Year A, Epiphany 2, John 1.29-42, Behold the Lamb

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.  Amen

“Behold the Lamb of God!”

Behold the Lamb.

If you were a Jew living in first century Palestine how would you hear those words?

You would think of Abraham, 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."

God had asked of Abraham the impossible, as a measure of his faith.  God asked that he sacrifice his son Isaac, the son who he loved and which had been the fulfillment of God’s promise to him and Sarah.

How could God demand such a sacrifice of Abraham?

"God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son."

In the end, it was God who provided the Son to sacrifice.  Jesus.

Behold the Lamb of God.

21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Go, select lambs for your families, and slaughter the passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood in the basin. None of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning. 23 For the Lord will pass through to strike down the Egyptians; when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over that door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you down. 24 You shall observe this rite as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children. 25 When you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. 26 And when your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this observance? ' 27 you shall say, 'It is the passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses. '" And the people bowed down and worshiped.

It is notable in the Gospel of John that Jesus is introduced by John as the Lamb of God and then is crucified at the very hour that the Passover Lambs were being sacrificed in the temple.

The Passover Lamb whose blood saved the house of Israel from the angel of death that they might be free.

God comes to us as a Lamb, vulnerable and weak, that he might destroy the greatest power that holds us captive—death itself.

“Behold the Lamb of God!”

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." 27 Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

28 After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), "I am thirsty." 29 A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

31 Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. 32 Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. 35 (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) 36 These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, "None of his bones shall be broken." 37 And again another passage of scripture says, "They will look on the one whom they have pierced."

“Behold the Lamb of God!”

And then finally, in Revelation, yet another vision of the Lamb.

9 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." 10 And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. 12 It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; 13 on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. 14 And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26 People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27 But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

“Behold the Lamb of God!”

From Abraham to the end of time the Lamb of God was central to God’s plan of salvation.

God provided the lamb for Abraham to sacrifice.

God destroyed Israel’s enemies and set free those who were marked with the blood of the Lamb.

On the cross, Jesus was the lamb whose blood both was the sacrifice for our sins and the means by which God saved us from our enemies.

And finally, the Lamb will be the light of all people.

God with us, in the form of a vulnerable Lamb.

Crucified and Risen.

People laugh at this message.  They scoff and ridicule it.

Just read the comments on Facebook.

Its part of the vulnerability of the Lamb that God would be laughed at.

Of this Paul writes:

18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

19 For it is written,

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Amen.

End of the World, or Birth Pangs? Year B, Pentecost 25, Mark 13.1-8

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.  Amen

When I was in fourth grade we lived in Irene, a sleepy little farming community in the southeast corner of South Dakota.  We had just moved there from Wyoming.

One of the first people to befriend me was Claire Fagerhaug, one of the local farm boys.

I frequently went out to the Fagerhaug’s and had the opportunity to experience farm life, first hand.

One Sunday afternoon, Claire’s parents, Connie and Helmer, took the two of us with them for a visit with their relatives in Sioux Falls, a big outing.

While we were there, we went with the relatives to a church meeting that Sunday afternoon, an old fashioned “revival” in a small white church.  I remember sitting there, on a hot Sunday afternoon while the preacher went on and on.

He was preaching at great length about the end times, and how the signs were all around us about the end of the world, and we needed to be prepared.

That was in 1966, our nation had just been through World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and were heavily engaged in the Vietnam War.

At home the cultural revolution of the Sixties was well underway, with anti-war protests, drugs, and a sexual revolution stimulated in part by the invention of “the Pill” a few years before.

The civil rights movement was tearing our country apart.

John Kennedy had just recently been assassinated.

I find it interesting now, that often we look back on the fifties and sixties as being the Golden Age of the American experience, and forget what an incredibly difficult time that it was.

One thing was obvious—Change was in the air.

Well, on that sultry Sunday afternoon, in that little white church in Sioux Falls, the ‘evangelist’ went on and on about how all these things were signs that the world was coming to an end, and sooner rather than later.

When we got back to the farm that evening, I was troubled.

I asked Connie, my Sunday school teacher, about the end of the world and what that preacher had to say.  Her response is one of the most important things I have ever heard, before or since, regarding my own faith convictions.

“I don’t worry much about the end of the world”, she said.  “As far as I’m concerned, when I die the world will come to an end for me, and nothing else really matters.”

History is dotted, throughout the ages, with times of epic transformation which inevitably brought great suffering on the part of many people.

For the people of Israel there was the captivity and slavery in the land of Egypt, followed by the Exodus and journey to the promised land.

