Behold the Lamb of God

John 1.29-3 4

There is a story about a traveller waiting at a railway station who noticed that there were five clocks, all showing different times. When he asked why, he was told, "If they all showed the same time, there wouldn't be any point in having five of them." The four gospels show four different pictures of Jesus - and the fourth gospel, in particular, looks very different from the other three.

All tell the same story to mark the beginning of Jesus' adult life: a story which starts with John the Baptist and finishes with another epiphany, or manifestation - the dove descending. So why are they so different? And, in particular, why is the Fourth Gospel so different from the others?

The differences:

· Mark describes the physical appearance and diet of John to make him look the part of a prophet: the fourth gospel says nothing about this, only "There was a man sent from God whose name was John"

· Who saw the dove descending, Jesus or John (or possibly the crowd)?

· Finally, the Fourth Gospel does not say that John baptized Jesus!

· In Mark, John's preaching is focused on repentance (a theme developed still further in the direction of judgment by Matthew and Luke, who speak about the one who is to come as a thresher, beating out and burning the chaff Luke also says, "Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the tree"); in the Fourth Gospel, John speaks only about the one who is to come, the Messiah, and, when he recognizes Jesus, calls him "The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" - he does not call him judge, destroyer, or thresher but saviour. In the first three gospels, John teaches what we must do: in the fourth, about what Jesus does for us.

Possible Explanations:

· Selection - the baptism of Jesus was an embarrassment to the early church, as Matthew brings out by the conversation he reports between John and Jesus: "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" The baptism of Jesus, with the voice from heaven, may appear to be a commissioning of Jesus, but does this mean that Jesus was not previously aware of who he was? The fourth gospel gives the story another function: "John bare witness ..."

· The author of the Fourth Gospel and his readers already knew what was in Mark: the author does not repeat the background detail.

· The author wanted to refute the surviving disciples of the Baptist who saw him as the Messiah or at least as more important than Jesus. (Some of these disciples turn up in Acts; and the first century Jewish historian Josephus appears to know more about John the Baptist than about Jesus.)

· Or is it possible that John's encounter with Jesus brought about John's conversion, from a doctrine of judgment to a doctrine of atonement / redemption! salvation? Let's look at the phrase with which John points out Jesus: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

Why "Lamb of God"?

· There may be an association with the passover lamb, whose blood, smeared on the doorposts caused the angel of death to pass over the houses of the Hebrews at the time of the plague of the firstborn.

· Or Jesus may be seen as the scapegoat - scapesheep being also acceptable - on which the high priest laid the sins of the people before driving it out into the wilderness. The writings of René Girard show how the theme of the scapegoat is central in many cultures, and how the cycle of blame can only be broken by a scapegoat who is truly innocent.

· The suffering servant in Isaiah "opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter"

All of these make sense only in the context of the suffering and death of Jesus. Was John showing prophetic insight and foretelling the future, or is this figure of the Lamb of God something more than its Old Testament forebears? If we look at the Book of Revelation, "Lamb" has become a favourite title for Christ, occurring 29 times in 27 verses, notably in the song of the elders: "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!" Hence the emblem, familiar not only in religious art but also on pub signs, of a lamb carrying a flag in its mouth.

We remember the opening verses of the fourth gospel, speaking of the incarnation of Jesus: "We beheld his glory." Later in the same gospel, when Jesus speaks of "the time for the Son of Man to be glorified" he is not speaking of a marvellous birth or of strange visitors to a stable, but of his crucifixion, the slaying of the Lamb: "When I am lifted up, I shall draw all people to me."

John Howard Yoder gives an interesting subtitle to his book on the Politics of Jesus: on the titlepage, "Vicit agnus foster" (our lamb conquers), and on the cover "Behold the Man! Our Victorious Lamb." He sees in the life of Jesus, and in the life of his own Mennonite community, a renunciation of violence, and contrasts this to a pragmatic "rejection of violence offered only because it is a cheaper and less dangerous or more shrewd way to impose one's will upon someone else, a kind of coercion which is harder to resist."

Certainly any renunciation of violence is preferable to its acceptance; but what Jesus renounced is not first of all violence, but rather the compulsiveness of purpose that leads the strong to violate the dignity of others. The point is not that one can attain all of one's legitimate ends without using violent means. It is rather that our readiness to renounce our legitimate ends whenever they cannot be obtained by legitimate means itself constitutes our participation in the triumphant suffering of the Lamb.

Yoder goes on to say that this concept of participation in "the war of the lamb" is "meaningful only if Christ is who Christians claim him to be, the Master."

This is one way of bearing witness to Christ. It is not the only way that Christians have interpreted this calling.

We started with the futility of five clocks displaying different times. We finish with not just the variety of the gospels, but the whole diversity of Christendom, bearing witness to the many ways in which God has spoken to us through Jesus. And this is not futility, but a challenge - a challenge to be faithful to that act of witness which has been entrusted to each one of us. Amen.