Lamb of God (8 of 52)
Series: Lectionary, Year A
Christopher B. Harbin
John 1:29-42
We grow accustomed to strange concepts and give them little to no thought. We turn on lights, though most light switches have nothing to turn. We speak of meals by the naming a meat. We dial phone numbers, though our phones are not rotary. We call them phones, but we use them for most anything except phone calls. We live in the information age with a 24-hour news cycle, while our news media will only discuss about three stories at a time because that is all we will pay attention to. When we read the Bible, are we able to appreciate the shocking character of so much of its content?
We read John the Baptist's words about Jesus without giving them much thought. We've heard these words before. They are old hat. John calls Jesus the Lamb of God, talks about Jesus bearing our sin, and claims he would baptize people in God's very Spirit. Then we go on with our lives as though this is all cut and dried. There is nothing shocking here. There is nothing to see. Just move on. For John's disciples, these words were anything but old hat. They were new categories and difficult concepts to grasp. It should be a wonder to us that his disciples didn't just pass him up as off his rocker.
If we go looking in the Hebrew Scriptures for a lamb who bears our sin, we will be at a loss. There was no such lamb in Israel's canonical literature. There was nothing of the kind in the Mosaic law and all the instructions surrounding sacrifice. Sure, there were lambs slaughtered in sacrifice, but that had nothing to do with removing sin. The closest allusion we find to bearing sin is the scapegoat taken into the wilderness bearing the nation's sin and returned to Azazel. This was no lamb but a goat. The next closest picture of a lamb as background to John's words is the Passover lamb killed in Yahweh's redemption of the people from Egypt. Nothing in the Passover tradition, however, links that lamb to ...
Series: Lectionary, Year A
Christopher B. Harbin
John 1:29-42
We grow accustomed to strange concepts and give them little to no thought. We turn on lights, though most light switches have nothing to turn. We speak of meals by the naming a meat. We dial phone numbers, though our phones are not rotary. We call them phones, but we use them for most anything except phone calls. We live in the information age with a 24-hour news cycle, while our news media will only discuss about three stories at a time because that is all we will pay attention to. When we read the Bible, are we able to appreciate the shocking character of so much of its content?
We read John the Baptist's words about Jesus without giving them much thought. We've heard these words before. They are old hat. John calls Jesus the Lamb of God, talks about Jesus bearing our sin, and claims he would baptize people in God's very Spirit. Then we go on with our lives as though this is all cut and dried. There is nothing shocking here. There is nothing to see. Just move on. For John's disciples, these words were anything but old hat. They were new categories and difficult concepts to grasp. It should be a wonder to us that his disciples didn't just pass him up as off his rocker.
If we go looking in the Hebrew Scriptures for a lamb who bears our sin, we will be at a loss. There was no such lamb in Israel's canonical literature. There was nothing of the kind in the Mosaic law and all the instructions surrounding sacrifice. Sure, there were lambs slaughtered in sacrifice, but that had nothing to do with removing sin. The closest allusion we find to bearing sin is the scapegoat taken into the wilderness bearing the nation's sin and returned to Azazel. This was no lamb but a goat. The next closest picture of a lamb as background to John's words is the Passover lamb killed in Yahweh's redemption of the people from Egypt. Nothing in the Passover tradition, however, links that lamb to ...
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