20th January 2008 : Epiphany 2 : Year A
9:30am Westfield
Isaiah 49:1-7 : 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 : John 1:29-42
One of the questions that frequently excites my curiosity is this: If Jesus were to appear today or tomorrow or any time walking down Lake Road, or Westfield or Ypres Road, or any one of the labyrinthine streets and thoroughfares of our Parish – would I recognise him? Would I, as does John the Baptiser in this day’s gospel, be able to announce with the same certainty, Look! The lamb of God!?
I don’t know that I could do that. I could claim in my defence that John had a huge advantage that I don’t have – namely an explicit statement from the Living God describing, not the physical details of the man who would come, but his special and particular spiritual character.
These spiritual characteristics are so important that they take precedence over Jesus’ actual name. We learn that the descending and remaining dove-like Holy Spirit will identify him. We learn that Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, recognises him as the Messiah, the Christ. This gospel implies that in common with John the Baptiser and his disciples, Andrew and Simon are expecting him, looking, watching, waiting, maybe even actively seeking him.
But John accords Jesus another title – lamb of God. And he says it twice. First it’s, Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then simply, Look! The Lamb of God …
It’s no mere honorific because towards the conclusion of John’s gospel Jesus becomes the sacrificial lamb of Passover, crucified, in John’s gospel only, on the day of preparation, that is, the day the lambs “without spot or blemish” were slaughtered. In other words, John does not have Jesus sharing a final Passover, as do Matthew, Mark and Luke. Instead, the Romans execute the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and they remove his body before Passover begins.
What John’s gospel achieves in that one phrase – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world – is to bring together succinctly and brilliantly two different pieces of biblical anthropology.
Taking the second one first, we have the notion of the scapegoat. The scapegoat was an animal – a goat, duh! – that, once a year, had symbolically laid upon it the sins of the Hebrew nation. They then drove the goat out into the wilderness to fend for itself. But the point was that the goat took away the nation’s sins in what was paradoxically both a symbolic and literal manner. It was a moment of catharsis in which the Hebrew people freed themselves of their sense of guilt, individual and communal, for another year, until the next year. The scapegoat was – nor could it ever be anything but – an imperfect and limited solution to corporate and individual sin.
When John’s gospel gives us the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world we finally have a permanent answer. But John tweaks the scapegoat anthropology very significantly.
First it’s no longer “sins” – acts of sinning – but sin. Singular. This is like the main pod from which all the other minute spores of sinfulness spew forth. Jesus the Lamb of God provides a definitive answer to the whole question of sin and sinfulness by cutting out the middle goat and dealing directly with the source. And second it’s no longer about a single and particular people but extends now to the whole world and every people. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, not just the sins of Israel.
9:30am Westfield
Isaiah 49:1-7 : 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 : John 1:29-42
One of the questions that frequently excites my curiosity is this: If Jesus were to appear today or tomorrow or any time walking down Lake Road, or Westfield or Ypres Road, or any one of the labyrinthine streets and thoroughfares of our Parish – would I recognise him? Would I, as does John the Baptiser in this day’s gospel, be able to announce with the same certainty, Look! The lamb of God!?
I don’t know that I could do that. I could claim in my defence that John had a huge advantage that I don’t have – namely an explicit statement from the Living God describing, not the physical details of the man who would come, but his special and particular spiritual character.
These spiritual characteristics are so important that they take precedence over Jesus’ actual name. We learn that the descending and remaining dove-like Holy Spirit will identify him. We learn that Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, recognises him as the Messiah, the Christ. This gospel implies that in common with John the Baptiser and his disciples, Andrew and Simon are expecting him, looking, watching, waiting, maybe even actively seeking him.
But John accords Jesus another title – lamb of God. And he says it twice. First it’s, Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then simply, Look! The Lamb of God …
It’s no mere honorific because towards the conclusion of John’s gospel Jesus becomes the sacrificial lamb of Passover, crucified, in John’s gospel only, on the day of preparation, that is, the day the lambs “without spot or blemish” were slaughtered. In other words, John does not have Jesus sharing a final Passover, as do Matthew, Mark and Luke. Instead, the Romans execute the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and they remove his body before Passover begins.
