I haven’t eaten lamb. I actually really like lamb; roasted low and slow with a lot of garlic and a little rosemary, maybe served with a little mint jelly on the side.

Which is really messed up if you think about it …so I don’t.

If I’m home for Easter dinner and lamb is on the menu, I just give thanks for the fact that it tastes so good and I try not to think too deeply about how it came to be on my plate. It’s just too disturbing.

And you know what? I feel the same way about the scriptures when they talk about Jesus as a lamb…because I don’t think I could kill Jesus if my life depended on it. And yet there is definitely a prominent line of thinking within Christianity that seems to believe that my life and your life - our eternal life - does.

Not that we have to kill Jesus anymore than I need to kill the meat I eat - the dirty work has already been done - but there is still a belief that Jesus’ death, his sacrifice on the cross, was in some way necessary in order for you and me to live life and live it to the full.

And that does disturb me. It disturbs me very much. And I hope it disturbs you too.

Honestly, I would be happy to gloss over this whole “lamb of God” thing today were it not for the fact that John the Baptist doesn’t just say it once, he says it twice. So it feels like something we need to face because if we get this wrong, I think it really messes up our understanding of God and what God wants for us and what God wants from us.

In fact, I think you can trace the mess we see unfolding all around us  - this mess of authoritarian overreach we are living through - straight back to a fundamental misunderstanding amongst Christians of what John means when he calls Jesus “the Lamb of God.”

The trouble is that it is so hard to get it right because the gospel writer is not playing straight with us. The gospel of John is laying down allusions, mixing metaphors, playing with and subverting familiar symbols, all in an effort to get us to repent/rethink/change our minds the better to see how God is at work in the world in a new way.

So if you hear this phrase about the, “lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” and your first thought is of sacrifice, a blood sacrifice offered at the temple in Jerusalem to atone for one’s sin, that makes sense.

Or at least it would if lambs had actually been sacrificed at the temple for the forgiveness of sins. Only… they weren’t. Full grown rams and bulls, birds and even grain was, yes, but not lambs. So the image of a lamb who takes away sin is actually weird.

Likewise, if you’re familiar enough with the scriptures to associate “the lamb of God,” with the Passover lamb, you’re also on to something.

Most of you will remember that the Israelites were once slaves in Egypt. When Moses appealed to Pharaoh saying, “let my people go,” Pharaoh was unwilling to release them. So God sent plague after plague, until God ran out of patience and sent the angel of death to visit each household and take the life of the first born son - the firstborn son because he represented the future of the whole family.

But God made a provision for the people of Israel.  Each household was told to slaughter a lamb and paint its blood on the doorposts as a sign to the angel to pass-over and not take their first born.

Then, with their sandals on and their tunics tucked in for a hasty retreat, they were to eat the small meal the lamb provided along with unleavened bread, because there was no time to wait for the leaven to rise.

And then, while Pharaoh and his people were distracted by the death of their own children, Moses was able to lead his people up and out of bondage and across the red sea to freedom.

In that story the blood of the lamb provided protection and was a means of liberation from captivity, but was in no way about the forgiveness of sins.

And yet John says, “here is the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” So what’s he on about?

I guess we could range even further back to the strange and horrible story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his own beloved son, Isaac. A sacrifice which God commanded and then forestalled by providing a ram in a thicket.

Was God trying to communicate that the sacrifice of a beloved son was necessary? Or did God provide a ram to show us that child sacrifice is not something God would ever think was necessary? To this day, no one knows for sure.

And then, of course, there is the suffering servant cycle in the book of Isaiah that speaks of one who “like a lamb led to slaughter”…” “was wounded for our transgressions (and) crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5,7).

It turns out that there are many lambs and a lot of sacrifice mentioned in our scripture, and you need to know that all of these powerful and disturbing images would have been swimming in the head of the gospel writer so much so that parsing them is a challenge.

But one thing we know for sure is that the gospel writer isn’t just offering these images up straight. Instead he is asking us to see these old symbols in a new way.

John is “telling the truth, but telling it slant,” to quote a well known local prophet. It’s all a bit of a mash-up and like any really good mash-up, the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

So friends, see if you can follow me here, because I think the gospel writer’s understanding of Jesus as the “lamb of God” is actually the exact opposite of the standard straight up reading most of us were taught; a reading that is so disturbing that most of us just give thanks for the fact that it works out for our good and try not to think about it too deeply.

I mean, how many of us were taught to see Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice, given to appease an angry God or a just God….but also, paradoxically, a God who loves us… loves us so much that He is willing to allow His firstborn son to be sacrificed instead of us?

How many of us were taught that our sin separates us from God, but that Jesus’ blood washes away our sins?

If you didn’t hear it from the pulpit you probably absorbed it through hymns. Sing it if you know it:

What can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

O, what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

I used to sing that with my grandma. Or how about that old rugged cross:

so despised by the world,

has a wondrous attraction for me;

for the dear Lamb of God left his glory above

to bear it to dark Calvary.

In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,

a wondrous beauty I see,

for 'twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,

to pardon and sanctify me.

So many of us were taught through word and song that we needed to believe and be thankful - whether it made sense or not - that God loved us so much that he sacrificed his only begotten son on our behalf,. We were taught that God needed to punish someone for our sins, that Jesus took the punishment we all deserve, and if we would just believe in the power of that sacrifice to save us, we would live happily ever after.

But if you think about it, it’s messed up, isn’t it?

Years ago, I had a conversation with Brian McLaren about all of this and he said, “yeah, it’s like we go out and tell the world that God is love, but in our heart of hearts we know that he’s only able to be nice to everyone else because back at home he beats the hell out of our older brother.”

