THE LAMB OF GOD
20 January 2008
Texts: Isaiah 49.3, 5-6;
I Corinthians 1.1-3;
John 1.29-34
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
But how?
How does a ‘lamb’ bear away the sins of the world?
How does being a ‘lamb’ save?
How does Jesus being a ‘lamb’ save us?
In John the Baptist’s mind and in biblical tradition, of course, the lamb is associated with sacrifice. Lambs were the most common victims in Israel’s cultic sacrifices. But that begs the question, Why lambs? Why sacrifice lambs rather than cats or dogs or guinea pigs?
The first reason is that, in a society where food was scarce, lambs were precious. The sacrifice of a lamb usually represented a considerable cost. It was therefore a token of serious intent on the part of the one making the sacrifice.
But the second reason for the popularity of lambs as sacrificial victims was their connotation of vulnerability and innocence. So when the prophet Nathan took King David to task for engineering the death of Uriah in order to marry Uriah’s wife, he likened the widowed and manipulated Bathsheba to a “little ewe lamb” (II Sam. 12.3). Like a lamb, Bathsheba was innocent and vulnerable.
So lambs were popular victims because their sacrifice betokened a cordial sincerity and earnestness on the part of the one offering them; and because of their connotation of innocence and vulnerability.
But how does sacrifice help? How does costly sacrifice save? How does the costly sacrifice of the innocent and vulnerable save us from our sins?
One important clue lies in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, a little further on from this morning’s reading. In the famous 53rd chapter we read:
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes we are healed….
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb,
so he opened not his mouth. (3-5, 7)
What have sacrifice and vulnerable innocence to do with salvation?
According to this passage of Isaiah, what saves is the self-sacrifice of the vulnerable innocent. The innocent suffers the injury of contempt and rejection, and yet he opens not his mouth. The innocent victim does not protest. He does not resist. He does not strike back. He swallows his rightful indignation. He foregoes self-defence. He forbears in the face of outrageous injustice.
In this way he bears his oppressors’ unwarranted contempt and rejection. He bears their injustice. He bears their sin without retaliating.
That is his self-sacrifice.
As you know, this image of the Suffering Servant was one that several authors of the New Testament found illuminating in trying to understand how Jesus’ life and death help to save us. Indeed, there are faint echoes of it in the Gospel of St John before we reach this morning’s reading:
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. (1.10-11)
But it’s in the Acts of the Apostles that St Luke has Philip explicitly use the image of the Suffering Servant to expound the significance of Jesus to the Ethiopian eunuch (8.32).
And it’s in Luke’s Gospel that we find, I think, a further, vital clue. For it is Luke who has Jesus look down from the cross to which he is nailed and say, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (23.34).
Jesus, the innocent victim, absorbs the blows. He suffers the injustice meted out to him. He puts up with it. He bears it. He doesn’t defend himself. Before Pilate he is laconic. Before Herod he is silent. He sacrifices himself. He makes a lamb of himself.
Well, that may be noble. It may be morally admirable. But how does it help? How does it change anything? How does it save? How exactly does Jesus’ bearing sin, bear it away?
The answer is two-fold: partly through his passivity; and partly through his forgiveness—or, better, compassion.
To be passive and silent in the face of oppression is not, in fact, to do nothing. Rather, it is to let the oppression show itself for what it is. It is to let it condemn itself from its own mouth. It is to expose it. As the author of the Letter to the Colossians puts it, “Jesus disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him” (2.15).
When the victim refuses to muddy the waters with retaliation, he helps the wrongdoer to see what he has done. So, for example, when the centurion in charge of the crucifixion party witnessed Jesus’ death and the manner of it, according to the Gospel of Luke “he praised God, and said, ‘Certainly this man was innocent!” (Luke 23.47). And by implication: “We are guilty”.
There are times when passivity and silence can speak volumes, and convert minds and hearts. Sometimes the eloquence of wounded silence can woo repentance.
But there is silence, and there is silence. Silence can adopt different manners and say quite different things. We all know the silence that glowers, the silence that accuses, the silence that wags its finger, the silence that takes the moral high ground and wants to dominate. We all know the silence that would manipulate.
Which is why silence alone is not enough. The silence that would save, rather than control, needs compassion. It needs to recognize the wrongdoer as one of us, not one of them. As a fellow creature largely driven by forces of which he has little understanding and less control—forces of history and family, of anxiety and lust; forces with which the victim is all too familiar.
The silence that would save must speak its word of judgement out of compassion.
The centurion who recognized Jesus’ innocence and his own guilt, the centurion who was moved to repentance, was also the centurion who heard Jesus say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.
Judgement alone tends to provoke resistance and self-justification. Compassionate judgement can liberate repentance and create reconciliation.
Imagine that you have wronged a friend. Perhaps you betrayed a confidence, or said something unkind about them, or let them seriously down. And now they know. And you know it.
And here you are, walking down the street. And there they are, walking toward you. And there’s no side-alley down which to escape; nor any shop in which to hide. So you brace yourself for the indignant accusation, maybe the outraged assault. And you arm yourself with excuses and self-justification and maybe even counter-accusation.
But when you meet, your victim’s face is not so much condemning as it is hurt and bewildered and searching. It doesn’t say “Damn you!” or “How could you?!”. Instead, it says “Do you understand what you did? Can you help me to trust you again?”.
And immediately all your defences fall to the ground, and before you can stop yourself you hear your lips volunteer, “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry!”
Passivity in the face of oppression exposes and judges. Compassion turns that judgement away from domination, and toward reconciliation.
This is how being lamblike saves. Through its combination of judgement and compassion it helps to woo wrongdoers to repentance, and thus to reconciliation.
And how does Jesus being lamblike save us?
If Jesus is God incarnate, then God wears Jesus’ face. As Jesus responded to those who did him wrong, so God responds to creatures who wrong themselves and each other. God’s judgement is not about domination and control. It’s about trying to show us the evil that we’re doing to others and to ourselves. It’s about trying to woo us away from abuse and self-abuse, and back into health and friendship.
At the Last Supper, Jesus shared the bread and wine of fellowship with those whom he knew were about to betray and desert him.
And God wears the face of Jesus.
So when, in a moment, we enter the eternal drama of the Last Supper, we will receive the bread and wine of fellowship from the God whom we wound, but who still persists in looking upon us with the searching eye of compassion.
“Behold the Lamb of God, who bears—and helps to bear away—the sins of the world!”
The Revd Canon Nigel Biggar Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology