The Lamb Who Takes Away the Sin of the World - Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, after the Advent Christmas season, we return now to Ordinary Time. So we're the second Sunday of Ordinary Time. But something very interesting to me, the way the Church has composed the liturgy, the readings. So last week was the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. So we heard St. Matthew's account of the baptism. And I told you, in all the Gospels, you're compelled to see Jesus through the lens of John the Baptist. And that's true. So today now, the church is like, we didn't have enough time to reflect on the meaning of the baptism, so it's asking us again to think about it. But this time in light of St. John's account of the baptism of the Lord, which is distinctive. Let me read to you the first couple lines here. John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him. So there's John in the banks of the River Jordan, and people are coming to him.

0:55 So he sees Jesus and he says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Now, you recognize that line because at the Mass, right, when we hold up the consecrated elements and the priest says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He repeats John the Baptist's words here. Can I suggest to everybody, this is of absolutely decisive significance. As I say, you can't get at Jesus without going through John. John is giving us the interpretive lens by which we see and understand Jesus. Now, let me just do this by way of contrast. And please, I don't mean any disrespect at all here to other great religious founders. I just want to make a distinction. Let's say if the Buddha were coming forward.

1:48 You say, oh, look, there's the one who's been enlightened. He was under the Bodhi tree and he came to enlightenment and he shares with us the fruits of that enlightenment. Look, there's the enlightened one. If Confucius came forward, oh, look, there's the one who's put together this very compelling moral, ethical system. Muhammad comes forward. Oh, there's the one who gave us the Quran. Moses comes forward. Oh, look, there's the lawgiver. That's how he'd probably characterize these other founders. John the Baptist doesn't say, as Jesus comes forward, oh, look, there's the definitive teacher, though Jesus was indeed a teacher. He doesn't say, oh, look, there's the lawgiver, though he was a kind of new Moses.

2:34 Doesn't say, oh, look, here comes the great wonder worker, though he was a wonder worker. What does he say? Look, there's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world Ah, now we get it You want to know what's distinctive about Jesus? That's it Now, you say Lamb of God, okay, that means he's a nice gentle figure No, no, no Go back to that time and that place Especially on the lips of John the Baptist John the Baptist, we know, was the son of Zechariah, the priest, the temple priest, son of Elizabeth, who came from a priestly family, going back to Aaron. He's a super priestly character. What did priests know about? They knew about temple sacrifice.

3:30 So I spoke to you before about the temple in Jerusalem, which was like everything. It was the center of Jewish life. And the central preoccupation of the priests in the temple was the performance of these sacrifices involving different types of animals, but paradigmatically involving lambs who were sacrificed unto the Lord. Now, for different reasons, sometimes just as an expression of thanksgiving, an expression of praise But typically, as atonement for sin A sin offering Now, how did that work? I know it's an alien idea to us But someone coming to the temple with this animal This, by the way, very innocent and sweet and gentle animal That made no protest, that gave no resistance as the throat of the animal was slit and its blood poured out, the person offering the sacrifice was intended to think, what's happening to this animal by rights should be happening to me.

4:44 He would, by a kind of transference, displace onto this animal his own guilt so that in the offering of the animal's blood, he was expressing his own responsibility, guilt, reparation, sorrow. And then as the animal is offered as a holocaust, he's meant to feel now the forgiveness of God. That through this great act of representative sacrifice, so he's not cutting his own throat, he's cutting the throat of the animal, who represents his sin before the Lord. So John the Baptist knew all about this. He knew all about this world. And he says about Jesus, Look, there's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. All the lambs sacrificed in the temple, the hundreds of thousands of lambs.

5:48 John is implying, didn't perform the task. They didn't accomplish the goal of the forgiveness of sins. Here is the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world. Let me just keep kind of ringing the changes on this theme of lamb because I want to get into the mind space of those who would have heard John the Baptist. Temple sacrifice, yes, indeed, but go back to the very beginning. Remember, Cain and Abel offer sacrifices. One accepted, the other not. Abel's accepted sacrifice was the sacrifice of a lamb. Look at the Passover, the great expression of the Exodus, and it centers around the sacrifice and eating of a lamb.

