacrificial care of a mother for her precious child: “The blessed wounds of our Saviour are open and rejoice to heal us; the sweet, gracious hands of our Mother are ready and carefully surround us; for in all this he does the work of a kind nurse who has nothing to do but occupy herself with the salvation of her child. His task is to save us, and it is his glory to do so, and it is his wish that we know it; for he wants us to love him tenderly, and trust him humbly and strongly. And he showed this in these gracious words, ‘I hold you quite safely.’”
May his name be praised, who is the Lamb of God. Amen.
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