A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. When John the Baptist caught sight of Jesus coming toward him, John exclaimed, look there, the lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world. It is he of whom I said, after me is to come a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me. I admit that I did not recognize him, though the very reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. John, that's John the Baptist, gave this testimony also.
I saw the spirit descend like a dove from the sky, and it came to rest upon him. But as I say, I did not recognize him. The one who sent me to baptize with water told me, when you see the spirit descend and rest on someone, it is he who is to baptize with the holy spirit. Now I have seen for myself and I've testified. This is god's chosen one, and this is the good news, the gospel of the lord.
Well, first of all, a thought struck me just as I was coming over from the rectory, how different the rectory looks since we took down all those glorious decorations for Christmas. After epiphanies, with all the labor that it took to put these things up, they all disappeared almost instantly. The tree's gone. The lights gone. The holly reeds are gone.
There are no there are no more decorations around chandeliers. It's a bare routine rectory. Christmas is over. And the thought struck me with all the hype, and I I and I'm I'm one who admits, I mean, I'm not a cynical about it. Christmas is a great time because there is a while it lasts a wonderful spirit abroad.
Peace on earth, goodwill to men, we're surfeited with it, but there's a lot of good sincerity, there's a lot of generosity there behind it. And then all of a sudden, you go into people's drugstore and there's no more Christmas, and now we're in Valentine's Day. And the thought struck me. That's just about it is with our lives. It isn't that we're as I said, the first Sunday of of Advent, it isn't that we're recovering from being grievous sinners.
If we have sinned grievously or not, we have come to Christ, we have we're we're at peace on that score. But, the first Sunday of Lent, I quoted Saint Augustine to you and Holman Hunt's picture of behold, I stand at the door and knock. And I quoted from Saint Augustine's one of his sermons where he says, wake up, you Christians. God has been born for you. Wake up.
That was the first Sunday of Lent, and I hammered home on that subject for three following Sundays. I suppose ad nauseam. Well, you're getting some more of it Because what we have to fight of course, we have to eliminate sin from our lives. Sin is something that happens. God didn't come to save saints.
Christ was born to save me because I'm a sinner. Let's let let me admit it. We're in these pews because we're sinners. But the point is we we settle down too easily to a routine, into a lethargy, to a supineness. We're so so horrific.
We're our eyes are heavy with sleep. We get into the routine of life and we go through the same boring things. Well, the thing is we've got to wake up. God became man. If we could get that into our thick skulls that God almighty was born of a virgin girl and died on a cross for me.
There is my worth. There is my source of personal esteem. And so let us let us put some vigor into our living, our Christian life, prayer, making it mean more something more, not just routine stuff. I'm a great friend of routine. If it's a good one, William James said the best thing to do is to get in a good rut and stay there, if it's a good one.
But you see, it become it get becomes monotonous, and we wanna get out once in a while. So I say with Saint Augustine today, Christians wake up. God has become man for you. Now we have today the baptism of our lord. And, the phrase there that struck me was lamb of god.
And then the thought struck me the early part of last week. How many times I have used that word phrase, lamb of god. And what in the world do I mean by it? What do I mean? Now here's Saint John the Baptist.
He's down in in Bethany across the Jordan. That's down right at the close to the Dead Sea, southern part of the river. And he's across the river. He's over in Jordan, in Bethany. And he's been there.
He's been preaching and baptizing, begging the people to repent of their sins and to be baptized in the Jordan with water. Now the next day, we're told by Saint John, Christ appears on the scene. And as he's coming along, it's just before or it's close to the Passover, John sees Christ coming and he says, behold the lamb of the god. What did John mean by that? Obviously, this person out there wasn't a lamb coming along on four feet wagging his pretty little tail.
That's for sure. So what did John mean when he said, behold the lamb of god? I I would love to have to pass out papers and ask you to write it down. What do you think he meant? Have you ever thought about it?
When you say lamb of god, we say it three times in every mass just just before our communion. Lamb of god who takes away. In other words, all the things we could call Christ at that most sacred moment that we're going to receive him, body, mind, soul, and heart, his entirety, entire divinity, his entire humanity, We are going to take him into our mouths, and the best thing we can think of is the lamb of god. Why? Why call him a lamb?
