Today’s choice for a Lenten hymn is actually another very simple song, which as John says in his morning prayer video might be used in various ways such as in between intercessions. The text is a form of the ‘agnus dei’: “Behold the Lamb of God, Behold the Lamb of God, He takes away the sin, the sin of the world”. Those are the words of Jesus’ relative and forerunner, John the Baptiser ,as recorded in John 1:29.
I wrote a blog post on 6 February about an image of the Lamb of God. This title, one of many for Jesus in Christian history, is one that seems to have endured. The idea of the all-powerful One becoming as weak and helpless as a baby sheep is intriguing to the outsider, and maybe comforting to small children. From an adult perspective it is one of many apparent contradictions in our faith. It is perhaps the end of the development of the idea of the Messiah being the ‘servant of God’ in Isaiah: a servant (or more precisely a slave) has no choice in whether or how they serve their master or mistress, as a result of which there is a strong human tendency to treat servants badly.
The particular scandal of the image of Jesus as a Lamb is the association of lambs with the Temple sacrifices in the older form of Judaism and other religions. So the idea that Jesus as God’s servant was forced to an excruciating and humiliating death on the cross is taken as evidence that our (Christian) concept of God is of a wrathful father punishing his servant / son as a substitute for everyone who has angered him. That is of course a simplistic way of putting it, and the idea of atonement is more subtle and complex than that, but it’s how some humanists view Christianity and what puts them off.
There is however a second image at play when we think of the Lamb of God: that of Passover, when the blood of the sacrificed lamb is sprinkled around the doors of the Hebrews’ dwellings, not to punish but to save. Those households alone were spared the destruction of the firstborn of Egypt, just as Jesus himself was saved from Herod’s massacre of innocent children. For the sake of balance, and to show that the images of ‘atonement’ and ‘saviour’ are a contrast and not intended to reinforce each other, here’s an interesting view from a Jewish writer.
So taking the two images together, sacrifice for sin and sacrifice for redemption, we come closer to the Christian understanding that Jesus had to die in order that we might live. His sacrificed body has a purpose: to “preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting life” to use the words of the old Prayer Book communion. These two images also frame the Lenten journey from the confession of Shrove Tuesday to the celebration of our salvation at Easter.