Sermon at Parish Mass Epiphany 2 2014

Isaiah 49:1-7

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

John 1:29-42

“Here is the Lamb of God”, says John the Baptist. That is to us a very familiar phrase in the Mass and in Christian art and hymns. But perhaps our familiarity stops us seeing how startling that phrase is. We need to abandon what may be our modern conceptions. When we hear “Lamb” we are not meant to think ‘fluffy cute’, but sacrificial victim. That is, an animal destined for a ritual killing.

What was sacrifice about? Partly it was to do with feasting and celebration, meat was a rare and expensive food that most people only ate on religious festivals. And partly it was an offering from what you own as an acknowledgement of your dependence on God. We have banknotes or standing orders for our giving, but in ancient societies livestock were currency.

But also, and here is the key to sacrifice, it is a small contained act of ritual violence intended to ward off greater and uncontrolled violence. A bit like a vaccination, a weakened dose of a dangerous bug protects you from its full effects. Animal sacrifice probably replaced earlier and almost forgotten human sacrifices, as hinted in the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Such stories may have their obscure origin in the lynching of a human victim by a group that came together, all against one. The killing produced a cohesion in their group that made it seem like a miraculous sacred act. The gods must have been pleased by it, their anger averted. And each group, united round a killing, formed the nucleus of each new society as it developed. The anthropologist René Girard calls this the “founding murder” – the heart of violence deeply buried in all societies.

So the lamb is a sacrificial image. It connects to the deeply buried dark side of human nature. But Jesus is different. He is the Lamb of God. This indicates, not sacrifice in the old way, but its reverse. Jesus is not the victim humans offer to God to defuse his anger or turn away his violence. Instead, Jesus is the lamb that God offers to us. Sacrifice becomes self-giving love.

And the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. Not sins, you notice, but sin: the general state in which we find ourselves, the heart of darkness in all human society. Jesus opens to us a new way of living: the life of God himself. God is light and in him is no darkness at all. It is humanity, not God, which demands sacrifices. It is God who frees us from sacrifice by freely giving us himself.

The Jewish scriptures have an ambivalent attitude towards sacrifice. Some strands see it as being essential to the religion of Israel. Originally there were many altars and places of sacrifice, later reduced to one in Jerusalem, and closely regulated for example in Leviticus. But other strands consider sacrifice to be of no value. The prophet Amos says that God has not asked for sacrifices but for ethical living and justice for the poor. And Psalm 40, which we heard this morning, says, “Sacrifice and offering you do not desire… Burnt-offering and sin-offering you have not required”. And it is this strand of teaching that Jesus seems consistently to approve and reinforce.

Jesus, the Lamb of God, identifies himself with all the victims of human violence in all its forms from the beginning. In the book of Revelation, that great symbolic vision of the reality behind earthly events, he is called “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. It is as though he takes into himself the dark heart and violence of all human society from the beginning, and overcomes it. And the Lamb who was slain is seen on the throne of God, living for ever. The Lamb of God is identified with God, for only God can take away sin. The risen victim changes how we see all victims, and reveals where God is really at work in the world.

In taking away the sin of the world Jesus saves us from the false unity created by violence, the unity of the group gathered against its victim. And he opens to us the true unity and life which he shares with the Father. Real unity, real life, is found in God.

This is the deep meaning of the encounter between Jesus and his first disciples in today’s Gospel reading. They ask Jesus, “where are you staying?” And Jesus replies, “come and see”. And “they came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day”.

As usual in John’s Gospel there is more going on here than meets the eye. The key to this is the word, “remain”, “stay”, or “abide” – John uses the same Greek word for all. “Abiding” in John’s Gospel means being rooted, centred, solidly and persistently staying. Where you abide is where you are real.

Through John’s Gospel Jesus leads the disciples deeper into this teaching: where he truly abides is in the Father. And the Father abides in him, and the Holy Spirit in both. And the disciples themselves, and therefore we, are invited to abide in Jesus in God. “They remained with him that day.”

This is where our true life is to be found. Abiding in Jesus in God. And it is an invitation not only to life, but also to unity. Not the false unity of the violent group, but the true unity that is God’s gift. This invitation is extended to all. So Andrew, when he has been drawn to Jesus, goes and finds his brother Simon and brings him to Jesus, too.

The Benedictine monk Sebastian Moore has pointed out that the way that Andrew and the other disciple follow Jesus, as soon as they see him, reads almost as though they had fallen in love. Love at first sight! And indeed they have. But it is not a jealous and possessive love. It is love that spreads, love that wants to draw others in, to abide in the unity of the Father.

In this week of prayer for Christian unity we need to remember that the unity we seek can be found only by abiding in Jesus in God, and by drawing others to the love which has caught hold of us.

We celebrate the Eucharist as the sacrament of the unity of the Church, and indeed it is that. The Eucharist brings into being what it signifies, the Body of Christ. But we do so in a divided church in which not all Christians are able to recognise each other’s eucharist. We need to feel the pain of that division, and to work to overcome it. But we also need to remember that unity is God’s gift, and is found in God. It is not our construction. If we begin by tinkering with different structures to try to make them fit together, we won’t get anywhere. We have to begin in prayer, by seeking the unity in the heart of God, which is our true life. When we get that right, the structures will sort out themselves.

Nevertheless, even in a divided church the Eucharist is a sign and foretaste of the unity to which it points. At its heart is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. It is God’s self-giving love that draws us together in unity. Here our abiding in God, in Jesus, is truly renewed, even if we must wait in this in-between time for the full visible unity of the Church to appear.

And this is not only about the unity of the Church, but about the unity of humanity as well, as we saw last week. The Eucharist reconnects and renews the world. The world Jesus came to save from sin, the world to which he sends us. The world in which we are to be bear the love of God for our neighbour, for the stranger in the street, for the lonely, for the needy, for the oppressed.

Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And we, like the first disciples, are sent to that world to draw others in, to abide in unity with Jesus in the life and love of God.