Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen
“Behold the Lamb
of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
With these words
John introduces Jesus to the world.
“Behold the Lamb
of God!”
At the end of John’s
Gospel, Jesus is crucified on the day of preparation for the Passover, at the
very time that the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the temple.
Behold the Lamb
of God!
John also makes a
special note that the legs of the two who were crucified with Jesus were broken
to hasten their deaths, however, Jesus had already died at that point and so
his legs were not broken. This was
important to John, as it was forbidden to break any bone of the Passover Lamb.
Behold the Lamb
of God!
The Passover.
Israel
languishing in slavery in Egypt.
Pharaoh was not
inclined to grant Moses’ request to “Let my people go!”
And so what
followed was a series of 10 plagues, each designed to frighten Pharaoh into
releasing the Israelites.
·
The Nile turned to blood
·
Frogs overran the land
·
Then came gnats
·
And flies
·
A deadly pestilence killing Egyptian livestock
·
Boils on their skin
·
Thunder and hail
·
And then locusts
·
And next to the last, darkness covered the
land. So dark, that it could be felt.
All these
plagues, and still the heart of Pharaoh remained hardened.
And then came the
final and most horrific plague.
God would strike
down the firstborn sons throughout all of Egypt. But as for the Israelites, their sons would
be spared if they did as God commanded.
They were to
sacrifice a lamb, a perfect lamb, with no blemishes, and the blood of the lamb
was to be wiped across the lintel of their doors, and seeing this, the angel of
death would “Passover” their homes, and their sons would be spared.
Behold the Lamb
of God that takes away the sin of the world.
The Passover Lamb.
There is another
story that the words “Behold the Lamb of God” calls to mind. We read in Genesis 22 the story of the
sacrifice of Isaac:
1 After these
things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said,
"Here I am." 2 He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac,
whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt
offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you." 3 So Abraham rose
early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with
him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and
went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. 4 On the third day
Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5 Then Abraham said to his young
men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will
worship, and then we will come back to you." 6 Abraham took the wood of
the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the
fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 7 Isaac said to his
father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son."
He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a
burnt offering?" 8 Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb
for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.
9 When they came
to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the
wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the
wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.
11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said,
"Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." 12 He said,
"Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know
that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from
me." 13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its
horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering
instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place "The Lord will
provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the Lord it
shall be provided."
Behold the Lamb of God.
This story of
Abraham and Isaac will always be a special one for me. My dad was a pastor, and was serving in
Worland, WY at the time.
During Lent one
year, he put on theatrical presentations of numerous biblical stories. I participated in two of the dramas. For the story of Jonah and the whale, dad
made a whale and inside of it, I was the one who moved the whale about to
swallow my dad and then spit him out again.
And then we did
Abraham and Isaac. Dad bound me up and
laid me on the altar. He stood before
the altar and lifted up his hunting knife high above his head. And then, a carefully timed recording sounded
from backstage instructing him to not harm me.
And then, he turned to retrieve a
lamb, caught in the bushes, to sacrifice instead. This I don’t remember. I suppose he used a stuffed animal for the
lamb. I don’t know. I can’t remember that part.
What is seared
into my memory, though, is the image of my Father with his hunting knife raised
high above his head, ready to plunge it into me.
And it left me
with a question.
“What kind of
Father would sacrifice his own Son?”
“And why would
they do it?”
The Bible tells
us that God instructed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, as a test of Abraham’s
faith.
“. .
. now I know that you fear God,
since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."
Perhaps it would
make more sense if instead of using the word “fear”, we used the word “love”.
Now I know that
you love the Lord your God, above all else, since you have not withheld your
son, your only son, from me.
Through it all,
Abraham’s faith is evident in his statement to Isaac.
"God himself
will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son."
What kind of
Father would sacrifice his own Son?
And why would he
do it?
The answer is
that it was God who made that sacrifice, not Abraham, as Jesus was offered on
the cross.
And he did so, to
take away the sin of the world, and to cause the angel of death to Passover us,
that we might live with him forever.
Why?
John provides us
with the answer early in the Gospel:
"For God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but may have eternal life.”
"For God so
loved the world that he sacrificed his only Son, so that everyone who
believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
We are not
comfortable with sacrificial language.
It is foreign to
us.
And yet, for each
of us, there is something, someone, who we love enough to make real and
substantial sacrifices for.
In Romans 5, Paul
writes:
“God proves his
love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”
Sacrifice.
Offered in
Love.
God love you so
much, that he was willing to sacrifice his own son.
That much.
One of the youth
of my congregation in Baker, MT preached a sermon at the Montana Synod youth
gathering. One of Jana’s points was what
she called “speciality”. You are so
special, so precious to God, he loves you so much, that even if you were the
only person in the world he would have still offered his Son as a sacrifice to
save you. Speciality.
As uncomfortable
as we are with language about sacrifice, there is a truth about it that is absolute.
Love that is
unwilling to sacrifice for the sake of the other is not love at all.
Love that is
unwilling to sacrifice is nothing.
Behold the Lamb
of God, the one God himself sacrificed for you.
At the end of
John’s Gospel we hear the rest of the story.
"Simon son
of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord;
you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs."
16 A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to
him, "Tend my sheep." 17 He said to him the third time, "Simon
son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the
third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you
know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed
my sheep. 18 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten
your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will
stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take
you where you do not wish to go."
“Do you love me?” Jesus asks.
Feed my sheep.
“Do you love me?” Jesus asks.
Are you willing
to make the sacrifice that love demands?
Love is
costly. This is true.
To truly love
someone with all your heart, soul, and mind is to be willing to give yourself
up for them.
As Jesus says in
John 15:
No one has
greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
This is the type
of love with which Christ lived and died.
And God asks
nothing less from us.
Amen
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