SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY, YEAR A

January 15, 2023

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Isaiah 49:1-7

Psalm 40:1-10

I Corinthians 1:1-9

John 1:29-41

 

A question I like to ask when looking at the collect and readings appointed for the coming Sunday is this: What Good News do these texts give us about God? What do they tell us about Jesus—about who he is and what he does? In other words, what theological truths do these propers reveal? And how might we be called to respond?

 

Asking these questions about today’s readings, we encounter two principal images of Jesus. The first is that of light. Today’s Collect sets the stage by opening with the explicit address: “Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world …”  And in our Old Testament reading, God declares through the prophet Isaiah: “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” 

 

About whom Isaiah is speaking is not entirely clear in the reading itself, but the Christian tradition has understood it as applying first of all to Israel, then to Christ himself, and then to the Church. As the Collect concludes: “Grant that thy people, illumined by thy Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth …”

 

The opening greeting of Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians picks up on this theme of a worldwide fellowship enlightened by Christ. Paul addresses his readers in the Church in Corinth as those who are “called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours …” So that’s the first image of Christ in today’s readings: the Light of the World, illuminating all nations and peoples to the earth’s farthest ends.

 

When we turn to the Gospel reading, however, we encounter another image of Christ: the Lamb of God. At the River Jordan, John the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him and says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” The next day, John repeats the proclamation to two of his disciples as Jesus walks by, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” thus prompting those two disciples to follow Jesus and spend the day with him. On this basis, just before Communion at almost every Eucharist, we sing or say the hymn known as the Agnus Dei: “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world: Have mercy upon us … Grant us thy peace.”

 

What would those two disciples have understood when they heard John describe Jesus as the Lamb of God? Well, the image has multiple layers of meaning in the Old Testament. It could refer to the lambs sacrificed twice daily in the Jerusalem Temple’s regular morning and evening services. It could refer to the lambs individual Israelites brought to the Temple to offer as sacrifices for their sins. It could also refer to the Passover Lamb, sacrificed every year to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt when the angel of death passed over the Israelites’ houses whose doorposts were smeared with the blood of the lamb. And it could evoke the mysterious figure of 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 what’s been called “the Apocalyptic Lamb.” In certain apocryphal Jewish writings dating from the period between the Old and New Testaments, the figure of a lamb represents Israel’s Messiah, who is opposed by an array of ferocious wild beasts representing the nations of the earth. Against all odds, the lamb defeats and subdues the wild beasts, inaugurating God’s kingdom and the dawning of the messianic age of universal peace. 

 

For this reason, some biblical scholars argue when John the Baptist proclaims Jesus the Lamb of God, he means 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’s saying something more: namely, that Jesus has come to shed his blood in a sacrificial offering that will reconcile a fallen world to God.

 

So, today’s readings offer us two images of Christ: the Light of the World and the Lamb of God. An obvious question for further reflection is how these two images link up with each other. What do they tell us about Jesus when we take them together?

 

Well, it so happens that a certain passage in the Revelation to John does explicitly join these two images. In this mysterious last book of the New Testament, John repeatedly represents Christ in heaven by the figure of a lamb, who’s paradoxically been slain and yet lives and reigns victorious over all creation. And in his wonderful vision of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven, John exclaims, “The city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the lamb.” Or, as hymn 490 paraphrases it, “The lamb is the light of the city of God. Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.”

 

The juxtaposition of these two images teaches us a deeper truth. Christ is the light of world precisely because he’s the Lamb who’s been slain and yet lives. And we’re invited to take our part in spreading Christ’s light to the world in no other way than by pointing to his sacrifice, and by bearing witness to his death and resurrection.

 

As Psalm 40 puts it: “I have declared thy righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I will not refrain my lips, O Lord, that that thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; my talk hath been of thy truth, and of thy salvation.”

 

That may seem like a tall order but it’s really a very simple process involving ordinary people like you and me. We encounter a prime example of it in today’s Gospel. John the Baptist bears witness to what he’s seen and heard, and two of his disciples are moved to follow Jesus. Then, having spent the day with Jesus, Andrew finds his brother Simon, and testifies: “We have found the Messiah.” 

 

And so it has continued from that day until now. We encounter Jesus, we tell our friends what we’ve seen and heard, and we invite them to come and see for themselves. In this very way, we begin to fulfill the prayer that as God’s people, illumined by his Word and Sacraments, we may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, so that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth.