Peace be with you friends. After the advent Christmas season, we return now to ordinary time. So, we're the second Sunday of ordinary time.
But something very interesting to me, the way the church has composed uh the liturgy, the readings. So, last week was the feast of the baptism of the Lord. So, we heard St.
Matthew's account of the baptism. And I told you in all the gospels, you're compelled to see Jesus through the lens of John the Baptist. And that's true.
So today now the church is it's like we we didn't have enough time to reflect on the meaning of the baptism. So it's asking us again to think about it but this time in light of St. John's account of the baptism of the Lord which is distinctive.
Let me read to you the first couple lines here. John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him. So there's John in the, you know, banks of the River Jordan and people are coming to him and so he sees Jesus and he says, "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
" Now you recognize that line because at the mass right after when we hold up the consecrated elements and the priest says, "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. " He repeats John the Baptist words here. Can I suggest everybody this is of absolutely decisive significance as I say you can't get at Jesus without going through John.
John is giving us the interpretive lens by which we see and understand Jesus. Now let me just do this by way of contrast and please I don't mean any disrespect at all here to other great religious founders. I just want to make a a distinction.
Let's say if the the Buddha were coming forward, you say, "Oh, look, there's the one who's been enlightened, you know, he was under the bodhic tree and he came to enlightenment and then he shares with us the fruits of that enlightenment. Look, there's the enlightened one. " If Confucious came forward, you, oh, look, there's the one who's put together this very compelling moral um ethical system.
Uh Muhammad comes forward. Oh, there's the one who, you know, gave us the Quran. Moses comes forward.
Oh, look, there is the the lawgiver. That's how he'd probably characterize these other founders. John the Baptist doesn't say as Jesus comes forward, "Oh, look, there's the definitive teacher.
" Though Jesus was indeed a teacher. Doesn't say, "Oh, look, there's the lawgiver. " Though he was a kind of new Moses.
Doesn't say, "Oh, look, here comes the great wonderworker. " Though he was a wonderworker. What does he say?
Look, there's the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Ah, now we get it. You want to know what's distinctive about Jesus?
That's it. Now, you say lamb of God. Okay, that means he's a nice gentle figure.
No, no, no. Um, go back to that time in that place. Especially on the lips of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist, we know, was the son of Zechariah, the priest, the temple priest, son of Elizabeth, who came from a priestly family, going back to Aaron. He's a super priestly character. What did priests know about?
They knew about temple sacrifice. So, I've spoken to you before about the temple in Jerusalem, which was like everything. It was the center of Jewish life.
And the central preoccupation of the priests in the temple was the performance of these sacrifices involving different types of animals but paradigmatically involving lambs who were sacrificed unto the Lord. Now for different reasons. sometimes just as a as an expression of thanksgiving, an expression of praise, but typically as atonement for sin, a sin offering.
Now, how did that work? I know it's it's an kind of alien idea to us, but someone coming to the temple with this animal, this by the way very innocent and sweet and gentle animal that that made no protest, it gave no resistance. As the throat of the animal was slit and its blood poured out, the person offering the sacrifice was intended to think what's happening to this animal by rights should be happening to me.
He would by a kind of transference displace onto this animal his own guilt. So that in the offering of the animals blood he was expressing his own responsibility, guilt, reparation, sorrow. And then as the animal is offered as a as a holocaust, he's meant to feel now the forgiveness of God that through this great act of representative sacrifice.
So he's not cutting his own throat. He's cutting the throat of the animal who represents his sin before the Lord. So John the Baptist knew all about this.
He knew all about this world. And he says about Jesus, look, there's the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. All the lambs sacrificed in the temple, the the hundreds of thousands of lambs, John is implying didn't perform the task.
They didn't accomplish the goal of the forgiveness of sins. Here is the lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world. You know, let me just keep kind of ringing the changes on this theme of lamb because I want to get into the mind space of those who would have heard John the Baptist temple sacrifice.
Yes, indeed. But go back to the very beginning. Remember Cain and Abel offer sacrifices.
