Sermon for Epiphany 2, Year A

Jan van Eyck, Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, 1432
(Click on image for larger view)

John 1:29-42

About thirty years ago, on a road trip in Belgium, we stopped in the city of Ghent—on the highway from Brussels to Bruges—for the express purpose of going into Saint Bavo’s Cathedral and seeing the treasure of late medieval religious art known as the Ghent Altarpiece.

Designed by Hubert van Eyck, the Altarpiece displays twenty panels painted by his younger brother Jan van Eyck between 1430 and 1432. (It was stolen and returned to Ghent twice in the twentieth century, once each during the two World Wars, but that’s another story.)

The largest and best-known panel is called the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. By any estimation it’s a magnificent painting. It’s also significant in art history not only for its unprecedented realism and attention to detail, but also for being one of the earliest Western European paintings executed in oils rather than egg tempera.

At the center of the painting an altar stands in a verdant meadow bordered by lush foliage. On the altar stands a Lamb. From a wound in his breast a stream of blood pours into a chalice, also on the altar. Yet the Lamb is serene, showing no signs of pain or suffering.

Above the altar, at the top of the painting, the Holy Spirit hovers in the form of a dove, radiating beams of supernatural light that illuminate the entire landscape without casting any shadows. In the foreground, at the bottom of the painting, stands the well of the water of life. Visible on the horizon are the towers and spires of the heavenly Jerusalem.

A group of angels surrounds the altar, worshiping the Lamb. Two are swinging censers; others bear the instruments of the Lord’s Passion: the Cross, the Crown of Thorns, the spear that pierced his side, and the pillar where he was scourged.

Four groups of human worshipers approach the altar from different directions: in the foreground, contemporary monks and bishops to the right, Old Testament prophets and virtuous pagans to the left; in the background, virgin martyrs and holy women to the right, and martyrs and saints of past centuries to the left.

An inscription on the altar identifies the painting as a visual commentary on the words of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” It also has a mystical visionary quality, affording a glimpse of worship in heaven as described in the Book of Revelation, where the Risen and Ascended Christ appears as a Lamb who has been slain and yet lives.

The first part of today’s Gospel reading from John comprises John the Baptist’s reflections on the Baptism of Christ, which we commemorated last Sunday. Here John speaks of what appears to be a mystical vision that he himself experienced at the Baptism of Jesus: “I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven and it remained on him.”

Interestingly enough, in the parallel passages in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is not John but Jesus who sees the Spirit descending in the form of a dove and alighting on him. But just before that, the Synoptics include another detail missing from John’s account: “[Jesus] saw the heavens opened...”

It’s easy to skip over that little detail: he saw the heavens opened. But that’s the stuff of mystical visions. At the risk of doing what we were told in seminary never to do—namely, conflating John’s Gospel with the Synoptics—we may well ask: did John the Baptist also see the heavens opened? And, if so, what did he see?

Following this line of questioning, theologian and preacher Aidan Nichols OP speculates that at the Baptism both Jesus and John the Baptist received a glimpse into heaven, where Jesus saw himself, and John saw Jesus, as the Lamb of God on the heavenly altar. This is admittedly just speculation, but if true it would definitely account for John’s subsequent identification of Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

This motif of seeing the heavens opened recurs in the New Testament. Almost immediately after the events related in today’s Gospel, Jesus himself declares to Nathanael, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” And at the moment of his martyrdom, our patron, Saint Stephen, gazes into heaven and testifies to his accusers, “Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.”

The image of the Lamb in the Old Testament is multilayered. It could refer to the lambs sacrificed twice daily in the Jerusalem Temple, morning and evening, or to the lambs that individual Israelites could bring to the Temple to offer as sacrifices for their sins. It could refer to the Passover Lamb, sacrificed every year to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt when the blood of the lamb on the Israelites’ doorposts caused the angel of death to pass over their houses. And it could refer to the Suffering Servant in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, who “opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter …"

Another possible meaning is the Apocalyptic Lamb. In certain Jewish writings dating to between the Old and New Testaments, the figure of a lamb represents Israel’s Messiah, opposed by an array of ferocious wild beasts representing the nations of the earth. Against all odds, the lamb defeats and subdues these wild beasts, inaugurating the arrival of God’s kingdom and the messianic age.

Some scholars have thus argued that when John the Baptist proclaims that Jesus is the Lamb of God, his meaning is simply that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed one. It seems to me, however, that when John adds that this Lamb takes away the sin of the world, he is signifying something more: namely that Jesus has come to shed his blood in a sacrificial offering that will reconcile a fallen world to God.

At every Mass, we sing or say the threefold hymn Agnus Dei: “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.” Then the priest shows the consecrated host and chalice to the people, repeating the words of John the Baptist: “Behold the Lamb of God; behold him that taketh away the sins of the world.”

These words invite us to look beneath surface appearances, and see into the heart of a deeper reality. Visual artists like Jan van Eyck communicate something of this reality in their paintings. Music can also be its vehicle, as can various forms of prayer, meditation, and silent contemplation. Whatever the vehicle, if we’re faithful, persistent, and attentive, it just may be granted us also to see the heavens opened, and the Lamb standing at the throne of God.