Lamb of God

Last week I talked about Jesus Christ and how Jesus and the Christ are totally entwined so you cannot separate them.

This morning, building on the reading from Revelation, I want to focus on Jesus as Lamb. Unlike Jesus Christ, Jesus the Lamb of God is a metaphor. It is a way of thinking about Jesus that draws us deeper into the mysteries of our faith. Most of our conversation about God is based on metaphor and parables - which are a form of metaphor – Although God is right here with us, none of us can know the totality of God. And so we use metaphors to get us wondering, to lead us deeper into the knowledge of God.

We use the metaphor of Jesus as Lamb a lot in our worship. Later this morning, after I break the bread, we will sing together “Jesus, Lamb of God have mercy on us.”  I wonder what that means to you? So I am going to ask you once again to find someone else to talk with, even if that means getting up and changing your seat, and for a few minutes share your ideas about Jesus the Lamb.
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We have several ideas between us. That is good because a spiritual symbol operates on many levels and has many meanings. I have mentioned before that as a teenager I was a strong evangelical believer and I thought we could know the ‘plain truth’ of God. But life and the Holy Spirit have changed me, and now I realize that there is always more than meets the eye and that every time I think I have grasped the meaning of a great spiritual symbol, I am only scraping the surface.

So let’s talk about lambs. I identified at least five levels to the symbol of the Lamb. Let’s dive in together.

Firstly, lambs are delightful little animals who dance around and make us think that Spiring has truly arrived. As such they are symbols of new life and of the resurrection.

We also slaughter them for food, and in the sacrificial system of the Hebrew people they were sacrificed as an offering to God. There were several reasons that someone might make a sacrifice – it might be as a freewill offering, to support prayer or praise, part of the regular rhythm of temple worship, or as an offering for sin or request for atonement.

There is a range of understandings about Jesus’ death on the cross. The idea of Jesus as the lamb of sacrifice, as the offering for human sin, is a strong one which has been reinforced in church teaching over the centuries. By dying ‘for our sins’ Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice so we don’t need to go on slaughtering animals; we are reconciled to God once and for all by Jesus’ sacrifice.

Our fraction anthem, “Jesus, Lamb of God have mercy on us, Jesus bearer of our sins, have mercy on us,” reminds us of this aspect of the Lamb – the sacrifice who reconciles us with God despite human sinfulness.

So there we have two layers of meaning already – Jesus the lamb of resurrection and new life, and Jesus as the sacrifice for the sin of the world – the sacrifice which makes all other sacrifices unnecessary.

Let’s add a third. Passover. On the last night in Egypt before they left, the Hebrew people were told to kill a year-old lamb or a goat and put its blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses. When the Angel of Death came saw the blood of the Lamb and know to pass-over the houses of the Hebrews. So the blood of the Passover lamb protected them from death.

In John’s gospel, Jesus dies on Passover, clearly making a connection between Jesus and the Passover Lamb. The apostle Paul also made this connection explicit when he refered to, “Christ our Passover Lamb [who] has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7)

So that’s three layers: resurrection, a sin sacrifice and the Passover lamb.

Now let’s turn to today’s reading from Revelation. John’s having a vision of the court of heaven. A few pages before our reading today, one of the elders told him that the Lion of Judah had conquered, but when he looks the Lion is actually a Lamb (Rev 5. 5-6.) A Lamb who has been killed but is now being worshiped by the heavenly host. And not just the heavenly host but “every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, in the sea and all that is in them.” (Rev 5:13)

In todays’ reading the multitudes are still worshiping God and the Lamb. But now John asks why some of them have long white robes. And he is told “"These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

‘Washed in the blood of the Lamb’ is the refrain of many an old hymn. The blood of the Lamb has reconciled these people with God. Blood is the life force in our veins so the blood of the Lamb is not a symbol of his death only but also of his life. When we share the cup of wine together we are sharing in Jesus’ blood – his life force, his death and resurrection.

Perhaps this is already contained in our understanding of the Lamb as resurrection, a sacrifice that removes sin, and whose blood causes death to Passover but I am going to add this as fourth and fifth levels of meaning – the Lamb reconciles us to God and we get to share in his life force, his death and his resurrection.

Yet the image of the Lamb is a shapeshifter – a few chapters ago it was a Lion, then a Lamb and now at the end of today’s reading the image turns on its head again and becomes a shepherd. We read, “for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life.”

So this my friends is the Lamb who is also the Christ who is also Jesus. As the Lion he conquered the powers of darkness, as the Lamb he willingly sacrificed himself for us and in so doing reconciled us with God and as the Shepherd he brings us the water of life.

Isn’t that amazing? It’s like, Wow!

The Lamb of God is no gentle little creature but the powerful and deeply loving life force which pulses in our veins, fills our cells with life and reconciles us with God.

It is not surprising that the heavenly host gather around God and the Lamb in worship and praise. And we get to do that too. We were made to take part in the heavenly chorus of praise and thanksgiving, along with the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands,” and along with, “every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, in the sea and all that is in them.”

People of God, I am convinced that it is this song of praise to God and to the Lamb which is the energy of the Cosmos, and that as we align ourselves with that song, as we participate in that song, day in and day out so we are transformed, and the world is changed. So let us not forget to praise God, and specifically as we gather together in the eucharist this morning let us give thanks to the Lamb and include ourselves in the multitude without number singing the song of praise that echoes through the ages.
the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall