Behold the Lamb of God

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Last Monday, we celebrated the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Today, we seem to encounter a déjà vu moment. Unlike the synoptic gospels, the Fourth Gospel only has this second hand reported account of the Baptism of the Lord. Being a reported account rather than a direct record of the incident by the evangelist does not diminish its value. In fact, there is added value in the testimony of an eye witness, no less than St John the Baptist. This is no mere clinical and factual account of what others would have witnessed but also provides us with John’s own mystical insight of this event.

St John the Baptist sees our Lord approaching him and cries out in an imperative almost commanding voice addressing the crowd: “Look!” John did not use the rather tepid words “this is”. Rather the original Greek is ‘ide,’ which is an exclamation, and is matched well in formal English by “behold!” It’s the kind of expression when an artist unveils his masterpiece. The invitation to ‘behold’ helps us then to better visualise what John the Baptist is doing – he spots his cousin Jesus, points a finger in His direction and in a loud thundering voice exclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God! Behold him who takes away the sins of the world!”

The next day, John is standing with two disciples. Again, he sees Jesus coming towards them, and for the sake of his disciples he repeats the words, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’. This time these words are directed to his own disciples, not the crowd in general. The Baptist acts as a kind of sign-post – testifying to the One who is greater than he. John points away from himself to Jesus. It is clear that John intended his own disciples to leave him and join Jesus. They were now expected to give their undivided attention to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John understands that his own ministry is ending – it will end. The time has come for them to follow the Messiah.

What does John expect his disciples and all of us to behold? What did he mean when he conferred on Jesus the beautiful title of the ‘Lamb of God’?

First, the “Lamb of God” is not a phrase from the scriptures that is traditionally associated with the Messiah. There is one verse in Isaiah (53:7) where the “Suffering Servant” is described as “a lamb that is led to slaughter”. For the Jews, the image of a lamb resonates with them as they remember the sin atoning sacrifices offered at the Temple. Forgiveness of sins and worship in general was a messy and bloody affair. Thank God, we Catholics have the confessional and the Mass. But for the Jews, no blood no gain. Unblemished lambs were sacrificed every morning and evening in the Temple as a sin offering, and also at the great annual festival of Passover to mark the great event of Israel’s liberation. John’s gospel supports this motif by stating that Jesus was slain at the very time that the Passover lambs were being killed in the Temple.

But then, John does not stop with the title ‘Lamb of God’, but introduces a further imagery – this is the Lamb of God “who takes away the sin of the world.” This seems to recall the scapegoat, over whose head the Jewish High Priest confessed the sins of the people on the Day of Atonement. The goat was then driven away into the wilderness, as a sign that God in His mercy had removed far away the sins of the people. So added to the Passover themes of deliverance and rescue, of freedom from slavery, is the theme of atonement for our sins.

The words of John the Baptist finds a parallel, a sort of parody, at the end of the gospel of John. Pontius Pilate presents Him, flogged, bloodied, crown with thorns before an angry mob crying out for His execution. Pontius Pilate announces to them, “Ecce Homo” (Latin), “Behold the Man”. This disfigured person seems too human, in comparison to the idealised image of the Messiah they were expecting – a man of skin, blood and bones. “Behold the man!” Pilate didn’t know what he was saying, but John the apostle did. Jesus is the perfect man. The image of the invisible God, the beginning and the end, the One in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. The One who shows us what God always intended humanity to be like. He is the One who takes the shame of our sin and bears the mockery of evil. The masterpiece of God’s creative work. When, therefore, Pilate sarcastically introduced Jesus with: “Behold, the man!” he said far more than he knew. “Behold, the man!” — indeed! We see before us not just a Man, we see before us the Invisible God made visible!

But it is in the Book of the Apocalypse, where we will see a convergence of these two images - Jesus identified as the Lamb of God at the beginning of the gospel of St John and Jesus as the Man of Sorrows at its end. It is the scene where St John describes his vision: “Then I saw, in the middle of the throne with its four living creatures and the circle of the elders, a Lamb standing that seemed to have been sacrificed; it had seven horns, and it had seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits that God has sent out over the whole world.” (Apoc 5:6) Jesus is the Lamb “standing” or “resurrected,” who had willingly allowed Himself to be “sacrificed” on the cross! The Book of the Apocalypse points back to the scene of the crucifixion on Golgotha and we now fully understand what the Baptist and Pilate could only perceive incompletely: the One on the cross is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” “Behold!”

One of the great challenges of our time and even for the first disciples of Jesus, was making sense of Him being crucified. If He truly was the Son of God why did He suffer and die? Even the resurrection does not stifle this questioning, that Jesus rose from the dead does not make His suffering and dying any less real and problematic. But the answer to this problem at the end of the story, is found at its very beginning. It was the same two disciples who had followed John the Baptist who remembered his cryptic words “Behold, the Lamb of God!” and made the connexion between the innocent Jesus and the lamb of the Passover; linking His passing with the events of Exodus. The first disciples of Jesus preached His death not as a defeat, but as a sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world. Their ideas crystallised around the phrase “Lamb of God” and from being something shameful, the cross became their boast, from being a symbol of defeat, the cross has become a symbol of victory. His death was necessary in exchange for our lives.

That is why Christian liturgy and art show just how powerful the image of Christ as “the Lamb of God” is for Christians. Our Eucharistic liturgy still echoes the prophetic words of John the Baptist; the host is elevated and the priest says “Behold, the Lamb of God” – we are to look and recognise the innocent victim whose death takes our sins away. We recall Christ’s sacrifice as the Lamb of God, we recognise that in communion we taste forgiveness and life, liberation and salvation, the fruits and benefits of His passion. We behold Christ, in whom God has taken human flesh, and in seeing – beholding – Christ, we behold God. This is not just a man who has made Himself to be the Son of God. That was Pilate’s mistake. The Baptist understood and wanted his disciples to see what he saw. This is the Son of God who has made Himself the Man, the Lamb sacrificed and slain and left for dead but now standing erect because He is risen! Behold! Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world