One accepted, the other not. Abel's accepted sacrifice was the sacrifice of a lamb. Look at the Passover.
the great expression of of the Exodus and it centers around the sacrifice and eating of a lamb. Think of that terrible scene in the book of Genesis. The Jews call it the Akeda.
It means the binding the binding of Isaac. As as Abraham and his beloved son are at the top of the mountain, Abel or or rather Isaac observes, "Well, we have everything we need for the sacrifice, but where is the lamb? " he asked his father, breaking his father's heart, of course.
Abraham's answer is, "God will provide the lamb. " Well, you remember in that story, it's not a lamb. They find, you know, once the Lord says to Abraham, "No, no, don't don't sacrifice your son.
" and they find a ram with his horns caught in the thicket and they sacrifice that ram. But Abraham in answer to Isaac's question, God will provide a lamb. H John the Baptist, look, there he is.
There's the lamb that God provides. We can see in the prophet Isaiah look in chapter 53 where the suffering servant is construed as a kind of lamb of sacrifice that the sins of the people are laid upon him by his stripes we are healed. Think on the great day of atonement when the high priest going into the holy of holies would place upon the scapegoat the sins of the people then drive the scapegoat out into the desert to die carrying away the sins of the people but then sacrificing a lamb and spreading its blood around the holy of holies and then upon the people.
You see friends, John the Baptist coming up out of this lomy biblical tradition says, "Look, there's the lamb of God. " That's what he means. That's what he means.
The one who will perform the definitive and final and absolute act of atonement and reparation. Now go back to what I said about the lambs in the temple and the one offering the animal. It's by a great act of substitution.
What's happening to that animal is what is by right should be happening to me. Jesus identifies himself with that role. What happens on the cross everybody?
Oh, it's the, you know, the death of someone uh this good man that was put to death by the Romans as great act of injustice and Yeah. Yeah. It was that.
But seeing now with these eyes of faith, what do we see? Jesus says, and John indicated it, I I I am the lamb of God. See in what is happening to me what by right should be happening to you.
See in in my suffering the price paid for human sin. I spoke last week about Jesus identification with the sinner and that's extremely important. Standing shouldertosh shoulder with sinners.
Yes indeed. But there's something friends here that's even it's more awful in a way but extremely important. Somehow sin has to be dealt with.
It can't just be left alone or forgiven from a distance at some level. Everybody the the price has to be paid. Now, please don't construe that as God is this dysfunctional, you know, an angerholic father that that demands.
That's not it at all. It's this honest sensibility that sin has to be paid for. If not, we're not taking it seriously.
You know, go back over over all of human history and think of of the the the sheer intensity of our dysfunction. Think of of not just individual sins, but the sin that has gripped the entire human race from the beginning. We can't just dismiss that and say, "Oh, well, that's no problem, and God will forgive it from a distance.
" No, no. It it's deep in the biblical sensibility that a price has to be paid. Jesus offers himself as the lamb of God who pays that price.
He pays that price by which we are redeemed. And that word means to be bought back. By which we are ransomed.
So now is as though we're we're held captive as indeed we are by sin but by the act of his sacrifice we are ransomed from our sin. Why did he come? Church father said this.
He came to die. And they don't mean that in some cynical or or simplistic way. He came to offer this sacrifice for our sins.
Can I make one more reference to a lamb? Now, I've I've gone all the way through the Old Testament up to John calling Jesus the lamb. Now, go to the very end of the Bible, the book of Revelation, and they're presented with the sevensealed scroll that represents all of scripture, represents, you might say, all of history.
And the question is raised, who will open the scroll? Who will open these seals? And there's no one that can do it until there arrives.
And it's it's awkwardly slash beautifully described in in the Greek of of the book of Revelation as the lamb standing as though slain. The lamb standing, yes, victorious, but slain. [clears throat] And he's the one who can open the seven seals that reveal for us the meaning of it all.
The meaning of history, the meaning of scripture, the meaning of life. It's the sacrificed lamb on the cross who's the key to understanding everything. Behold, there is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Friends, we're not going to understand Jesus and his cross until we understand what John the Baptist meant by that. and God bless you.
