Behold, the Lamb of God

“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 2:29)

The words of John the Baptist, spoken as Jesus walked towards him on the banks of the Jordan River. If you’ve grown up Catholic or Anglican, you’ve probably sung those words hundreds of times in the leadup to the Eucharist:

“Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us.”

We sing them softly, prayerfully, almost like a lullaby. But for the people who first heard them, these words were not gentle. They were explosive. They were dangerous. They were the kind of words that could get you arrested — or worse.

Of course, referring to someone as a lamb doesn’t sound very provocative, and that’s because we’re not Jews living in the first century. When we think of lambs, we think of the last time we visited a farm, or we think of a child’s storybook. When Jesus’ contemporaries spoke of God’s lamb, they meant something very different, though to us their meaning might not be immediately obvious.

Of course, we know that lambs were used in ritual sacrifice by first-century Jews. When John referred to Jesus as the ‘lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’, was he thinking of a lamb that might be sacrificed at the Temple in Jerusalem? Well … the only problem with that idea is that the animals that were sacrificed there for sin were not lambs.

You can read about all those sacrifices in the book of Leviticus (and it’s a great read). The main burnt offering was always of a bull, though that offering wasn’t specifically targeting sin either. What did target sin, as outlined in Leviticus chapter 16, was ‘the scapegoat’ (from which we get the word ‘scapegoat’), where the animal wasn’t actually killed. The people prayed over the goat and transferred their sins onto the poor beast, after which it was shooed away into the wilderness.

If John the Baptist had been using imagery drawn from the temple, we’d be singing of the ‘bull of God’ or, more likely, the ‘goat of God’, and that’s not going to happen! Even so, I think it’s pretty clear that John wasn’t using temple imagery at all but was instead harking back to the story of the Exodus and the celebration of the Passover.

The Passover lamb was not sacrificed in the Temple, and its blood wasn’t sprinkled on any altar. Instead, its blood was painted on the doorposts of enslaved families in Egypt — a sign of protection, a mark of belonging, and a declaration that these people were God’s people and that God was about to act on their behalf.

The Passover lamb was a sign of liberation, and that is the image John chooses.

Now picture the scene. John is baptising at the Jordan — the very river Israel crossed under Joshua generations earlier when they first entered the promised land. The symbolism is thick. The people are gathering, confessing their sins, preparing themselves for God to act again.

These are a people under occupation, just as their ancestors had been in Egypt. Rome controls their land, taxes their labour, and kills their young men with impunity. They long for freedom. They long for God to intervene. And into that moment John points at Jesus and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God.”

In other words:

“Here is the one through whom God will liberate us.”
“Here is the one whose life will mark us as God’s people.”
“Here is the one who will lead us into freedom.”

These are not soothing words. Them’s are fighting words! John is announcing nothing less than the beginning of God’s long‑awaited liberation.

John saw it—that in Jesus God was going to bring the Roman occupation to an end. No, it wasn’t going to happen in exactly the way that he or any of his contemporaries imagined, as Jesus wasn’t going to raise an army with swords and spears. He was launching a different kind of revolution that used the weapons of truth, courage, and self‑giving love—weapons that have the power to not only liberate nations but can also liberate individual human hearts from fear, shame, addiction, grief, and betrayal.

And this is why this ‘lamb of God’ metaphor still resonates. Because the world still groans under occupation—sometimes literally, sometimes spiritually, sometimes emotionally. The Roman occupation of Israel has been replaced by the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and it’s no longer the Romans or the Persians but the Americans who are occupying Venezuela and perhaps Iran and Greenland! The pieces on the chessboard change, but we’re still playing the same old game.

There are still powers that crush, systems that dehumanise, fears that enslave, addictions that bind, and griefs that suffocate. And we still long for a God who does not simply forgive us but who truly sets us free.

“Behold, the Lamb of ”God”—let us hear these words as the first disciples did:
as the announcement that God’s long‑awaited liberation has begun, and as an invitation to step into that freedom,

May we have the courage to follow the Lamb wherever he leads.
May we have the faith to trust his way of liberation.
And may we become, by grace, a people through whom God sets the world free.

