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January 15, 2017 at Advent Lutheran Church in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Second Sunday after Epiphany. John 1:29-42. About lambs and prophets.
QUESTION: Today I’m going to be talking about Prophets and lambs, the two main characters in our Gospel lesson. John the Baptist was a prophet, there are many prophets listed in the Old Testament, what makes a person a prophet Biblically speaking?
We are told that John the Baptist saw Jesus coming and said; “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Why did he say that and what do you think it means?
What does it mean that the Lamb of God will take away the sin of the world?
What major event happened here at Advent in 1969 that made national news all the way to the cover of LIFE Magazine?
(As a result of inviting James Groppi and the Sex Education debate Pastor John Sell resigned on January 1, 1970, and was permanently barred from returning to Wisconsin for pastoral ministry by Bishop Bob Wilch.)
Was John Sell a prophet? Was Father Groppi a prophet? We shall see!
The first thing to know is that in the Jewish religion at the time of Jesus was the practice of animal sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people. The most common animal sacrifice, or zevah shelamim, which in Hebrew means peace offering, and olah, the burnt offering of an animal killed ritualistically to please the gods.
We are all familiar with the word holocaust which comes from the Greek word holokauston, also used to refer to animal sacrifice, such as a bull, sheep, goat, deer or a dove.
Of course, in our modern-day reflection on history the word holocaust has the ominous meaning of the murder of 6,000 Jews by Nazi Germany. What a chilling and haunting image to think of those deaths as a sacrifice to a God that would have to be an absolute monster to require that kind of genocide.
And yet, judging from world events today, humankind has not progressed very far in that regard for we are still slaughtering each other in many places throughout the world. Just think of Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. These are not pleasant things to think about, but think and talk about them we must, lest we continue to repeat them over, and over, and over, again!
So, this is what Lamb of God means, for as we know Jesus, who was innocent of any crime was executed, or we could say sacrificed for the good of the people. Remember the passage in the Gospel of John where the there is a discussion among the temple hierarchy about what to do with Jesus.
Not everyone was in favor of killing him, as we know from this passage in
John 11.45-55:
The Plot to Kill Jesus
45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. 46But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. 47So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. 48If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place* and our nation.’ 49But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! 50You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’ 51
Every day more and more bizarre events are being reported by news outlets that have become not news but entertainment giving credence to the new word for the year 2016 that I have mentioned before, mainly post-truth.
It appears that we really do live in a post-truth world these days. And if you have noticed, it is not just here in America. Brexit in England took many people by surprise. Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild the Russian Empire and North Koreas constant warnings about starting a nuclear holocaust that of course would destroy them along with everyone else.
It is as if the world has gone mad. Words seem to mean whatever the person speaking them wants them to mean rather than what they really mean. I could not help but think of that wonderful novel whose title entered our English language lexicon: Catch 22, by Joseph Heller, showing us once again how reality often imitates art. He wrote, and this would be my definition of sin:
“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
You see this is why you hear me speak so often about faith being something that you are – and not something that you believe. And further, I had not made the connection before preparing this message, but Heller’s words about character remind me of both the Lamb of God, taking away our sins...because if sins mean anything at all, they are described in in that quote – and those deeply moving words by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose life and legacy we honor with a national holiday tomorrow:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
The simple definition of character being, “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.”
In other words, who you really are as a person!
Dr. King brought a message of reconciliation, non-violence and freedom, and he was killed for that message. As the Old Testament affirms so often, prophets are killed for their message and honored after their death, that is our collective sin that the Lamb of God will take away if we follow him.
I believe that’s what he meant in the Beatitudes when he said in the Gospel of Matthew, 5:11;
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
I believe Dr. King’s dream is also God’s dream for all of God’s children. As poet Maya Angelou, eloquently states: “It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.”
I believe the whole message of Jesus can be summed up in the words of the Prophet Micah, verse 6.8:
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”
This is exactly what Dr. King did and lived, and that’s why he is, Biblically speaking a prophet. After all Jesus prayed to God before his arrest, as recorded in the Gospel of John;
“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one even as we are one…”
The work of Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was never solely about race. He was a theologian, and his work constituted an effort to create the community God desires for us all. That we all may be one, and that justice may be extended to absolutely all people, is God’s will. Jesus literally prayed that we all be brought into complete unity. When anyone stands in opposition to the dream of Dr. King, they stand in opposition as well to the dreams of God that we may all live in full community and grace. Thanks be to God for dreams that live on in our hearts. Amen.
-Rev Jeffrey G Mikyska
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