Empty Handed

Who remembers the sermon I preached on the 4th Sunday in Easter last year. Anyone?  No – I had to look it up myself. I remembered that we had talked about Jesus as the Lamb of God and I didn’t want to repeat myself, though one of the fun things about having this whole year together is that we have the opportunity to delve deeper into things so some important themes come up more than once.

Back in Eastertide we read about Jesus the Lamb in the Book of Revelation and we approached the Lamb from that perspective. Today we heard the only time in the gospels where Jesus is called the Lamb of God. Scholars think that the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation were written about the same time so I think we can assume that “Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” was an important theme in the church around Greece and Turkey sometime between the years 90 and 100 CE.

But what does it mean to us today?

I know from our conversations that most of us experience God as primarily loving, rather than judgmental or violent, and that certainly goes along with Jesus’ teaching and with the epistles of John which boldly declare, God is Love.

Yet the idea of Jesus dying for our sins is often interpreted in a way which seems less than loving on God’s part. We have been told that the wages of sin is death and that as a result of our sin, God requires the death penalty. Jesus’ death on the cross paid our penalty and so we get to have eternal life. Thus Jesus took away the sins of the world.

I am not alone in having difficulty reconciling a loving God with the God who requires death as a penalty for sin, even though everyone of us is prone to sin. Surely a loving God would find another way to reconcile us to Godself without anyone having to be killed. Remember the story of Abraham taking Isaac up a mountain to offer a sacrifice? Abraham thought he would need to kill Isaac, but instead God provided a ram who was caught in the thicket. If God can provide Abraham with a sacrificial ram on the top of a mountain, surely God can work out a way not to kill his own Son!

I am hoping that during Lent we can go more deeply into the ways that Christians have understood the work of Christ on the cross. So you might consider this discussion today to be a preview of a coming attraction!

Let us assume for now that God is Love, and that consequently God is not violent and does not condone or demand child sacrifice. How then are we to understand “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”? Isn’t the lamb led to the slaughter, the one who is to be sacrificed, killed to appease God?

What if we rephrase it as “God’s Lamb who takes away the sin of the world”? That changes things for me. In every situation of sacrifice in ancient religions, it is humanity who provides the animals for the sacrifice. The effect of the sacrifice may be to appease a god or to thank a god or even to be reconciled with a god, but in every case it is the humans who bring the sacrifice. The sacrifice is usually a blood-sacrifice in that someone living is killed and their blood released, then the meat is cooked and eaten by the gods involved and by their priests and sometimes by everyone. Often it is the blood – the life of the creature - which is seen as the powerful agent of healing.

This gift of a creature to a god is totally turned around in our Eucharist. Certainly it is the humans of the altar guild who faithfully bring the bread and the wine, but in some way, it becomes for us the Body and Blood of Jesus, God’s Lamb. In this ritual of reconciliation, of becoming more and more God, it is God who provides the real, spiritual food. Let me repeat that. It is God who provides the real, Spiritual food.

So this is unlike anything that went before. God provides the sacrificial Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, not us.

Now listen up because this is a bit of mind-bender.  Jesus did not die on the cross because God is violent but because we are. Jesus did not die because God required a sacrifice. Jesus did not die because it was the only way to reconcile us to God. Jesus did not die to get rid of our sin, but because of our sin. It was human violence, human anger which led Jesus the Christ to his death. And God allowed it to happen. God allowed Jesus to become the sacrifice for the sacred meal, for our reconciliation and ultimately the reconciliation of all Creation to God.

Yesterday on NPR I heard an interview with a woman who has been part of the protests in Iran. She said, “We are empty-handed, standing in front of the bullets.” That made me cry. And I wondered if I would have the courage to protest non-violently, there or even in Minnesota today.

Yet that’s what Jesus did. He stood empty handed in front of the bullets of hatred and the pain of the nails. He took the worst that humankind could do in its violence and allowed himself to be killed.

But that wasn’t the end.

And that is why we are here today. It wasn’t the end because God brought Jesus back from death and the grave. And we are here today because Jesus shows us that God takes the worst of our violence and comes back up loving us.

As disciples of Jesus, we too are called to live non-violently.  We are called to live “empty-handed, standing in front of the bullets.” Because Jesus did not retaliate and Jesus told us to pray for our enemies. And that transforms the world, soul by soul, from one based on violence to one based on love.

This was the genius of the civil rights movement, that they chose to follow the path of Jesus, to love those opposing them and to stand empty-handed in front of the bullets. And we know that many, including Martin Luther King Jr. were killed. We also know that their work is not complete. We do not yet live in a world where skin color doesn’t matter.

In this country, Black men are imprisoned at six times the rate of white men, and Black women twice as often. And Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. Since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, at least 31 states have passed 115 restrictive voting laws. 

The work of the Civil Rights movement is not yet complete, and neither is the work of the Lamb of God. Today as we gather at the table for eucharist, let us continue the work of the Lamb as we accept the free gift of God, reconciliation and healing through the life of God’s Lamb, not just for comfort but also for strength. Strength to stand empty-handed in front of the bullets.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall