Behold the Lamb of God
Second Sunday Scripture Readings
The gospel we just read is taken from the opening chapters of the Gospel of John. John’s account of Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River and the role of John the Baptist differs somewhat from that of the other evangelists. This isn’t at all surprising because, as usual, John is taking a more theological or mystical approach to the events of Jesus’s life. John doesn’t report directly on the baptism as an historical event. He evidently thought that Matthew, Mark, and Luke had already covered it sufficiently. Instead, John describes for us a scene that happened sometime after the baptism, where the Baptist catches sight of Jesus and reflects aloud—perhaps to his own disciples—his take on the identity of the man he’d baptized. He sees Jesus and exclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Those are the same words that every celebrant at every Eucharist proclaims while presenting the consecrated bread and wine to the congregation before Communion.
The entire remainder of today’s gospel passage goes on to elucidate the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus, yet it’s those words, “Behold the Lamb of God,” that are the most significant. They’re an indication of who John recognized Jesus to be. And, like all the passages from John’s Gospel, they require us to dig deeper to find the full meaning. Some people connect the words, the “Lamb of God,” with the Passover lamb, sacrificed in the temple, echoing the Passover lamb whose blood on the doorposts of the Israelites before the Exodus caused the angel of death to pass over. In fact, John the Evangelist himself made that connection explicit, later in the same Gospel, moving the date of Passover a day so that people could see Jesus’s death on Calvary as happening in parallel with the sacrifice of the lambs in the temple on that Preparation Day. John saw that relationship, and he wanted his readers to see it, too.
Yet, we have to ask, is this what the evangelist intended when he put those words into the mouth of John the Baptist? I think the answer to that question can be both yes and no. We can say, yes, because such sayings are prophetic utterances insofar as they’re always open to new and expanded interpretation and understanding. It would be a mistake to deny that the words referred to Jesus as prefigured by the sacrificial lamb. However, in the context of this gospel passage, we’d have to say that isn’t the immediate reference. When John the Baptist speaks of Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” he’s actually referencing the four Songs of the Servant of Yahweh from the Prophet Isaiah.[i] We read a portion of the second Song of the Servant as our first reading today. The first Song is even more familiar, as it begins, “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am well pleased. Upon him I have put my spirit; he shall bring forth justice to the nations.” [Isaiah 42:1]. Or, we hear it in the fourth Song, “Like a lamb led to slaughter or a sheep before shearers, he did not open his mouth.” [Isaiah 53:7]
The identification of Jesus with the Servant of Yahweh is an implicit proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah for those who knew how to interpret the words. It’s clear that John the Baptist never imagined the Servant of Yahweh, the Lamb of God, the Messiah to be divine. All that revelation, that expansion of people’s understanding of the nature and role of Jesus as the Messiah and suffering Servant of Yahweh, only became clear with his death and resurrection. John the Baptist confesses that he did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah until he baptized him, and the words of Isaiah became clear for him as though a voice from the heavens. Yet, his understanding was limited. It’s our privilege to see behind the curtain… a vision that John the Baptist never fully had in this life.
Notice where the evangelist has placed this passage. It comes immediately after the Prologue to his Gospel, where he lays out for us the eternal Word of the Father who took flesh and was born among us. We’ve seen behind the curtain from the outset, and we see the fullness of the revelation that John the Baptist was only just discovering. That’s a reflection back to us of our own journey of discovery. Once upon a time, we were given little pieces along the way: Jesus, Christ, Messiah, Son of God, resurrection, sacrament, Blessed Trinity… These are all concepts we heard and stumbled over as we grew up. The full Christian message wasn’t available to us at first, as it wasn’t available to John the Baptist, and still isn’t available to children like we were. The powerful impact of the Christian Gospel is hidden from those who haven’t followed Christ through his death and resurrection in their own flesh. It’s only by our confronting suffering, hopelessness, despair, and death, and finding life and hope on the other side, that we can understand and appreciate the full meaning and impact of the Christian message.
The sin of the world is the loss of hope. The sin of the world is despair. But Jesus, the Messiah, has conquered sin and death and has come as our pioneer, our Moses, to lead us out of darkness and into God’s unfailing light. Listen well when you hear John the Baptist’s words of recognition of whom it is who stands before you: “Behold the Lamb of God… Behold him who takes away the sin of the world.”
[i] Isaiah 42:1-4, 49:1-6, 50:4-9, and 52:13-53:12.
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