The Lamb of God

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time A-1

Entrance Antiphon Ps 66 (65):4 All the earth shall bow down before you, O God, and shall sing to you, shall sing to your name, O Most High!

Collect Almighty ever‑living God, who govern all things, both in heaven and on earth, mercifully hear the pleading of your people and bestow your peace on our times. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Isaiah 49:3, 5-6; Psalm 40:2, 4, 7-10; 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; John 1:29-34

The next day John saw Jesus coming to him and he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold the One who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, ‘After me there comes a man who is preferred before me because he was before me.’ I did not know him, but it is in order that he may be manifest in Israel that I have come baptizing with water.” John gave his testimony, saying: “I saw the Spirit coming down as a dove from heaven and he remained upon him. And I did not know him. But he who sent me to baptize with water said to me: ‘The one upon whom you will see the Spirit descending and remaining, he is the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and have given testimony that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:29-34)

The Lamb of God It is well known to any reader of the New Testament that the inspired authors gave a special prominence to the person and testimony of John the Baptist. He was accepted by the people as a prophet and Christ confirmed that he was the greatest of the prophets. The New Testament makes it abundantly clear that he formally testified both to Jesus himself as the long awaited Messiah and to his mission. It seems that some who at one point or other had been disciples of John were not aware that he had identified Jesus as the Christ, and we read in both Acts 18:25 and Acts 19:1-5 of their being made aware of this by Christians. Perhaps the Baptist had had disciples who came and went at various points during his ministry, and had not heard his testimony about Jesus. One does not gain the impression, incidentally, that John the Baptist sought disciples as such, but rather that they sought him. His humility may have led him readily to allow or encourage them to pass on from him and we see an instance of this in the first chapter of St John when two of his disciples leave his presence to go after Jesus. His mission was to bear witness to Jesus and once he had done this he surely saw Jesus as the Master to whom all disciples ought go. In this respect he was very different from our Lord who sought disciples and who taught that life would be theirs if they remained his disciples always whatever might be the cost. Life for the Christian is to be a total love for and following of Jesus the Master. Indeed, the very mission of his Church would be to go to the whole world and make of all the nations his ardent and loving disciples. John pointed to the one who is to be at the centre stage of every human life. Our Gospel passage today (John 1:29-34) presents John’s amazing prediction about One who was still unknown to the public. It sums up in what we might call embryonic form the teaching of John’s Gospel about Jesus because John tells us that he wrote his Gospel so that the reader “may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing this” he “may have life through his name.” (John 20:31). Well, this is exactly what in seminal form the Baptist said of Christ before our Lord showed himself publicly.

Just as all his life John the Evangelist lovingly remembered and meditated on the words and testimony of the Baptist about Christ, so too ought we. Let us think of the scene of our Lord walking towards John the Baptist and then the Baptist saying to a few of his disciples nearby that there was the Lamb of God. He would take away the sin of the world. What an extraordinary thing to say, said by a great prophet of one who was nearby and who was as yet unknown in a public sense, a statement made of no other person in the Old Testament to that point. He takes away the sin of the world! He is God’s Lamb, hinting at the idea of sacrifice, a sacrificial Lamb, a Lamb of God perhaps in the sense that God himself had provided the Lamb. It seems to intimate the Suffering Servant of Yahweh presented in the book of Isaiah, and that this particular individual coming to him is all of that. The image of the Lamb of God contains in seminal form the doctrine that this man Jesus is the Messiah and the Suffering Servant whom God had sent to atone for the sins of the world by his sufferings and death, which in the event was death on the Cross. It was an extraordinary light given to him and for good reason did Christ state that John was the greatest of the prophets. But there is more. Not only is Jesus the Lamb of God who as sacrificed takes away the sin of the world, but he is the one who fulfils the prophecy of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on mankind. The prophet Joel (3:1-5) had prophesied that this baptism of the Spirit of God would occur, and John the Baptist now states that he saw the Spirit of God descending on Jesus, and that he had then been told by God that he is the one who would pour out on others this baptism of the Holy Spirit. In seminal form it predicted not only the redemptive sufferings of Jesus but his sending of the Holy Spirit to mankind, which in the event would follow his resurrection and ascension, and which would be done by means of the ministry of his Church of which he is the Head. To crown it all, John the Baptist solemnly affirmed that Jesus is the Son of God.

In embryonic form and perhaps without realizing fully all the implications of his inspired prophecy John gave testimony not only to the doctrine of the Atonement from sin but to the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus is the Son of God. Thus it was that prior to our Lord’s public ministry the Good News of Jesus Christ had been already intimated. This Good News would be made more and more public by our Lord himself. His redemptive death would be in witness to the truth about himself. Let us embrace in our hearts the person of Christ and his truth, and then be faithful to it every day. He is the only Saviour of the world, the Lamb of God who was sacrificed for the sin of the world, the one who gives the Holy Spirit to mankind through the ministry of his Church, the Son of God and Lord of lords. Let us live for him and bear witness to him, with John the Baptist as our inspiration.

(E.J.Tyler)

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