Tag: Paschal lamb

Lenten Meditation: All We Like Sheep

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Isaiah 53:6

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

I am privileged to be learning Handel’s Messiah with a group of really wonderful folks in my small town, readying ourselves for our twice yearly performances.   The “All We Like Sheep”  chorus is one of the most challenging of all, simply because the melody lines intertwine in seemingly random fashion, as if our choir were sixty some individual sheep running amok, each in a different direction.    Sheep are skilled  at ignoring boundaries, running over anything in their way, doubling back and retracing their steps and giving in to whim rather than doing what is right and orderly.

It is brilliantly organized musical chaos, as only Handel can create, until the final Adagio, like a shepherd of sorts,  brings all the voices together in one powerful final lament:  the Lord lifts from us the burden of our depravity and takes it upon Himself in the ultimate sacrifice.  We are absolved, sheared of our heavy burden, though unworthy as only a herd of dumb sheep can be.

We are sheep in desperate need of a Shepherd who knows what it is to be the Paschal Lamb.   Worthy is that Lamb.

Advent Meditation–Paschal Lamb

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bronze sculpture by C. Malcolm Powers from www-personal.umich.edu/~mmpowrs/front.html

When I was growing up, when hearing the Old Testament Passover story from the Book of Exodus, I’d always flinch at the choosing of the year old male lamb “without blemish” to be selected as the sacrifice for the meal, and whose blood was used to mark the doorposts of the homes of God’s people, enslaved in Egypt.  His blood spared those residing inside from the angel of death slaying the firstborns, securing the “Passover” of that home,  so the lamb became the sacrificial replacement as directed by the Lord Himself.   Although I understood the reason for the sacrifice of the perfect lamb, as a child I secretly thought it would be preferable to have a blemish or two, thus avoiding being chosen.  What became clear later was that lambs, particularly the ones with blemishes, were doomed to be slaughtered for meat anyway–their death was a certainty.

Only the Passover lamb actually saved lives, lives that were to be liberated from the bondage of slavery.  Lives that are liberated from the bondage of sin.

Jesus is the Worthy Lamb, sacrificed so that death will pass over us, that we will be changed forever, freed from who we have been.  Death is no longer our certainty.

1 Corinthians 5:7-8