What John’s gospel achieves in that one phrase – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world – is to bring together succinctly and brilliantly two different pieces of biblical anthropology.
Taking the second one first, we have the notion of the scapegoat. The scapegoat was an animal – a goat, duh! – that, once a year, had symbolically laid upon it the sins of the Hebrew nation. They then drove the goat out into the wilderness to fend for itself. But the point was that the goat took away the nation’s sins in what was paradoxically both a symbolic and literal manner. It was a moment of catharsis in which the Hebrew people freed themselves of their sense of guilt, individual and communal, for another year, until the next year. The scapegoat was – nor could it ever be anything but – an imperfect and limited solution to corporate and individual sin.
When John’s gospel gives us the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world we finally have a permanent answer. But John tweaks the scapegoat anthropology very significantly.
First it’s no longer “sins” – acts of sinning – but sin. Singular. This is like the main pod from which all the other minute spores of sinfulness spew forth. Jesus the Lamb of God provides a definitive answer to the whole question of sin and sinfulness by cutting out the middle goat and dealing directly with the source. And second it’s no longer about a single and particular people but extends now to the whole world and every people. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, not just the sins of Israel.
But the divine solution isn’t the removal of sin as such from the world, or individual sins. It’s more elegant than that. It allows us humans to retain our free will to choose God or not-God but in the event that we choose not-God and therefore sin we now have recourse to an ever-present solution when we change our minds and return to the Living God.
That solution, quite simply, is grace. Gone is the delusion that we ourselves can deal with the sin thing – because we can’t. Instead God devises a way through that Jesus mediates through the Holy Spirit: every time we wander away from and then return to God, God simply forgets whatever it is we feel guilty about. And that’s grace.
And it’s worldwide. It’s nation-wide and people-wide and religion-wide. You heard me. It’s not restricted to Christians. If it was, then it wouldn’t be grace. It would be some kind of client-centered favour doled out to particular people, to some but not others. It would mock and make a foul lie of Paul’s assertion that God has no favourites. So let no one live with the cruel delusion that Christians are better or more favoured than anyone else in God’s universe. We aren’t. Because if we were then grace would not be grace!
Jesus the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world.
And that’s the second part of John’s exquisite conflation. As the Passover Lamb, Jesus becomes the living symbol of God’s salvation. The Passover is about liberation from bondage to the promise of freedom – a freedom not exactly handed to anyone on a platter, silver or otherwise. Rather, it’s a freedom we have to work for, if only to that extent that we consciously choose to seek it and accept it.
But the point is that for each one of us Passover through Jesus now becomes a global phenomenon also. Liberation is available to all who choose it, through exactly the same mechanism of grace.
But wait! Let’s remember that the lamb is generally a gentle creature. Jesus isn’t the Lion of God who takes away the sin of the world. He’s the Lamb. And the Lamb not only refuses but actively negates the violence implicit in the whole scapegoat thing by absorbing that violence on the cross and showing us how possible it is.
We see the shift from a single people – Israel – to a universal plan as early as Second Isaiah:
He made my mouth like a sharp sword,
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me away.
Perhaps God toyed with the idea of allowing Israel to meet violence with violence. But even in that intermediate phase God puts the sharp sword and polished arrow on the back burner and then decides that the way to go is global:
"It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
God decides to give Israel a shot at being the agents of a new, redemptive, non-violent approach.
Ultimately the new approach failed. Israel simply could not do it. No nation could have done it. So, in Johannine theology, the Living God sends the Son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
It’s still universal. But this time it succeeds. This time we have a lamb of freedom instead of a violence-smothered goat. This time the solution to sin is ongoing and timeless. Through the grace and, as Paul rightly adds, peace of Christ, the Lamb who absorbs the violence in every human heart.
And maybe that’s the answer to my question. Maybe we should all, as we leave here today, be truly attentive to those people casually strolling about out there on Lake Road or St George’s Terrace or wherever we happen to be during the week. Maybe what we’re looking for is someone who exudes grace and peace, someone whose demeanour speaks of love and invitation and welcome, no matter who we are or what the colour of our flesh or the manner of our encounter with the divine.
Who knows? maybe someone out there might see one of us and quietly and hopefully think to themselves, That person reminds me of someone … the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world …
Grace and peace be with you all -
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