Amen.

Our Sunday Eucharist

We celebrated another wonderful Sunday Eucharist last weekend, and a special thank you to Rob Gilland and Rev. John Jegaothy for being with me on the panel.

We probably got a bit carried away with the Bible Banter on Acts, chapter 10. The discussion (which you’ll find in the video at the end of today’s newsletter) went for almost 20 minutes, but a part of the problem was that our virtual brother, AI Paul, became rather uncooperative when asked about tensions experienced between his namesake and the Apostle Peter. AI Paul pleaded technical difficulties, but he was not convincing. I’ve included a short below that tells the sad story.

The most popular short from last week was on the power of prayer, and that’s also published below. Of course, you can watch all our shorts on the Sunday Eucharist Instagram page, and you’ll find the full archive of all our recordings on YouTube.

This coming Sunday I’m very much looking forward to having Dr Andrew Madry and Jakob Pyeatt with me. I’ll try resist asking Jakob about pending military deployments, but I am praying hard that he and his many sisters and brothers in the US military will be spared from any deeper involvement in the current global insanity.

Join us this Sunday at noon, please, and invite your friends by referring them to our Facebook Event Page or the Streamyard page. Join us via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia, Streamyard or TheSundayEucharist.com

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What’s On?

Sunday, January 18th – Our Eucharist from noon @thesundayeucharist.com, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia or Streamyard
Tuesday, January 20th – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Thursday, January 22nd – Online Bible study group meeting from noon @ www.thesundayeucharist.com/bible
Thursday, January 22nd – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Saturday, January 24th – Boxing at Legend’s Gym in Kensington from 3 pm

I’ve been both fascinated and horrified by the narratives dominating our mainstream media this week.

I learnt years ago that one of the propaganda machine’s standard techniques is to encourage free discussion within strictly predefined boundaries. For instance, someone chairing a discussion begins by saying how we all know that a certain enemy ruler is a ruthless despot (be it Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, Nicolas Maduro, Ayatollah Khamenei, or … whoever). Having established that framework, they then ask whether we should leave it up to the good citizens of the dictator’s country to deal with him or whether we should step in and help.

That’s it! The framework has been established, and there are only two options. No one is expected to challenge the framework or even acknowledge it!

I’m always impressed by Professor Marandi of Tehran University, who never accepts these frameworks but always questions the narrative. I watched a woman interview him this week, where she began by talking about the Iranian government’s murder of unarmed protestors. Her only question was what would bring the slaughter to an end! Needless to say, Marandi refused to accept her starting point.

We need to be careful not to get ensnared in false narratives. I’m not an expert, but I question these reports of “mass casualties” amongst peaceful protestors due to government brutality. It sounds eerily reminiscent of the Syrian propaganda of 2011

A lot of these reports about Iran are coming from the Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is not in Iran at all. It’s in New York (see here), and Its board is chaired by American, Minky Worden, formerly of Human Rights Watch – an organisation that has been strongly criticised for Its uncritical support of US foreign policy (see here).

If you want an alternative account of what’s been happening on the streets of Iran, listen to retired US army Colonel, Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to the US Secretary of State. He sees the chaos in Iran as being entirely the work of Mossad and the CIA (click here).

In truth, the best weapon for dealing with false narratives is a true narrative, and the Scriptures provide us with just such a narrative – the story of the Lamb of God who is leading us to a brighter tomorrow. Adopting that as our primary narrative should both give us hope and help us discriminate between the wheat and the chaff.

Continue to pray for me as I pray for you.

Your brother in the Good Fight,

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P.S. In my ongoing attempt to develop our online community, I’m trialling a new community platform – www.skool.com. I’ve specifically invited only three people thus far to check it out with me but I’d like to invite all my subscribers now to take a look.

Will this platform help us build communication, work together more effectively, and so make us a more effective force for the Kingdom of God? Let me know what you think. You can access the new site from the URL www.fightingfathers.com.