The Lamb of God

What is the meaning of the crucifixion? That question has been debated for over 2,000 years. It is clearly one of the focal points of our faith, but how do we interpret it? Many people claim that  it is somehow payment to God for the sins of humanity. I don't understand it that way. I see the crucifixion as the ultimate evil that humanity could do; but God absorbed it and transformed it into the ultimate good. With that in mind, I offered this sermon at a recent Good Friday worship service. May it bless you.

The Lamb of God. That’s what John the Baptist called Jesus: the Lamb of God. (John 1:29-31) According to the gospel of John, he is the one who takes away the sin of the world. He is The Sacrificial Lamb, the one who will reconcile the whole world to God. But there were lots of sacrificial lambs before Jesus came along: thousands, maybe millions of them! And it all started with Abraham. You remember the story of Abraham and Isaac. God told Abraham to kill Isaac, his only son, as a sacrifice to God; and Abraham was willing to do it! But at the last minute, even as Abraham’s hand was raised, ready to plunge a knife into Isaac’s heart, God stopped him. Instead of sacrificing his son, Abraham sacrificed a ram that was caught in a nearby thicket. A ram was offered up as a substitute to the son.

Then we fast forward to the days leading up to the Exodus, when God’s people had forgotten that they even were God’s people. On the night before the very last plague of Egypt – the death of the firstborn sons – the plague that freed the Hebrews from slavery – God instructed all the Hebrew families to sacrifice a lamb and smear its blood on the doorposts of their homes so that the angel of death would see that blood and pass over those doorways, saving their families from destruction. (Exodus 12:21-23)

That sacrifice, offered up each year, was only the beginning. When the Israelites travelled to Mt. Sinai under Moses’ leadership, God gave them the Law. Sacrificing animals was a big part of that Law. The book of Leviticus describes all kinds of sacrifices – sin offerings, thank offerings, guilt offerings, peace offerings, and fellowship offering. (Chapters 1-7) But all of those sacrifices were intended to bring the people closer to God. By offering an animal from their own flock, they acknowledged that they depended on God for all the blessings that they had; and they expressed their thankfulness for all that God had done for them.

But after a while, those sacrifices lost their meaning. Priests told the people that the more sacrifices they offered, the happier God was. Sacrifices turned into insurance policies to keep God on the side of the Israelites! The whole system became a machine built on slaughter. By the time that Jesus was born, lambs were sold in the Temple at inflated prices to fill the pockets of corrupt priests. A system that was intended to bring the people closer to God had been so infiltrated by greed and corruption that it didn’t benefit anyone but the priests who ran it. Almost everyone had forgotten what the prophet Micah had said (6:6-8):

“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow down before the exalted God?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?

Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

And then… Jesus was born: the Lamb of God. But this Lamb wasn’t one of the millions of lambs that had been sacrificed over the years since the Exodus from Egypt. This Lamb was God’s own son. This Lamb was the only one who had ever fulfilled God’s requirements to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk with God in humility and obedience. And in that spirit of humble obedience, this Lamb protested the corrupt sacrificial system. He went into the Temple and overturned the tables of the money changers. He released the lambs that the priests were selling, roaring, “This is my Father’s house! Stop making it into a market place!” He told the people that God didn’t care about rituals and laws, but about love and mercy. He told them to stop trying to buy God’s favor, and trust him with their lives. I’m sure you know how that went over. Jesus was telling the people in authority that instead of sacrificing lambs to benefit themselves, they should sacrifice their greed, their traditions, and their power instead. And they weren’t about to sacrifice those lambs! So they sacrificed the Lamb of God instead.

Isn’t it ironic? The gospel of John tells us that Jesus was hanging on the cross at the very hour that the Temple priests were sacrificing the hundreds of lambs needed for the Passover celebration. Over the years, millions of lambs had been sacrificed in God’s name, fattening the pockets of the priests who were offering them up in a corrupt system. And the Lamb of God was nailed to a cross because the people in power wanted to keep it that way.

Now, we all know the Good Friday story. We know what happened on that day. But have you ever thought about what might have happened? God never asked for this sacrifice! Crucifying Jesus was our idea! When we nailed his son to a cross, God had every right to step in and punish us. Why, God might have squashed us like bugs. God could have brought the world to an end, right there and then! It certainly would have been just if God had punished us for killing his beloved Son!

But God doesn’t react that way. If Jesus taught anything, it is that God’s very being isn’t violence and revenge, but love and forgiveness. God knows that we believe we are perceptive and wise and shrewd. God also knows that we are really blind and foolish and clueless. Long ago, God had declared through the prophet Isaiah, “My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways my ways.” (Isaiah 55:8) And so, instead of returning violence for violence – instead of continuing the sacrifices – God stopped the whole process, as he had stopped the hand of Abraham so many years before. On Good Friday, God said, “Stop it! No more sacrifices. No more violence. No more bloodshed. I’ve had enough.”

And now, as the light of Good Friday dims and the long night begins, the Lamb of God is taken down from the cross and laid in a borrowed tomb, and all creation holds its breath. What will God do in response to this injustice? Will our foolishness and selfishness and greed get the last word after all? Well… God delivered the Hebrews from Pharaoh on that very first Passover night; and God will deliver us, too – deliver us from sin, deliver us from ourselves, and even deliver us from death! We just have to hang on until Easter morning.