Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.
I always love when the Gospel text in the lectionary starts with a phrase like “the next day,” when we did not read the preceding paragraphs to know what day we are talking about. We didn’t even read them last week, where those with an excellent memory might be able to draw the through-line. Nope, we’re just arriving in the middle.
What happened the day before?, you might ask. The day before, John the Baptizer was in the city of Bethany, across the Jordan, doing some baptizing. In Bethany, he was asked some questions by some religious leaders. John was loudly proclaiming to any who would listen that the Messiah was coming. He was drawing some attention to himself, and rousing some rabbles, so they needed to get to the bottom of just who he thought he was and what he thought he was doing.
“Who are you?” they asked. He replied, “I am not the Messiah.” So they asked, “What then? Are you Elijah? Are you the prophet?” to which John answered no and no. I imagine these priests were getting a little fed up with his evasion, and they needed a clear answer to tell the people who had sent them to interrogate him. So they said, “why then are you baptizing, if you are neither the messiah nor Elijah nor the prophet?” John answered, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”
John is speaking, of course, of the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth. So it is the day after this interrogation that our story starts. John is out and about, baptizing, perhaps, and who should he see coming up the road but Jesus! The Messiah! The Son of God and Son of Man! Not one for subtlety, John the Baptizer shouts “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” This is him! This is the guy! The Lord I kept saying to prepare the way for? Remember? Here he is! John continues testifying about the man Jesus, explaining his baptism and the anointing from God.
That’s enough disruption for one day, so our story continues on the next day. John was, again, out and about with his friends and disciples, when Jesus came by again! “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” John shouts, again. He was not kidding about being the messenger who came ahead of Jesus to point to him as our savior. You would really have to try hard to miss these cues if you were there.
Two of John’s disciples are with him. One of them is Andrew and the other is unnamed, but the two of them had been following John and waiting for the day when all of their preparation would lead to actually engaging with the Messiah he kept telling them to prepare for.
I think this scene is a little bit comical, almost, because the Gospel writer tells us that these men were standing there with John, and are disciples of John, and then John says, “hey, there he is” and points at a different guy that they don’t know, and without a word they just follow that guy down the street. “Oh, this guy? Great. See ya, John!” Perhaps this retelling is a slightly exaggerated version of the story, and they did not literally walk away from John to join Jesus without even a second glance. But we’re going to roll with it.
Jesus notices that these men have begun to follow him, and he stops walking. He has a question, as well, it turns out. “What are you looking for?” He asks them. They answer in a sort of peculiar fashion, inquiring as to where Jesus is staying. Jesus says, “come and see” and leads them away. And with that, Jesus has his first two disciples.
The way that the Gospel According to John tells us this story is different from the other three gospels, but that’s fairly typical. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic gospels, tend to go hand in hand, while John does its own thing. Out of context from the rest of the book and without setting up all four side by side, the casual observer may not notice that the Gospel According to John has taken off running. We are in chapter 1, and John the Baptizer has already publicly declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
In the other Gospels, it takes Jesus’ disciples and everyone else…a while to come to that conclusion. So why is John the Evangelist so eager to have John the Baptizer tell us this? Throughout this fourth gospel, we read the refrain “so that you might believe” several times. John the Evangelist is wasting no time telling us just what it is that Jesus is here to be and do. Jesus is the Lamb of God, not just any lamb, but “the final Lamb, a Lamb of divine and awesome potency. This mighty and majestic Lamb has the power to rid the cosmos of sin.” [1]
Lambs, like other livestock, make a handful of appearances in our scripture, as many of Jesus’ first-century hearers were farmers and other agrarians. Since we are not those first-century hearers, though, it’s important to this Lamb of God stuff that we remember that lambs, specifically, are not for sin offerings or atonement sacrifices. Rather, this title connects Jesus to the Passover lamb, a ritual remembrance of God’s deliverance from enslavement in Egypt.
“As a name for Jesus, then, ‘the Lamb of God’ is less about [accounting for] sin and more about liberation from sin and its contraining, oppressive, death-dealing effects.” [2] This sin removal will not be micromanage-y, with Jesus showing up to every minor infraction with a magic eraser. Rather, in Jesus, God will free us, once and for all, from the power of sin and death. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Y’all have not known me very long, so you may not have had the opportunity to hear me self-describe as a word nerd, but you will. Our scripture is full of words, and it matters to me that we get to the bottom of some of them. I took several years of Biblical Greek classes, and you might as well benefit from that experience sometimes.
I think John the Evangelist was particular about his words, too, because when he writes that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, this “take away” verb that he’s using is perhaps deeper than it appears at first glance. This word (airo) is the same that is used when the stone is rolled away from the tomb of Jesus, as well as the destruction of Jerusalem. This taking away is not a minor removal but a world-altering abolition. [2]
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus will bring about an entirely new world, one that is free from the power of sin and the specter of death.
John the Evangelist sets us up to enter the story of the ministry of Jesus with this at the forefront of our understanding. We should have no question about who he is or what he is doing. We know, from chapter one, that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the one that the prophets foretold, that John the Baptizer has been explaining to everyone who will listen.
For the next several weeks, we’ll be joining the disciples as they walk alongside Jesus, healing the sick and feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and freeing the captive. He will perform miracles and tell stories and challenge authority and promise that, though he will die, he will rise again. He will show us the way. Come and see.
[1] Robert H. Smith, Wounded Lord: Reading John Through the Eyes of Thomas, a Pastoral and Theological Commentary on the Fourth Gospel, 2009.