Epiphany 2A
January 19, 2020

O God,manifest in us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Since the beginning of Advent, our Sunday Gospel readings have been from Matthew, and we will return to Matthew next week. But this morning it is as if the lectionary announces, “we interrupt our serial reading of the Gospel of Matthew to bring you this Good News from the Gospel of John. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John the Baptist has testified to it.” Our lectionary has decided to call witnesses!

You know, there’s a question that I sometimes get asked. “What does ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world mean?’” And when I’m at my best as a pastoral listener, my response is, “What do you think?” Part of me is truly interested in what the questioner thinks. And part of me is stalling for time. We sing or say those words in the Agnus Dei as the bread and wine of our Eucharist are portioned out so that they can be shared. It’s a moment of deep holiness for me and for many of you when our hearts and bodies are being prepared to receive and be transformed by the elements of bread and wine. Those liturgical words date back to the late 7th century, and seem to have been put into the service as a reactionary protest to a canon law at the time that forbade depicting the Christ of God in the form of a lamb. The same council [1] also declared that alleluias would not be said during Lent, affirmed the right of married men to become priests, and charged that people who are already dead should not be given the bread and wine of communion because they can neither take nor eat! The Bishop of Rome agreed to eschew the alleluias during Lent, and refrain from administering communion to those already dead, but married priests were rejected, and Christ depicted as a lamb was affirmed.

Going back further, in the mid-second century, Justin Martyr wrote about Jesus: “the pascha was the Christ who was afterwards sacrificed…as the blood of the Passover saved us who were in Egypt, so also the blood of Christ will deliver from death those who have believed.” This probably sounds familiar to you in terms of a traditional sacrificial theology: that believers were saved by the blood of Christ. And perhaps you recall the ancestor of this idea from the Passover story that a lamb was to be slaughtered and its blood wiped on the doorframes of the Hebrew people so that God would pass by or hover over their houses and not kill their first born sons. So, the blood of the lamb was both a sign of identification and a promise of protection. We know that the practice by the time of the Second Temple was that observant Jews were obligated to bring a lamb for Passover, and only those who were obligated to bring a lamb were permitted to share in the meal. We also know that faithful people who were too poor to offer a lamb had an alternative. A poor person’s offering was a dove. So, the Holy Spirit, coming in the form of a dove, was an offering that poor people would recognize and appreciate.

When I imagine the writer of the Gospel of John, at the end of the first century, telling the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, and giving the background of what led up to the crucifixion, I can see that John the Evangelist had a much stronger feeling about the ritual sacrificial aspect of Jesus’ death than the other three evangelists did. For example, in his gospel, John changed the timing of the crucifixion, departing from the chronology reported by the other gospels, so that the last supper was not a Passover Seder but a regular dinner, and the crucifixion happened on the day before the Feast of Passover when the lambs were killed for the meal. It’s a jarring theological move.

It also seems clear to me that John the Evangelist was addressing people who were still devoted to following the teachings of John the Baptist and others who were following the teachings of Jesus – and he wanted them to join together, so he emphasized in his narrative how much John the Baptist loved and admired Jesus once he met him at the Jordan. In each of the four Gospel stories, the baptismal inauguration of Jesus’ ministry gets grander. From Jesus having a personal experience of the voice of God, to the gathered community experiencing the voice of God, to John’s public testimony, the story grows in scale and in details in the years between the earliest Gospel of Mark and the latest Gospel of John, in which John the Baptist didn’t mind at all that his followers left him to follow Jesus.

For a passage that self-consciously translates Rabbi, Messiah, and Cephas, I wonder, why stop there? For example, it’s not clear at all whether John the Evangelist was making “Lamb of God” into a title, or what it might mean. Lamb of God is not a title in the Hebrew Bible or in the other Gospels. Paul refers to Christ as the paschal lamb in 1 Corinthians, and 1 Peter refers to the blood of Christ being unblemished like a lamb, but a lamb was not a sacrificial offering for sin in ancient Judaism. And then there’s the Book of Revelation with nearly thirty references to the lamb – the lamb that was slaughtered, and the lamb from which flow the four rivers of paradise. I think that what we’ve got is early evidence of a developing idea about the capital punishment of Jesus being joined with the idea of salvation coming through blood sacrifice. The problem with this idea is that it has been far more death-dealing than life-giving in the history of Christianity, and it’s certainly not the only way to interpret how the sin of the world might be taken away.

