The Christmas season is now over, but today’s Gospel drops us right back where we left off. Once again, we meet John the Baptist. This time, though, we hear him through the Gospel of John. Just before today’s passage, the priests and Levites have come out from Jerusalem to see the strange man with a wild appearance that everyone is talking about. This group of religious leaders asks John a simple question: Who are you? Are you the Messiah? No. Are you Elijah? No. Are you one of the prophets? No.
So finally they ask, Well then, what do you have to say for yourself?
John answers with one line that sums up his whole life, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: make straight the way of the Lord.” And then he adds, “There is one coming after me whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
When John sees Jesus coming toward him, he points him out and gives Jesus a name no one expected.
He doesn’t say, “Here comes the Messiah.”
He doesn’t say, “Here is the King of Kings.”
He says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”
That title tells us everything Jesus came to do.
John the Baptist was the son of a temple priest. He grew up surrounded by sacrifice, blood, altars, and offerings. When he calls Jesus the Lamb of God, he’s not being poetic or sentimental. He’s being very precise.
For us, a lamb sounds gentle and sweet; something fluffy and harmless. For John’s Jewish audience, the image was much heavier. When they heard “lamb,” several powerful images would have come flooding into their minds all at once.
First, there was the lamb of atonement. On the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the high priest placed his hands on the animal and symbolically transferred the sins of the people onto it. It was then sent into the wilderness where it would suffer and die. The lamb suffered so the people could be forgiven.
Then there was the daily lamb. Every single morning and every single evening, a lamb was sacrificed in the Temple…day after day, year after year…to keep the people in right relationship with God.
They also would have thought of the Passover lamb, whose blood saved their ancestors in Egypt from death and marked the moment when God set them free from slavery.
They would have remembered the lamb of the prophets, especially Isaiah’s image of the servant who would be “like a lamb led to the slaughter”; the one who would suffer not for his own sins, but for the sins of others.
Finally, there was the lamb of victory. In Jewish history, great leaders and kings were sometimes described as “horned lambs”; figures who looked gentle but carried God’s power to conquer and save.
When John points to Jesus and calls him the Lamb of God, he’s saying: All of that…every sacrifice, every prophecy, every hope finds its fulfillment in him.
That’s why those words still echo at every Mass. After the sign of peace, we sing or say, “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.” Not long after that, the priest holds up the consecrated host and proclaims John’s words again: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”
In those two moments, we profess who Jesus is and why he came. He is the one who steps into a broken world and takes our sin upon himself.
For many generations, forgiveness came through repeated sacrifices in the Temple. But when Jesus arrives, all of that stops. He takes the place of every lamb that came before him. He stands where we should have stood. Our guilt is placed on him, and he freely accepts the cost so that we might have life.
The powerful symbol of the Lamb helps us understand something important: sin is not a small thing. It’s not harmless. It’s not just a mistake we shrug off or us failing to be our best self. Sin brings real destruction and real suffering. The price of sin is death. The only reason we have hope…the only reason we stand forgiven…is because Jesus took that price and punishment upon himself.
The Lamb of God is gentle and innocent. But he is also strong. Brave. Willing to suffer out of love. His meekness is not weakness…it is power restrained for our sake.
So as we echo John the Baptist’s words today, just moments before receiving Holy Communion, let’s pause and really mean them. Let us thank Jesus for being our sacrificial lamb. Let us never make light of sin, knowing what it cost. And above all, let us rejoice because we have been saved by the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!
