Tag: Passover lamb

Lenten Meditation–The Lamb

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Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
John 1:29

John the Baptist is the only one who actually calls Jesus a Lamb to His Face.  It seems a curious label to put on the Messiah expected to bring the Kingdom of God to His people with great power, might and fanfare.
A lamb?
A defenseless helpless lamb?
How could God send a mere lamb?

The label is particularly apt for this Messiah.  This mere lamb is marked for slaughter, destined for sacrifice.  The Jewish people well understood the age-old directive to find a “year old male lamb without defect”, the perfect lamb, as only that blood would demarcate their Passover rescue in Egypt.  There would be no mistaking what “Lamb of God” implied to the Jews who knew their Passover history.

But John is even more revolutionary than simply calling Jesus a Lamb of God.  He is not talking about a sacrifice meant only for his own people.  He is talking about a sacrifice on behalf of the world.    For the Jews, for the Gentiles, for the enemies of the Jews, for the millions of people as yet unborn.  His words cannot be clearer, ringing through to the unsettled times and people of today.

The perfect lamb is sacrificed, his blood marking the hands of the slaughterers, and washing them clean.
No mere lamb would forgive the holder of the knife.  Only so for the Lamb of God.

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