RBWords

     At every celebration of the Eucharist or Communion Service, the celebrant holds the consecrated host up and says, "Behold the Lamb of God.  Behold him who takes away the sins of the world....."  At Eucharist, just before this, we recited or sang, "Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, etc....].  Where on earth did John the Baptist get that title and attribute it to a carpenter from Nazareth?  Does it really matter?  The important thing is that John the Baptist bears witness that he (John) is NOT the Messiah - Jesus is!  All the gospels try to make that one point clear.

     The evangelist John and all those who contributed to the writing of the Gospel According to John had to draw on the information and traditions that they had.  Even by the time of St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians [50's AD], the idea of Jesus as the "paschal Lamb" had taken hold (1 Cor. 5:7).  Isaiah used the image of the lamb led to the slaughter.  The Gospel According to John has Jesus' crucifixion occurring at the same time as the slaughter of those lambs at the temple to celebrate the passover.

     We recite or sing many things in our liturgical celebrations without thinking much about them.  The same is true in reading the scriptures.  The evangelist John may have gotten ahead of himself chronologically in his gospel by putting the title in John the Baptist's testimony, but he (the evangelist) is simply bearing witness himself to the person of Jesus right at the beginning of his ministry.  When we "behold the Lamb of God," we are going right back both to the beginning of Jesus' ministry and his death on the cross!  AMEN