What do you mean by lamb of god? So I started out. I got father Ray Brown's commentary. Well, that was something. About 40 pages of it, all about the different kinds of sheep and the different kinds of lambs in Greek.
Then I went to Berkeley, William Berkeley, who's not a great scripture scholar, but I think he had you know, CS Lewis said, beware of scripture scholars. Well, Berkeley, he's a kind of scholar. He's I'm sure some of you know him. He's written a a commentary sort of on each of the gospels. It's very, very, very helpful.
Well, first of all, your guess is as good as anybody's. That's the first point. I'm not gonna tell you what it means. I'm gonna give you four possibilities based upon a week's research. Father Brown, father Ray Brown, what he he represents the latest in scripture scholarship, and then William Barkley.
Now he said lamb of god, and I'm what kind of a lamb? Whether it was a horn lamb, you know, they go on all into all of these things with with the different Greek words for lamb and for sheep. The point the first thing you think of now remember, it's down by the Jordan, which isn't it's just not far from Jerusalem. It's just before the Passover feast, and that is the greatest feast of the Jewish year. So it must have been on the people's minds.
So the first suggestion Barthley makes is that the lamb of god here represents the Passover lamb. When as you know, with with the the Jews had been years and years in Egypt, and now they've been released or go about to be released. And the angel of death goes through the and slays all the household except those that have been sprinkled with the blood of the lamb. And so first thought could ease and as Bartley says, it's easily possible. That is John stood up.
Notice that word possible. It's very different from the verb is. It's possible that as John stood there, a a flock of lambs came along. They were going up to Jerusalem for the Passover sacrifice because everybody had to have a sacrifice of lamb or at least share in it. And maybe seeing the lambs, John thought of, behold the lamb of god, behold you, behold the Passover lamb, the lamb that takes away your sins and saves you from death.
Possibly, John thought that, John the Baptist. Could well could well mean that. We can well mean it when we say lamb of god. He is the one who saves us from sin and from death and dying, the one. Not that it not not a symbol, the reality.
So that's the first thing that it might mean some relation to Passover to the Passover lamb. Another possibility, these are all good and realistic possibilities. From From the the day day of of the the Passover, Passover, when the Jews returned at a temple, a lamb was sacrificed twice a day. I often think that temple must one been one bloody mess with all these sacrifices going on, and they didn't have refrigeration. But anyway, twice a day, a lamb was sacrificed in the temple, morning and night.
Again, as a symbol of taking away the sins of the world. A symbol twice a day. Could John have meant that? Quite possibly. Quite possibly.
Can we mean that? Indeed so. Indeed so. Because here we have, uniting that with our thought of the cross and Christ sacrifice, we have indeed here a picture of Christ sacrificing himself for us, indeed taking away the sins of the world, Not merely saving us from death as in the days of Egypt and the Passover, but in the reality that we are called upon to be the sons and the daughters of God. From time to time, we fail, we sin, and we turn back for forgiveness.
And here we are turning not to a symbol, not to a four legged, pretty little animal, meek and mild and all that. We turn to Jesus Christ on the cross, our savior. Could John have been thinking of the the sim not not of the cross, but could he have been thinking of Christ as the daily sacrifice bearing the burden of man's human collective sin possible? Of course, it's possible. It's even likely.
What do you think when the host is held up and the priest says, and you say, lamb of god. What's on your mind? What comes into your imagination? Something, I hope, but what is it? Does it make any sense?
Is it invigorating? Does it express your faith? Or is it routine? Now remember, the things we do every day, every week, every month, every year, these inevitably become routine. The thing is that from time to time, we need to erupt.
We need to wake up. We need to cast off sleep. As Saint Augustine says, Christians awake. Just think when the priest holds that host up and you bend your knee and you say, my lord and my god. Just think what you're saying.
So is it possible that John the Baptist could have been referring to the daily double sacrifice of Christ being the true lamb, no longer a symbol? Remember, the temp the the veil of the temple was rent, was destroyed afternoon. On Good And remember this, from the day of Titus 70 AD, there's never been any sacrifice in the Jewish world. This has always astonished me. I've never gotten a good answer from from any Jewish person because I've never met one who would per who was able to discuss it.
