Behold the Lamb of God
18 January 2009
If an academic year is to be compared with a three-movement symphony, then Hilary Term is andante, against the allegretto of Michaelmas and the presto con brio of Trinity. (That exhausts this musical metaphor, thankfully.) Perhaps it is because we are excited by beginnings and exhilarated by endings, and this term is neither. Perhaps it is because we have neither the excuse of being new, babes in the University, nor the cachet of being fully grown and on the verge of going out into the world. Perhaps it is just the dark, the weather, the extra pounds put on over Christmas, or the imminence of Lent. Whatever the reason, this second-act in the year’s three-act drama – there we have it, perhaps, the slight tension, the menace, created through increasing complexity as yet devoid of final resolution – can be hard going, downbeat, dogged, mundane.
This term – this time of year – can be a time for introversion, introspection. We can feel a little adrift, anxious, unsure of our moorings and uncertain of our goals. The question which Our Lord puts to the two disciples, which we heard in the reading from St John’s Gospel a moment ago, is highly pertinent. ‘What do you seek?’ What do you seek? Depending on the seriousness with which you want to address the question, you might answer – to get my next essay in on time; to get my degree; to find a job; to write a novel, poem or play; to meet the true love of my life; or any or none of the above. What do you seek? What – or rather Who – are we searching for?
St John, in those densely compressed and theologically super-charged verses of the first chapter of his Gospel, invites us to understand that the answer to the question, ‘What do you seek?’ is the one who puts the question, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who dwells, abides – or even ‘stays’ – in the bosom of the Father; to ‘see’ Jesus is to believe in him; to stay, abide or dwell with him is to be drawn, in and through him, into union with the Father, and so to experience the knowledge of the glory of God which is eternal life. Andrew’s journey is the journey of faith, our journey, the journey which begins with following the Lord and ends with the beatific vision, the contemplation of God even face to face. It is a journey through which we shall be changed: changed as Simon is changed, who, in coming to Christ – no, being brought to Christ, by Andrew the first evangelist – is now called ‘Peter.’ Between them, Andrew and Peter stand for the entire community of faith, the whole Church: as Pope John Paul II remarked, they represent the ‘two lungs’ of the Church Universal, Peter for Latin or Western Christians, Andrew for the Christian East.
Why is it that Andrew and the other disciple – the one who tradition understands to be the Beloved Disciple – follow the Lord? They do so when they hear the words of John the Baptist: ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’ That is not the first time that John has used that title of Our Lord; when first he sees Jesus walking towards him, he says, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ That phrase, that title, resonates deeply with Andrew and his companion; the Gospel makes a direct connection between the Baptist’s use of the words, and their response. It is when they hear and understand what John the Baptist is saying, when the penny drops – Behold, the Lamb of God – that they feel utterly compelled to follow him. The title takes them immediately to the heart of the mystery of who Jesus is. Like the manifestation of Jesus to the wise men, like his baptism in the River Jordan, like his accomplishment of the miracle of new wine, it is an epiphany, a moment of revelation. The Lamb of God is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah speaks, the ‘lamb led to the slaughter,’ the one ‘wounded for our transgressions’ and ‘bruised for our iniquities,’ the one who ‘bore the sin of many’ and ‘made intercession for the transgressors.’ What do you seek? Him through whom we may know peace with God, Him through whom we may know the forgiveness of our sins, Him who brings us with Him and in Him to the heavenly places, and who continually makes intercession for us with his Father, Jesus, the Lamb of God.
If the two disciples had the prophecy of Isaiah in mind when they heard the Baptist call Jesus the Lamb of God, then they must have also made the link not just with the words of Scripture, but with something which was going on daily – twice daily – almost under their noses. From hints in Numbers, we know that morning and evening in the Temple in Jerusalem two male lambs, a year old, were offered in sacrifice to God. Origen, in his commentary on St John’s Gospel, notes that while various animals were offered up under the old law, yet the daily sacrifice was a lamb: ‘By which it was signified that the offering up of the true Lamb – that is, Christ – was the culminating sacrifice of all.’ Hence, Origen concludes, ‘It is said: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world.’
