“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away
the sins of the world.” Words that we hear every Sunday. Words that can pass us
by if we do not stop and reflect upon them. Words that reveal something so
astounding that we almost cannot take it in.
Sacrifice has been part of human
religion since before we started recording history. In the Jewish religion,
from which our own faith came, it was customary to sacrifice a one-year-old,
spotless male lamb for sin. The understanding was that all sin is an offence
against God, and deserving of death. But God allowed a lamb to be substituted
for the sinner, and to die in his place. After the blood, which Jews believed
contained the life, which belonged to God, had been drained from the body, the
richest part, the fat, was burned as belonging to God. Most of the animal was
returned to the offeror, who held a communion feast to celebrate the
forgiveness of his sins.
Abraham was called by God to offer his
own son Isaac as a sacrifice. But at the last moment, God provided a Lamb as a
substitute for Isaac. This has a vital message for us. First, this story is a
revelation from God that outlaws human sacrifice. God, as the story of
salvation tells us, demanded only ever one human life; that of his Son, who
died, not for just one sin of one person, but for all the sins of all the
world. Jesus became the Lamb of God. On the night before he died, he
gave his Body and Blood in the form of bread and wine as a communion meal, so
that we could rejoice in our salvation. That is why it is called the Eucharist,
for the word Eucharist means “to rejoice.” Jesus dies to save us from the death
we deserve for offending God, a price we could never pay ourselves, and it
costs us – nothing.
But if we want to enjoy that
forgiveness, to escape from the eternal death which is the price of sin, it is we
who must come to Him, confess our sins in sorrow before him, ask his
forgiveness. When John first saw Jesus, it was a breath-taking event for him.
He could hardly believe that the Saviour of the world had actually come at
last. Today, we tend to take our salvation for granted. After all, Jesus,
through his Church, has been amongst us for two thousand years. We need to
regain our sense of wonder that there is any hope for us at all, that the
forgiveness of our sins is even possible.
We cannot take God for granted. He owes
us nothing, and there is certainly no obligation upon him to forgive us. That
he sent his Son to free us from sin and death; that he feeds us with his Body
and Blood; all these things are a free gift. And we should be filled
with wonder at this gift. Today, we should be as astounded by his presence
amongst us as was John. We have celebrated his coming in Christmas; let us now
recognise why has come, and for what he has come. Let us, like
John, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”
Fr Phillip.
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