Now that's because I haven't met many. I've never talked to a a well educated rabbi. But I'm saying, as a matter of fact, from the day that the Temple Of Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus seventy AD, there's been no sacrifice in the in the with the Jewish religion. None. There were sporadic attempts to rebuild the temple, but it didn't succeed.
Even when the when Israel has been occupied, even when the the the mount of the temple is now in complete possession, at least militarily, of the Israelis, there's no attempt. No attempt, no actual attempt to rebuild the temple. None. There's been no sacrifice since seventy AD. Think of that.
The veil of the the temple was rent on Good Friday. The old law is old. It's the old covenant. Now there's a third possibility possibility here, here, and and these these are are all all good good ones. Ones.
I mean, these aren't because these these suggestions of what lamb of god may mean are realistically based upon what every ordinary Jew knew and knew very deeply and profoundly and in many instances lived. Because the the great the the great feast and especially the feast of the Passover was was a primary importance in a Jew's life in in Israel in our lord's time. So the third thing is what we might call the suffering servant. That's a term that comes out of the the scrolls, the Dead Sea scrolls. But we didn't have to wait for them.
You have in Jeremiah and Isaiah, and you get these texts during Lent. We call them the messianic texts. And both from Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Messiah is pictured as a gentle lamb being led to the slaughter. His dumb speaks not. He's just a suffering servant.
It's very dramatic, very, very detailed. Now these texts were very well known to the ordinary Jew. They knew their bible, and many of them still do, believe me, in the original Hebrew. So they knew about this what we now call the suffering servant. Be better to say they knew it as the messiah who is who was to go through all of this suffering.
They knew it very well. And so it's it's easily possible that when John the Baptist said, behold the lamb, he was referring to the messiah that was to come in his meekness, in his gentleness, in his silence, being led like a lamb to the slaughter. If you ever seen that, you'll know it. Few people have ever seen that happen. I have.
Lambs being led led into this to being slaughtered. They're very gentle there. They just move along. That's the end. Could John have meant that?
Of course, he could have meant it. Did he mean it? I don't know. What do you mean when you say lamb of god? When the priest holds the host up, what goes through your head?
What picture does your imagination hold? What are you thinking? Or is it just something some vague emptiness? Wake up, some Augustine said, you Christians. God has become man for you, and you say that that's in the host.
Now finally, the fourth possibility is a it's a real 180 degree turn. But once again, it's based solidly upon good well, pretty good text. It's from the Maccabees. Now you know the book of Maccabees is is a puzzle, but it came into existence just before Christ, the first century BC. And here, the picture of the lamb referring to Solomon, Samuel, and David, here the picture isn't of the silent, gentle, little animal docilely being led to slaughter.
Bar from it. Here we have the lamb triumphant, majestic in his power. That's quite a contrast, isn't it? And that's the picture in Maccabees. The majestic power of god in a lamb.
Is that a could John possibly have meant that or thought about it? Absolutely. If he knew the book of Maccabees, you can be sure of that. What do you think when you see that host and say, lamb of god, the triumphant majestic god who became a baby of a virgin girl. So take your pick.
You have the lamb as a symbol, a symbol of love, a symbol of suffering, a symbol a of sacrifice, and a symbol of god's triumphant majesty because god is triumphant. God is majestic. God is magnificent. Of course, we can talk about Christ as the gentle lamb, but he was also god incarnate and triumphant from his throne of the cross. So my friends, what do we you and I remember, I'm talking to myself.
What do I think when I hold that host in my hands? We're just minutes before I said this is just bread and we flip it away. And with a few words, I now say this is god almighty become man, and I hail him as the lamb of god. This is enough to strike you dead. And we say we believe that.
And why do you believe it? Because of the Peter on the rock of Rome in the last analysis. You certainly don't know it in any positivistic scientific way. So after six days of research and the seventh day for expelling it, I leave it before you. Don't let the lamb of god be an empty routine phrase.
Put some meaning behind it. I don't know what saint John meant when he said the word. Nobody does. You can write volumes on it. You still won't know what he meant by he didn't tell us.
So we are given a blank check as it were. You fill it out. You fill up that empty thing called the concept of the lamb of god. In the name of the father, the son, of the spirit. Amen.