Sermons

"Reversal of Expectations"

Delivered from the Pulpit of First Congregational Church

of Anchorage by The Reverend Mark E. Long

on August 23, 2009

Lections:  Is. 53.1-7

                 Rev. 5.1-10

                 Mk. 14.12-13, 16; Jn. 18.28, 19.14, 1.29, 35-36

Who has believed what we have heard?  Perhaps the better question is 'who has understood what we have heard'?  The topic from the "sermon box" for this morning is "the Lamb of God" of Revelation 5.

This is where the Christian church lands by the late first or early second century.  This is how the Christian community comes to understand Jesus: "The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, [conqueror] able to "open the scroll and break its seven seals."  But there is mixed imagery in the passage: The "Lion" becomes "worthy" to open the scroll and break its seven seals" because it surrenders itself to be a slaughtered Lamb.  In other words, the Lion king of the tribe sacrifices itself as a Lamb for the redemption of the tribe.

Lambs are not something unfamiliar to these new Christians, many of whom had first been Jews.  Sacrifice, as in many ancient cultures, is the means to get the gods to do something the tribe wants or encourage the gods not to do something the tribe doesn't want.  Leviticus tells us many things were sacrificed to the Lord by the Israelites.  Lambs led a list of sacrificial possibilities that included goats, birds, oxen, and even grains.

Why a Lamb of God?  Why not a goat of God or Ox of God?  Lambs were deeply embedded in the consciousness and traditions of those Jews who became 1^st c. Christians.  Sheep were everywhere.  They were the "rabbits" of the ancient world.  Besides they were easier to carry to the temple than a young ox.

It is hardly surprising that the "lamb" became the enduring image of sacrifice for Christians intending to connect Jesus with the tradition of appeasing God.  As Revelation makes clear, "for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed (recalling the blood on the doorposts in Egypt) for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth."

This intent even finds its way into the gospel of a different John at a cost of an eye-opening breach of scriptural integrity.  The Gospel of John was written within a couple decades after Revelation.  Something missed by most who read the Gospel of John is how the writer makes a huge change in the story apparently in order to make a theological point.

The Gospel of Mark has Jesus crucified on the morning of the Passover.  We know this because the night before Mark tells us Jesus and his disciples shared the Passover meal.  The meal is done and over when Jesus is arrested and taken before the authorities.

But look at the timeline in John.  There is no Passover meal in John's gospel because it hasn't happened by the time Jesus is arrested.  Verse 18:28 says, "Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate's headquarters.  It was early in the morning.  They themselves did not enter the headquarters so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover."  The Passover meal has not happened yet.

Be clear, John is not trying to hide anything.  As he goes on to say in verse 19:14a, "Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover."  Clearly John sees nothing wrong with telling the story differently from the earlier version by Mark - written about 60 to 70 years before his own.

But why would he do it?  Why would John take the trouble to contradict Mark's timeline?  The answer lies in what happens on the day of Preparation for the Passover.  The lambs are taken to the temple and slaughtered as the sacrifice for the Passover in remembrance of what the Lord had done for the Israelites in Egypt.  John sees the timeline problem with Mark that Jesus the Christian Lamb is slaughtered or crucified on the wrong day and clears up the problem in his gospel by changing the story.

And should this not be the expectation?  Didn't the prophets prepare the people for this all the way back to Isaiah's prophecy of a "suffering servant?"  John is in his mind just making the details fit the bigger truth even if he doesn't' show a very high regard for Mark's gospel.  After all, doesn't Isaiah justify John's editing?  This is where the story of Jesus as the Lamb begins isn't it?

Well if it is then John has a larger problem than a timeline.  Isaiah seems to be talking about something else.  The passage 52:13 to 53:12 is known widely as the "suffering servant" passage.  It is the fourth, last, and longest of the "Servant Songs."  What is its subject?

Most of the early Christian community saw Jesus as the lamb Isaiah writes about.  But it is a far reach, though an understandable one for the young movement of the "People of the Way" on the way to being Christians.  The upstart movement of mostly Jews needed something to persuade others that its new beliefs connected with the enduring Judaic tradition. 

Isaiah may not foresee Jesus but gives instead a dispirited Israel in exile hope for their return from exile and the oracle (prophecy) that they who will be redeemed will bring, through Israel, redemption to the other nations.

The "suffering servant" of Chapter 52, verse 13 is Israel, as in context of the chapter is clear.  Israel will not only survive its suffering but also "prosper" and grow "like a root out of dry ground" though "despised and rejected" and "held of no account."  Israel's suffering will serve as atonement for the sins of all the nations by modeling the people of God.

This is probably a new way for you to read Isaiah 53; we are used to hearing quite a different meaning during Advent every year.  But this is the one that does not bear the weight of early Christian propaganda, as well-meaning and necessary as it may have been to sustain the movement.

So if Isaiah does not provide the foundation for our Christian expectation of Jesus as the Lamb of God; if John has twisted round history to make a theological point now under suspicion; is Revelation's claim that the Lion of Judah becomes the Lamb of God a reasonable one?

I think so.  Perhaps not in the way of Christian expectation, but then when has God ever conformed to what mortals expect?  Maybe it should worry us when we are able to anticipate what we get.

The Lion King of Judah seems to often surprise us, and probably as a historical reality at no greater moment than when he became a Lamb, a lamb lying down before his enemies rather than fight or run from them.  He did so not to accomplish some mystical heaven bound leap but to encourage us to follow in a much more earthly way.

The Lamb King, I will call him, lay down because God told him it was the way to fulfill himself and bring redemption to others.  Those who would follow his path to listen for God's voice within their own would escape their exile and find redemption for their own lives.  Quite in a similar way as Isaiah told Israel that their suffering in exile would end and their lives would become paths by which others would end their own suffering.

Hmm!  Maybe Isaiah did prophesy the coming of the Lamb of God as more than Israel rising; maybe he foresees the rising of one who would do for each person what Israel would do for nations.  It is a reach but not as far a reach as the tortured expectations of our Johns, of either gospel or Revelation.

This is how I see it - not what I expected but when doesn't God surprise me.  Amen.