The Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A  
January 20, 2002
Christ Church, Covington

“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’” (Jo. 1:29).

The Gospels tell a story, and they are fond of letting us know from the very start what they are about in telling it.  This story, of course, is the central story of human history, concerning the crucial person of Jesus Christ, and the Gospel writers don’t want us to miss anything.  Not for the Gospel writers is there Jack Webb’s laconic tag, “Just the facts, ma’am”.  There is a story here to tell, rather than an arrest report to be made out, and so the way the story is told is actually quite important.

For our Gospel today, the moment in which John the Baptist recognizes Jesus’ identity is crucial for the story it tells.  The Baptist’s words point the way to the Jesus who will die upon the cross; in other words, in our Gospel perspective, from the very moment of taking up his ministry, Jesus is headed to the main event of death and resurrection.  The Baptist’s words let us know what’s up.

John the Evangelist casts his Gospel in sacrificial terms.  Jesus is “the Lamb of God”, as the Baptist calls him; a reference most likely to the lamb that God commanded the Israelites to kill at the time of the exodus from Egypt.  Each family was to kill a lamb and take the blood from it and mark its door, so that the angel of death would pass over it in delivering the final, catastrophic plague on the Egyptians.  The lamb was to be eaten, as well, and the celebration of this anniversary was to be kept as a festival forever by the People.

Jesus, the Gospel tells us, is this “Lamb of God”, the Lamb who is slain so that the lives of the People may be preserved and the family of Abraham be delivered from slavery.  The Gospel of John isn’t alone in making this claim; Paul the Apostle tells the Corinthians that “Christ our Passsover has been sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7), referring of course to the Paschal Lamb.  But John the Evangelist is especially keen on this metaphor.  In his Gospel alone, Jesus is crucified not on the day after the Passover meal but on the day of the feast, at the moment when the Passover lambs were slain by the Temple priests.  The lamb was to be eaten without any of its bones being broken, and so John is careful to tell us in his account of the crucifixion that none of Jesus’ bones were broken in the final trauma of his life.  The Evangelist wants us to understand that Jesus is the “Lamb of God”, the One whose death defeats death, and whose destruction leads to freedom for God’s People.

Even more, the Baptist announces that Jesus is the Lamb of God “who takes away the sin of the world”.  Sin is what separates humanity from God.  Under the Old Covenant sacrifices of various sorts, of animals and produce, were commanded, whose purpose was the reconciliation of humanity with God.  The slaughter of the Passover lamb itself had come to be understood in this way.  John the Baptist’s words let us know, at the beginning of the story, that Jesus’ death will be such a sacrifice.  As the “Lamb of God”, Jesus will reconcile humanity with God, canceling the destructive power of sin and bringing the two together.  If sin is an awesome chasm of separation, then (to borrow an image from Ephraim of Edessa) Jesus lays down the cross to bridge the gap.

It should be said that sacrifice is a hard notion for modern people to get their minds around.  The redemptive power of sacrifice seems a cruel notion, as if God were being placated by human suffering.  But most of us know, deep down, that love has redemptive power, especially love that is willing to pay such a costly price.  This knowledge of the redemptive power of sacrificial love is one of the reasons that the deaths of police and firefighters on September 11^th have stayed with us.  It’s the redemptive power of love at work, overcoming the selfishness of sin.  In Jesus Christ, God himself shows the depth of his love for us, in giving himself to redeem us.

Jesus’ death and resurrection is the Christian Passover that delivers us from sin and death and reconciles us to God.  At the first Passover, God acted mightily to save the People.  Now, in Jesus Christ, God has acted again, as Deliverer and Reconciler.  As we gather for the celebration of the Eucharist, we remember all that God has done for us in Christ, and receive as present gift in Bread and Wine the fullness of our freedom.  Christ’s Body and Blood is our Passover meal, where we remember and make the memorial.  “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.