Second Sunday after Epiphany; 15 January 2023; Epiphany 2A (RCL); Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42.
With verse 29, we finally come to the beginning of the narrative of John’s Gospel. vv. 19-28 amount to John’s denial that he is the messiah. With verse 29, John introduces Jesus into the narrative. So these verses stand out as crucial to understanding John’s purpose in writing. And they leap off the page at us.
John the Baptist sees Jesus walking by, and says, “Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” As Christians, we have heard this phrase so often liturgically that it raises no questions for us. To a first-century Jewish audience, it would have been truly puzzling. Read the whole of what we call the Old Testament, and you will find no such lamb. A lamb given as a sin offering might take away the sin of the one who offers it, because it is given wholly to the priesthood (and therefore had no value as food to the offerer). Otherwise, the sacrifice that takes away sin is the sacrifice of the Great Day of Atonement.
The sacrifice of atonement involved a bull slaughtered outside the camp, and destroyed there by fire to take away the sin of the priesthood (piacular or expiatory sacrifice always involved the destruction of the offering as food). After the slaughter of the bull, the high priest then offered two goats. One goat was sacrificed and the blood collected. This blood was then sprinkled on the mercy seat (the cherubim over the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies (after being sprinkled on the curtain)) and then sprinkled on the people to purify them.
Then, the high priest laid his hands on the head of the second goat and placed the sins of the people on that goat, which was then driven into the wilderness (presumably taking the people’s sins with him). That goat didn’t die! Already, with the words of John the Baptist, our curiosity is piqued. What is a lamb of God who takes away the sins, not just of the people, but of the cosmos?
Always, when John the Evangelist raises such a question, we know to look for the answer later in his Gospel — more of that in a bit. On the next day (keep track of the days!), John again sees Jesus and says, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Double the emphasis. Two of his disciples follow Jesus. One of them, we learn in a few verses, is unnamed — always an invitation for the reader to insert him or herself into the story. Jesus asks the two disciples, “What do you seek?” a key question to be answered by the Gospel. These two disciples ask Jesus, “Where do you remain?” The verb μἐνειν, menein, to remain, will be one of the words used again and again in the Gospel (I remain in the Father, and the Father in me; the one who keeps my commandments, the Father and I will come and remain in that one, ad infinitum). Jesus replies, “Come and see.” We are being invited into John’s Gospel to find what we seek, namely, where Jesus remains. This interchange should frame our whole reading of the Gospel.
And John will return to these questions at the end of the Gospel. John changes the chronology of the Synoptic Gospels by having Jesus die the day before the Passover (John does not narrate the ‘Last Supper’ because it is not the Passover yet), and instead has Jesus die at the very hour the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple court. Jesus, as the Passover Lamb, somehow takes way the sin of the world. This should refer us back to Chapter 6, with its disquisition on eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man, an image that would have caused any first-century Jew to cringe a little. Blood was absolutely forbidden as belonging to God. The life of an animal was redeemed (bought back from God) by rendering the blood of the animal (in which the life resided) to God by pouring it on the altar. John has imagined the Christian community as a replacement for the Temple altar. Where does God remain? In the Christian community as Temple and Altar.
When Jesus appears to Mary in the Garden, he tells her that he has not yet ascended (embarked would be a better translation) to the Father, but to go and tell his disciples that he is embarking to his Father and their Father and his God and their God. Where does Jesus remain? On the journey toward God.
The next day, Jesus goes to Galilee, and calls more disciples, ending with Nathaniel. After the call of Nathaniel, the Evangelist turns toward the readers and promises that we will see greater things than these — we will see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man, a vision Mary has in the tomb, where she sees two angels sitting where Jesus’ body had been, just as the two cherubim surmounted the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies.
And then, on the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the wine gave out. And just as Moses struck the rock when there was no water in the wilderness, Jesus turns water in stone jars into wine. On our journey toward God, we will be drinking wine as we go. Remember that Mary saw Jesus on the third day, when Jesus announced to her that he was embarking to his God and our God, his Father and our Father.
It is our consumption of bread and wine in the eucharist, our participation in the flesh and blood of the Son of Man as the Passover Lamb, that takes away the sin of the world. John (the Evangelist) has made an incredibly bold theological move in just a few simple verses here at the beginning of the Gospel, and invited us into his Gospel to see where Jesus remains. It is too light a thing, says God to the Servant, for you to raise up the tribes of Jacob, but I will give you as a light to the nations that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth. John sees the fulfillment of this prophecy in the eucharistic community that shares the flesh and blood of the Lamb of God.