But why sacrifice at all? It is a word, a concept, so at variance with the assumptions and presuppositions of the modernity, that we need to pause for a moment to consider what is going on when we say first that we should think in terms of offering sacrifice to God, and second why we can say that Our Lord is the perfect sacrifice, the true Lamb of God. So what, properly understood, is sacrifice? The first thing to say is that it is the setting apart – the consecration – of some physical and material reality which is intended to signify the interior disposition of the one who offers it. Why, in so many places, do the prophets rail against the sacrifices offered by the people of ancient Israel? Because they have become empty sacrifices, with no correlation between the external act and the orientation of the heart and mind. Next, we need to understand sacrifice as the necessary consequence of the recognition that human beings, as creatures, are wholly dependent on God, whose help mankind needs in all things; who is infinitely good, and therefore worthy of our adoration and praise; and whom we sinners have offended – for perfect goodness cannot bear the presence of sin – and from whom we have alienated ourselves.
The sacrifice of Jesus, the total and voluntary giving over of his human life to the Father, achieves all that every sacrifice offered before his own has been intended to do, but which has been unable to accomplish, because of that gap between the external act and the interior disposition of the one making the offering, because of human sin. In offering his life in obedience to the Father’s will, Jesus offers perfect praise and adoration. In accepting death, (which is the consequence of sin) he makes atonement for all sin, and calls so calls forth from the Father of all mercies every grace and blessing, which had always been his intended gift. I cannot improve on the words of the most distinguished scholar to have held office as Principal of this House, Darwell Stone, who preached these words just a few minutes walk from here, in the parish church of St Barnabas’, Jericho:
"In the Lord Himself is the central sacrificial life of all the universe. There have been pictures of it all the world over. The sufferings of the brute creation, the cries of women and children, the agonies of men, the dedication of the will in life and death, the rites, sometimes touching, sometimes repulsive of heathen religions, in particular the ordered system of levitical law, all these have in their different ways pointed on to the sacrifice of the cross, to the sacrifice presented in heaven; and in the light of Christ alone can their meaning ever be seen. In him the surrender of the will, the most vital of all the elements of sacrifice, reached its utmost height. He offers Himself. The offering is of His human life, perfect in its morality, stainless in its holiness, completely dedicated to the Father’s will without stint or reserve. The offering is filled with all the power and glory of His godhead, so that from His infinite being, an infinite efficacy is derived."
So what of us, children of the new covenant, reconciled with God through the sacrifice of Christ? Remember the prophets who condemned the empty sacrifices of Israel. It was not that there were to be no sacrifices – but rather that those sacrificial offerings, if they were to be pleasing to God, required a perfect disposition of the will which man alone, in his sinfulness, could never achieve. So with us. The liturgy of the new covenant, our sacrifice of praise, is one with the sacrifice of Christ; hence we must speak of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is because we worship only as that body of which Christ is the Head, Christ the Victim, Christ the Lamb to whom salvation belongs and who sits upon the throne in the Jerusalem above, that we can offer that ‘spiritual worship’ or ‘reasonable worship’ spoken of by St Paul, in a much misunderstood phrase. ‘Spiritual worship’ does not mean that which is now purely interior, individual, private, without outward form or ceremonial; rather it is worship which is still corporate, liturgical, bodily, which still possesses the nature of a sacrifice, but which is radically transformed by the cross of Christ.
Behold, the Lamb of God. It is a phrase which echoes around our Liturgy, as if insistent that we return again and again to the sacrifice of Christ, that we cannot get beyond it or around it; we come to the Father only as we are united with the sacrifice of the Son. Even in our hymn of praise, Gloria in Excelsis Deo, we sing: Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, Lord God, Lamb of God, only Son of the Father, that takest away the sin of the world. When we have prayer the prayer which Jesus taught us, we address him in his sacramental presence, not once, but three times: Agnus Dei…Miserere nobis; Lamb of God, have mercy on us; and we confess that it is from the Lamb that our peace and the peace of the whole world derives; dona nobis pacem. And then before we come to receive the Lord’s very body and blood, again, Ecce Agnus Dei, behold the Lamb of God: the one to whom we pray, Speak, that my soul shall be healed.
The Principal