Then, things began to unravel.

First, the Kingdom was divided following the death of Solomon.

Then in 722 BC the Northern Kingdom was destroyed and the people dispersed.

In 687 the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonian Empire and the people went into exile and slavery once again.

A generation later they were able to return to Palestine and begin the long process of rebuilding.

But the subsequent centuries brought major wars and conquests, with Israel being ruled by one foreign power after another.

At the time of Jesus, of course, it was the Roman Empire that ruled Israel.

Looming on the horizon was the most disastrous event to affect the Jewish people since the birth of their nation.

One leader after another would arise in Israel, claiming to be the Messiah, and leading a rebellion against the rule of the Roman Empire.  They all failed to restore Israel’s independence.

What they did, was provoke the Roman Empire to anger.

What happened next was the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and finally, the obliteration of the nation of Israel and dispersal of its people all over the face of the earth.

This period of time when the Jewish people lived outside of Israel, around the world, was called the Diaspora, and continued until 1947, and even up to our own day.

World War II brought the Holocaust; by far the most tragic of all Israel’s suffering.

For the Christians, the experience was different.

Following the time of Christ and after Christians and Jews separated and parted ways, the Christian began to be persecuted by the Roman Empire.

They were crucified.

They were fed to the lions in the coliseum.

They were brutally killed by the gladiators.

Their demise became mere ‘sport’ for the Roman Empire.

They were blamed by Nero for the burning of Rome.

Epic times.

Times of great suffering.

Times of violent change.

Such is how the history of human kind has been written throughout the ages.

One of the facts of history, is that when faced with these cataclysmic events, each generation feared that the world was coming to an end.

The prophets warned of it, such as Daniel in our Old Testament.

So did the apostle Paul, and especially, John, in the book of Revelation.

Martin Luther saw the events of his time, where among other things, the plague was devastating Europe, as signs of the end of times.

And in modern times, people such as John Darby and his disciples, such people as Hal Lindsey who wrote the “Late, Great, Planet Earth”, and even more recently, Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins in their “Left Behind” series have speculated about the end of times.

One of the things Connie Fagerhaug also told me that night back in Irene, SD was this:

That at the end of chapter 13 in the Gospel of Mark from which today’s lesson is taken, Jesus says:
"But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”

Anyone who tells you that they know what is happening, and that they have some great insight into the “end of the world” needs to listen to these words of Jesus.

Jesus himself, speaking about the calamity that is looming for the Christians and Jewish people, says “no one knows”, he doesn’t even know, when it will come—“ONLY THE FATHER.”

“Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

When we hear these words of Jesus what can we know?

What do we make of it all?

And when there are a whole lot of Christians predicting the end of the world, what do we have to say?

OK.  So first of all, let’s do a reality check.

We do not live at a time of epic conflict and great human suffering. 

We live at a time of relative peace and prosperity. 

Sure, we’ve been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those ‘wars’ have been minor skirmishes compared with other conflicts.

And if the Dow Industrial Average drops a few points, that does not signal the end of the world.

Yes there are natural disasters like the fires in California, but that’s a bit different than the ‘end of the world’. 

There have been tragic events such as the murder of those people at the Jewish synagogue in Pittsburg, but that’s a far cry from the Holocaust.

We live in good times, in large part, peaceful times.  We plan for our retirement.  We enjoy our families. 

Rome is not burning!  Christians are not being crucified.

There’s one other thing I want to say today, and that is an insight into the nature of history.

Conflict, in and of itself, does not signal the end, nor does a personal crisis such as many of us face from time to time.

Rather this type of strife is actually the motor that drives change and history and opens up the door to the future.

Jesus recognizes this when he says that “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

Birth pangs.

Suffering that precedes new life.

That’s a different picture than predicting the end of the world.

Throughout the history of the world there have been times of upheaval and human suffering.

And each of us, experience conflict and challenges in our life.

This does not mean that the world is coming to an end.

What the Bible tells us—

What history tells us—

                Is simply that ‘the times, they are a changing’.

But as difficult as change can be to accept, we can face the reality of change in our lives, and the transformation of the world around us, confident that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.

Jesus foretold the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Change.  But not the end of the world, just the dawn of a new age.

As horrible as World War II was, we’re still here.  The world changed.  It didn’t end.

Likewise, we face difficulties in our own lives.  And change is hard.  But even death is not the end.

Through conflict, turmoil, and change the future unfolds before us. 

And through it all, God is and always shall be the author and giver of life.

So do not be afraid.

God’s still in charge.

And God’s love endures forever.

Amen