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SPEAKING TO THE SOUL

Click Link for John 1:29-42
[[] https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=14#gospel_reading ]

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi… Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. In Latin or in English, the words are exquisite. And the concept they capture is far beyond that. It is the very essence of Christianity.

Take a moment to let the words sink in. As human beings, we are wired from head to toe with self-preservation instincts. Yet here is someone willing to throw all that away. Now consider who that someone is. He is all-powerful. He is flawless. He is without sin, without guilt. Yet he is willing to lay down his life for ours.

Why? In the bloom of health, in the prime of life, why would anyone embrace an agonizing death? There’s a one-word answer. But it is powerful enough to explain the entire life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The one-word is LOVE. Jesus is human but more than human. He is the love of God made flesh. He was, is and always will be God… God before Creation… God in the manger… God on the cross. From the moment of our Baptism, he is with us… in us and around us.

Dominus vobiscum… The Lord be with you. It is the blessing that Christians have exchanged down the ages. It invokes the ultimate state of serenity… unity with God in Christ… the realization of our purpose since Creation… the fruits of our redemption.

Dominus et Agnus… Lord and Lamb. That is the sacred mystery of our salvation. Jesus is both Savior and Sacrifice. In this gospel, John captures Christ the Messiah; not a long-awaited warrior king, but a pure sacrificial victim. And to drive home the point, John repeatedly calls Jesus the Lamb of God.

This is no throw-away line. The Lamb of God came for only one reason… he is the sacrifice that will save God’s people. That is the essential message John proclaims: In Christ, the time of fulfillment is at hand. No more waiting centuries…the Kingdom of God is right here, right now in the person of Jesus, the Christ.

Significantly, the disciples in reply then call Jesus: Rabbi… teacher. The concepts are deliberately linked together. The sacrifice of Jesus does not exist in a vacuum. It is the ultimate teachable moment. Jesus is teaching us a completely new way of life; forsaking a life of self-gratification, embracing a life of self-sacrifice.

In his miracles, his parables, his outreach… Christ is a teacher, not an entertainer. And the sacrifice of Calvary is his ultimate lesson. In fact, our re-education is integral to our redemption. In faith, we must learn to reject the conventional sense of self. As Paul writes to the Galatians: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.

Jesus tells us to take up our cross, to follow him, to love like him. He tells us we are more than the ace predators at the top of the food chain. We are God’s beloved, made in his image and likeness. Our driving force is not enrichment or aggrandizement. It is the love of God embodied in Christ and showered upon us. We call it grace. It shapes how we see the world and how we make our way in it.

We have so much to learn from the Rabbi who is the Lamb. First, we learn to forgive. Without forgiving yourselves, without forgiving others, we make a mockery of the sacrifice of the Lamb. Then we must learn to give. The lesson of the Lamb is that we choose to give things, to do without things and to suffer things… that apart from love… we would never choose to give, never do without, never suffer.

Ultimately, the Lamb is the Rabbi. By his life, death, and Resurrection, he teaches us how to live, how to die and how to go home to the Father. John does not say that Jesus is sort of like the Lamb of God. He is the Lamb of God. His mission defines his essence. In reply, we cannot be sort of like Christians. We must be Christians. That mission defines our essence… our lives, full-time, all the time. Until God gathers us home, we must learn to live in the sacrifice of the Lamb. In it we are saved… we are forgiven… we are loved. Thank you, Jesus… our Lord, our Teacher, our Lamb.

God love you!


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