Lamb's Blood




Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

Thus does John the Baptist fulfill his entire life’s work. For this he was born, to this he was called: to herald the Christ, to serve as the Forerunner of our Lord. And now that Jesus has inaugurated His public ministry, as confirmed by the descent of the Holy Spirit of God, John points beyond himself and cries, “There! There is the Lamb of God! Look unto Him!” And so John’s own disciples become Jesus’ first Apostles.

Everyone was waiting for the Messiah. Jews and pagans alike had their prophecies of the Christ. But this seems an unusual sort of introduction, when we think on it. For indeed, people had anticipated the roaring Lion of Judah, and instead John presents them with a Lamb. Not the most inspiring nom de guerre, now is it? Revolutionaries and freedom fighters aren’t exactly lining up to call themselves “the lambs.” Wolves, maybe; that would have a bit more panache. But how on earth should a Lamb stand up to Caesar and his Legions?

When we postmoderns think of lambs, if we think on them at all, innocence, gentleness, vulnerability come to mind. And likely the ancients would agree. But the first thing that’s going to go through the heads of John’s Second Temple audience—when he proclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God”—is blood. The blood of the lamb. And that’s because of Passover.

You know the story, or at least I hope that you do. Long ago, well over a thousand years before Jesus and John the Baptist, the people of Israel were enslaved in the land of Egypt. Not only did the Pharaoh set them to hard labor, but he also claimed their children, killing their newborn sons in order to keep their numbers down. You want to have enough slaves to labor, but not enough to rebel.

And so God sent Moses, born a Hebrew slave, raised a prince of Egypt, with a foot in either realm. Through Moses, God pronounced His judgment upon the gods of Egypt, via the infamous Ten Plagues, laying low the greatest empire of its day in order to rescue a rabble of Asiatic slaves. This is the tale of the Exodus, the founding myth of the Israelite nation, and thus of the Jewish people, Jesus’ people. And the action reaches its climax in the Passover.

On the night of the Tenth Plague—when God would send the Destroyer unto every household in Egypt, revoking the life of their firstborn just as they had murdered the Hebrew children—on that night Moses instructed the people to eat a particular meal. Each faithful household was to roast a lamb with their loins girded and their staves in their hands; for freedom would come so quickly that the bread they’d prepared would have not the time to arise.

Most importantly, the people were to take the blood of the lamb and to paint it upon the posts and lintels of their doorways, marking themselves as people of God, as inheritors of His promise. Any family could do this: Hebrew, Egyptian, what-have-you. If they trusted in God, and in the blood of the lamb, then the Destroyer would pass over that household, preserving them from death and liberating them from slavery.

Thus, every year, for centuries before Christ, the Israelite people ate the Passover, remembering not only how God had saved them and set them free, but also how He continues to do so in every home, in every generation, unto this very day. So when John says, in our Gospel reading, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that he speaks of the Passover Lamb. While not technically a sin offering by the sacrificial regulations of the Temple, the blood of the lamb sets us free to be people of God, to return to our rightful home.

All of our Gospels make this connection, between Jesus and the Passover. His Last Supper is a Passover meal, and so then also is our Eucharist. Even His birth in Bethlehem sets the stage, for the winter lambs, over which the shepherds kept their famous watch by night, were largely destined for the Passover meal in Jerusalem come spring.

Yet take note that John does not say, “Behold the Lamb of God, who sets His people free.” No, he proclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Christ is and has always been a Jew. But He comes to us now not to rescue one people, one nation, from slavery to Egypt, but all peoples, all nations, from slavery unto sin.

Recall what we said last week, that sin is separation from God, the wounding of our relationship with our Creator, with our Father. Christ then is the cure. In Him, all division, any hint of separation, between God and Man, betwixt Creator and Creation, evaporates like smoke upon the breeze. In Christ, the divine and the human are One. This makes Him more truly human than you or I have ever been; and more clearly God than you or I have ever known.

And what is it that He offers to us in this Eucharistic cup, in this Christian Passover feast? Nothing other than His own Lifeblood, the Blood of the Lamb. He comes to us in Word and in Sacrament, in water and in Spirit, in bread and in wine. All of which is to say that He puts His life in us, His Spirit and His Blood in us, making us into His Body, into the Risen Jesus Christ. The Church is Christ, still at work, in this world.

And that doesn’t mean that we’re perfect. It doesn’t make us any better than anyone else. But it does make us Jesus for a world in need of Him. That is the most impossible promise, the most ludicrous blessing, and the somberest duty that could ever be laid upon any of us. Thank God that in this quest, in this calling, in Jesus, we have never been alone. We are sinners in need of grace, and grace is lavished upon us. So now, together, we must share that grace, that life of Christ, with everyone in need.

Taking away the sin of the world doesn’t mean we’re never wrong. Christians screw up all the time. And it certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t any consequences for our actions. Taking away the sin of the world means that when we are one in Christ, then we are one with God. It means that He is with us always, unto the end of the age. And because of that, we are freed from the tyranny of our sin, freed from our fear of the grave, freed to start over, to resurrect, every single morning when we rise.

God gave to us His Son—He comes to us as the Son—to make us all His Son.

For there is now no distance, no separation, between our Father and His children. In Christ, He has pumped His Blood into our veins and breathed His Spirit into our lungs. He has gone all the way to Hell and back to prove to us His love—to prove that there is nowhere we can go, and nothing we can do, in order to escape from His inexorable salvation. The road may not be easy. Healing never is. But Christ is beside us and beyond us and within us. And because of that, none of us can ever be lost again.

Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.







Pertinent Links

RDG Stout
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St Peter’s Lutheran
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Nidaros Lutheran
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026

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