O.T.-II-C: Is 49:3, 5-6; I Cor 1:1-3; Jn 1:29-34

The Christmas Season ended last Monday with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Today's Gospel immediately follows the Baptism of Jesus as John tells his disciples that this Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

John the Baptist's favorite title for Jesus is "the Lamb of God."  It also became one of John the Evangelist’s favorite titles. He uses it here in his Gospel, and then he used it again, twenty-nine times, in the Book of Revelation. It brings together several images that would have been familiar to the Jews of those times. And so, by calling Christ the "Lamb of God," St John is telling us that those ancient images are fulfilled in Jesus. 

When God asks Abraham to go to one of the mountains in the land of Moriah – perhaps the mount on which the Temple would later be built – and offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering, the unsuspecting Isaac asks his father ‘where is the lamb?’ Abraham’s responds ‘God will provide’ – words which only become at the close of the Old Testament when John the Baptist points to Christ and says ‘Here is the Lamb of God’.

In the Old Covenant, God required the Jews to sacrifice a lamb twice a day to expiate the sins of the people (cf. Exodus 29:39). So the lamb symbolized the price to be paid for sin.

The primary holy day of the Jews was (and remains) the Passover. In the Passover ceremony each family sacrifices and eats a lamb to recall their liberation from Egypt in the days of Moses. On that night, God allowed the death of all the firstborn children and animals of the Egyptians, but spared those of the Hebrews. In order to indicate which households the angel of death was to skip over, God commanded the Hebrews to kill a lamb and mark their doorposts with its blood. Thus the Passover lamb signified God's merciful and saving love. John would say that Jesus would be crucified at the very time the lambs were sacrificed on the feast of the Passover.

Finally, a lamb going silently and docilely to be slaughtered is one of the images used to describe the coming Messiah. The prophet Isaiah speaks of a suffering servant of God, a man who would be despised and rejected by men and wounded for the transgressions of the people. He compares this suffering servant to a lamb that is led to the slaughter. From the very beginning of his life, Jesus is on a trajectory that will lead to the sacrifice of the Cross. He was going to take Israel's sins upon himself and wipe them away through his suffering obedience.

In John's gospel this theme is expertly woven into the story.  The ancient instructions for killing and eating the Passover lamb said, "You must not break any bone of it" (Exodus 12:46).  And so, John says, the soldiers did not break Jesus' legs as he hung on the Cross but pierced him instead with a lance.  Later, near the end of the century, in John's apocalyptic vision he saw "between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered" (Revelation 5:6)  -  that is, dead and raised up again.

And so, by calling Jesus the "Lamb of God," John reminds us that all of these Old Testament symbols had been pointing towards Christ - the true Savior.

This theme is so vital in our understanding of Jesus is that at the breaking of the bread symbolizing the time the death of Jesus is enacted in the mass: the Congregation shouts aloud…the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world…three times.

What also becomes clear in the story is that this Jewish Messiah, this servant of the chosen people, would be a Savior not just for the people of Israel, but for all people. He would take away the sins of the world. Until he came, the task of the chosen people of the Old Testament, as Isaiah insists in our first reading, was to act as a light to the nations. And this task of being a light to the nations is one that we must continue.

We, who through the gift of faith, recognize Jesus as the Son God who takes away the sins of the world have the ongoing mission, like John the Baptist, of pointing out Jesus to the world. Strengthened by the grace given to us in the Eucharist, the sacrament which makes present the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, we must go out as signs and instruments of the love, mercy, and forgiveness that Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, offers to all peoples of the world.