6:44 Think of that terrible scene in the book of Genesis. The Jews call it the Akedah. It means the binding, the binding of Isaac. As Abraham and his beloved son are at the top of the mountain, Abel, or rather Isaac, observes, we have everything we need for the sacrifice, but where is the lamb, he asks his father. Breaking his father's heart, of course. Abraham's answer is God will provide the lamb Well you remember in that story It's not a lamb They find You know once the Lord says to Abraham No no don't sacrifice your son They find a ram With his horns caught in the thicket And they sacrifice that ram But Abraham In answer to Isaac's question God will provide a lamb Hmm John the Baptist Look There he is there's the lamb that God provides.

7:46 We can see in the prophet Isaiah, look in chapter 53, where the suffering servant is construed as a kind of lamb of sacrifice, that the sins of the people are laid upon him. By his stripes we are healed. Think on the great day of atonement, and the high priest going into the Holy of Holies would place upon the scapegoat the sins of the people, then drive the scapegoat out into the desert to die, carrying away the sins of the people. But then sacrificing a lamb and spreading its blood around the Holy of Holies and then upon the people. You see, friends, John the Baptist, coming up out of this loamy biblical tradition, says, look, there's the Lamb of God, that's what he means.

8:40 That's what he means. The one who will perform the definitive and final and absolute act of atonement and reparation. Now, go back to what I said about the lambs in the temple and the one offering the animal. it's by a great act of substitution. What's happening to that animal is what is by right should be happening to me.

9:15 Jesus identifies himself with that role. What happens on the cross, everybody? Oh, it's the death of someone, this good man that was put to death by the Romans, this great act of injustice. Yeah, yeah, it was that. But seeing now with these eyes of faith, what do we see?

9:41 Jesus says, and John indicated it, I am the Lamb of God. See in what is happening to me what by rights should be happening to you. See in my suffering the price paid for human sin. I spoke last week about Jesus' identification with the sinner, and that's extremely important. Standing shoulder to shoulder with sinners. Yes, indeed. But there's something, friends, here that's even, it's more awful in a way. but extremely important.

10:25 Somehow, sin has to be dealt with. It can't just be left alone or forgiven from a distance. At some level, everybody, the price has to be paid. Now, please don't construe that as God is this dysfunctional, you know, anger-holic father that demands. That's not it at all. It's this honest sensibility that sin has to be paid for. If not, we're not taking it seriously. Go back over all of human history and think of the sheer intensity of our dysfunction. Think of not just individual sins, but the sin that has gripped the entire human race from the beginning.

11:19 We can't just dismiss that and say, oh, well, no problem, and God will forgive her from a distance. No, no. It's deep in the biblical sensibility that a price has to be paid. Jesus offers himself as the Lamb of God who pays that price. He pays that price. By which we are redeemed. and that word means to be bought back, by which we are ransomed. So now it's as though we're held captive, as indeed we are by sin, but by the act of his sacrifice, we are ransomed from our sin.

12:03 Why did he come? Church Father said this, he came to die. And they don't mean that in some cynical or simplistic way. He came to offer this sacrifice for our sins. Can I make one more reference to a lamb now? I've gone all the way through the Old Testament up to John calling Jesus the lamb. Now go to the very end of the Bible, the book of Revelation. And they're presented with the seven-sealed scroll that represents all of Scripture, represents, you might say, all of history. And the question is raised, who will open the scroll? Who will open these seals? And there's no one that can do it until there arrives. And it's awkwardly slash beautifully described in the Greek of the book of Revelation as the Lamb standing as though slain.

13:03 The Lamb standing, yes, victorious, but slain. and he's the one who can open the seven seals that reveal for us the meaning of it all, the meaning of history, the meaning of scripture, the meaning of life. It's the sacrificed lamb on the cross who's the key to understanding everything.

13:32 Behold, there is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Friends, we're not going to understand Jesus and his cross until we understand what John the Baptist meant by that.