Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 64

John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said,

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world."

The patristic bishops who defined our teachings during the earliest centuries of the Church, found many prophecies about Jesus throughout the Bible, and especially “The Lamb of God.” After our images of Jesus as a man – a baby, a good shepherd, a crucified or risen man – the most important image is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." We heard John the Baptist pointing him out and the Lamb appears many times in the Book of Revelation; and has innumerable antecedents in the Old and New Testaments.

The bishops recalled the blood of the Passover Lamb which the Hebrews put on their doorposts so that the Avenging Angel would pass by their homes when he slew all the first born males of men and beasts. 

“...for you the blood will mark the houses where you are. Seeing the blood, I will pass over you; thereby, when I strike the land of Egypt, no destructive blow will come upon you. (Exodus 12:13)

The Prophet Jeremiah (11:19) spoke of his own suffering and we hear words about Jesus:

“Like a trusting lamb, I was led to slaughter, I had not realized that they were hatching plots against me.” 

Isaiah described the manner of Jesus’ death five hundred years before he was let to Calvary, 

“Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth. 

Bishop Saint Cyril of Jerusalem interpreted the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac as a story about Jesus the Lamb of God: 

“...having bound his son and laid him on the wood. (Abraham) did, (for all practical purposes) offer him. But by the goodness of God in delivering to him a lamb instead of his child he received his son alive. And so the spiritual children of Abraham were saved from death and received back to life through the Lord’s sacrifice of himself as the Lamb of God." 

Our Mass is a sacrifice precisely because we are eating the flesh of the Lamb of God, and drinking his blood. During that sacred banquet we offer Him to God even as he brings us sacramentally into the Heavenly Sanctuary of God our Father. This meal is an oblation because God has given us this Lamb which we give back to God as we eat.

Just as kings, governors, and local tyrants could be satisfied with hypocritical displays of obedience, the pagan gods should be too. When you said, “I love you” to your king, you didn’t have to mean it. If he had a keen grasp of the obvious, he knew that you didn’t mean it. You crossed your tees, dotted your I’s, and said the right words. 

If the word was good enough for a tyrant, king, or emperor; it should be good enough for a god. Pagan prayers and sacrifices were supposed to work like magic, like abracadabra and hocus-pocus. You don’t have to mean it or believe it, when you say the word or offer the sacrifice, it’s done and, and your god should be satisfied. 

But the Bible says, God refuses empty sacrifice. He doesn’t want ostentatious signs of our love. As he said through the prophet Isaiah:
What do I care for the multitude of your sacrifices?.
I have had enough of whole-burnt rams and fat of fatlings;
In the blood of calves, lambs, and goats
I find no pleasure.

Even Saint Paul said, “If I should offer my body to be burnt… without love it means nothing.”

The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus is more pleased with a simple, sincere gesture like, “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Our God wants real love, real devotion; he is not satisfied with hypocritical displays, no matter how loud, expensive, or ridiculous they might seem. 

And when the Lamb of God offers himself in total, consuming love for us– his people, his own flesh and blood — our Father in Heaven is pleased and satisfied. 

We cannot save ourselves or our world. We should have figured that out by now. We cannot create governments that act with both mercy and justice; we cannot concoct medicines to heal our bodies and make us live forever; we cannot create robotics and artificial intelligence to restore the natural balances of soil, water, air, and sunshine. Our sins have made a mess of our lives and our world. There are no man-made remedies, and there never will be.

Our salvation must come from God through Jesus Christ or it will never come. And so, in today’s Gospel we hear the prophet John the Baptist announce with enormous pleasure and great excitement, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” This sacrificial lamb will please and satisfy the Lord God as Jesus – the Son of God and Son of Mary – offers himself on the altar of the cross. 

We are reassured of that, especially by the Apocalypse of John. In that book Mary’s son is called the Lamb of God twenty-seven times. He is the one and only sacrifice that atones for our sins and leads us to salvation. And so we hear a countless number of angels with all the patriarchs from Abraham to Moses, and all the Christian martyrs and saints, singing: 

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain

to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength,

honor and glory and blessing.”

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe, cry out:

“To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb

be blessing and honor, glory and might,

forever and ever.”

 The four living creatures answered, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

As Saint Peter said to the authorities who had only recently demanded the death of Jesus, “There is no other name in heaven or on earth by which we are to be saved.” 

And there is no other sacrifice than the Sacrifice of the Mass, when the Lord gathers us into his body and offers himself as a pleasing, satisfying sacrifice to his Father. We know then – our faith assures us that… 

…God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.