It just doesn’t sit right, which for me is a sign that something else is going on here. So hear me out and see if what I’m about to say makes better sense to you.

If Jesus is the “lamb of God,” I think the first thing we are invited to notice is that he’s not ours. Jesus isn’t our lamb to sacrifice for our sins to make peace with God. Jesus is God’s lamb. Jesus is God sacrificing some part of God’s self to make peace with us.

Jesus, the first born of all creation - that is the one who holds the future of us all - is God entering into our story as vulnerable and mortal as any other human being. Jesus is God immersing God’s self in our story as surely as Jesus was immersed in the waters of baptism: living in solidarity with us, making peace by coming to us rather than waiting for us to come to him.

Jesus comes to us knowing full well that it is not God who has a history of demanding blood, not God who desires to punish, not God who has a nasty habit of sacrificing the innocent, but us.

Remember that God never cried out for Jesus to be crucified. We did.

In fact, if you go back through the scriptures, from the story of Abraham and Isaac on, you’ll find, more often than not, that it is people who feel like they need to sacrifice something to get right with God, people who need to shed blood, people who need something or someone to be condemned and die, someone or something to blame in order to feel righteous; and we have a term for that, don’t we?

Anyone know what I’m talking about? A Scapegoat. Right.

Whereas God, from that ram in Abraham’s thicket onward, says over and over again…let’s dial back the blood. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. Through prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah, God says over and over and over again that the blood of animals means nothing.

“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?” says the Lord;/I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts;/I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats” (Isaiah 1:11).

All I require is for people to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with me (Micah 6:6-8; see also Jeremiah 6, Amos 5, Hosea 8, & Psalm 40). “Cease doing evil; learn to do good” (Isaiah1:16). “I desire mercy not sacrifice” (Hosea 8).

But we just don’t get it. We just don’t get it. Because honestly, shifting the blame to someone else is a lot easier than taking responsibility for our own change and transformation. Making someone else pay is a heck of a lot cheaper. Allowing someone else to suffer is a whole lot easier.

And so we have created a world and a religion in our own image: a world and a faith where our salvation and safety comes at the cost of innocent victims, a world and a faith where we profit at the expense of someone else and call that a good deal, a world and a faith where peace can only be achieved through violence… which makes no sense at all.

Friends, I think that is the exact opposite of what God wants from us and for us, which is why Jesus came to take away, not just the sins of the world - not just all our petty little iniquities - but the Sin of the world: our mistaken belief that violence is the answer, that someone must pay or suffer or even die in order for others to be set free.

I mean let’s think about this for a minute: if the lamb of God needed to be sacrificed in order for our sins to be forgiven, John the Baptist could have taken him out at the get go; held him under the water just a little bit longer.

But he didn’t, because Jesus didn’t just come to die, he came to live. He came to show us a new way of being in the world. He sacrificed himself knowing that the cost of life, of becoming human is invariably death, but that doesn’t mean his death was the point.

The point was to show us that neither blood nor blame will save us.

All that can save us is love and grace, forgiveness and mercy.

And so like a lamb led to slaughter, Jesus came among us and exposed himself to the very worst we could do…and then came back to us with nothing but what? … love and grace, forgiveness and mercy.

The lamb of God does not die because God needs a sacrifice, because God needs someone to suffer the consequences of our sin. The lamb of God dies as a consequence of our sin, as a consequence of our need for blood, and then in spite of that sin, returns to us in peace… anyway.

If God were like us, God would need to punish someone for crucifying Jesus, but God is not. Through the crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus sacrifices himself to show us that we can hit God with our absolute worst and God will not hit back. Jesus gives himself up, once and for all, to prove to us that God does not turn to violence, engage in violence, or require violence. No. What God requires… what God longs for…is an end to violence.

Which is why I’ve taken so much time to try and explain this, because here’s the thing: if you believe that God does require violence - as so many Christians do - then on some level, you believe that violence is not just necessary but righteous.

If you believe that God requires violence than that gives you cover to keep the cycles of violence and retribution going.

If you believe God is the ultimate authority figure just waiting to punish anyone who doesn’t obey his commands, then the vicious authoritarian behavior we see being unleashed on dissenters in our country feels not just familiar, but holy.

This administration has the power it does, because far too many Christians voted for this. They voted for this because deep down they think this is what God wants because this is how God acts.

You see, if you’ve been conditioned by your church, like so many Christians have, to believe that what we all really deserve is everlasting torture in an eternal concentration camp called hell, then it’s a lot easier to justify sending “illegals” to SECOT or Dilley, or Alligator Alcatraz.

If you’ve been taught that those who don’t comply will be damned, it’s a lot easier to blame the victims of violence who didn’t do what they were told.

If you’ve been told that you will be spared if you will just agree to see things the way we see them, even if it goes against what you can plainly see with your own two eyes, it’s a lot easier to quiet your conscience, keep your head down, and toe the party line.

But friends, I truly believe that is the exact opposite of what God wants of us or for us. Jesus comes to liberate us from that way of thinking.

Just like that passover lamb, the lamb of God comes to set us free from our fear, free from our need for scapegoating, free from our love affair with violence and retribution.

Free to believe that God loves us and wants what is best for all of us: a world where no one - least of all God - hurts or destroys anyone, anymore, ever. A world where we, like God, desire mercy, not sacrifice.

And God knows that we can’t force this vision on anyone. We can’t sacrifice anyone but ourselves in order to help people see.

All we can do is live into it and invite others to come and see just how different the world might be if we truly understood what God wants for us and from us.

All we can do is follow the lamb of God, regardless of the cost, the lamb of God who comes even still to take away the Sin of the world.

Amen