We can make the L in Lamb lower case, and back away from the idea of “Lamb of God” as an exclusive title for Jesus, since our earliest or oldest copies of scripture don’t have capital/lower case letter distinctions or punctuation or even spaces between words. Capitalizing the L in Lamb is an editorial choice with theological motivations that I do not share. I want to suggest that we make and affirm a different choice. Judaism has moved far beyond blood sacrifice and it’s beyond time for Christians to do the same. If we lower the case of the L in lamb, then Jesus is the lamb of God, the sheep in the fold of the good shepherd, and followers of Jesus can all be lambs of God – can all be sheep in the fold of the good shepherd. We can all take away, or carry the sin of the world, that is, we can all help lift the burdens of oppression, slavery, violence, injustice and other distortions that damage right-relationship.

And so when the bread and wine of Eucharist are offered with the words: behold who you are, and the people respond, may we become what we see – what we are affirming is our identity as lambs of God – as members of God’s flock. We are acknowledging our hunger and thirst for nourishment. We are anticipating taking in nourishment so that we can nourish others in Jesus’ name. We receive the bread so that we can become the bread for the world. We acclaim that we are full participants in repairing the various breaches, in reconciliation and peace-making.

That in fact might be an answer to Jesus’ question, “what are you looking for?” We are looking for a teacher of reconciliation and peace-making. What are you looking for? Translated differently, also means, what are you searching for, pursuing, striving for, wanting? The disciples’ response, without punctuation and capitalization, is simply: “a teacher.” We are looking for a teacher. They want to know from Jesus,“Where are you staying?” can mean where are you lodging; it can also mean where is the substance of your being? Where are you nourished, loved, where do you love? Where do you come alive? Where do you remain alive?

And Jesus’ answer is, “Come and see.” “Come and see” is a refrain that echoes in John’s Gospel. Jesus says it first. Then his followers say it to others – Philip says it to Nathaniel; the woman at the well says it to the people in the city. And this is not just any invitation. This is an invitation that will change lives. I’m fond of an old Hasidic understanding of scripture that every word is true for every person at every time. So I’m hoping by now that you can imagine that this passage has something to do with you, wherever you are on your spiritual journey. Here is Jesus asking what you are searching for, what you are striving for, what you are wishing for, what you are wanting. Here you are responding that you wonder about where Jesus stays – where Jesus comes and remains alive. 

We will have a magnificent example of the abundant and infinite love of God in our service this morning as we welcome Elliot Zaine into the Christian family. Elliot, which is translated “one with God” and Zaine, which is translated “God is gracious.” If this sounds like a lot of pressure, it’s not, it’s a description of who and Whose he already is. His mothers are inviting all of you who are here this morning to come and see. Our baptism ritual is communal, meaning that the rite invites all of you to remember the abundant and infinite love and grace of God that we are all swimming in. Here is Jesus inviting you to come and see. Come and see the abundant and infinite love of God. Come and catch the glow so that you, too, can lift the gloom of the sin of the world and shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory. 

Post-script: Once Elliot’s family and Godparents have come to the font, I invite anyone who would like a closer look to gather around. Our bishop’s office is filming the baptism today for a video about vocational discernment. I usually encourage folks to take out their phones and take lots of pictures at Emmanuel Church baptisms, and today is no different, but until his adoption is finalized, Elliot’s photograph or any other details about him must not be shared on social media – not Facebook or Twitter or websites. Even emailing is strongly discouraged. So I’m begging your restraint because we don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize his forever home with Margaret and Meghan. Finally, I’ve brought some water for Elliot’s baptism from the spring, or Quelle at Meryamana, Mary’s House in Ephesus. And Elliot’s mother, Meghan, has blessed some salt to put on his tongue, an old Christian custom – salt is a preserver, cleanser or purifier, flavor enhancer, healing agent, currency of great value, and a sign of covenantal permanence.

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