2d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Jan. 19, 2014
John 1: 29-34
Provincial House, New Rochelle
“John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward
him and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’”
(John 1: 29).
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| Source unknown |
The gospel for the so-called 2d Sunday of
OT is always from John’s Gospel, regardless of whether we’re in the year of
Matthew, as we are this year, or of Mark or Luke. And it always continues the manifestation
theme of the 2 preceding Sundays, Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord.
So today.
John’s Gospel doesn’t have a baptismal scene. Instead, we have John “testifying” that he “saw
the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven and remain upon” Jesus (1:32); and
instead of a voice from heaven announcing either to Jesus (as in Mark and Luke)
or to the bystanders (as in Matthew) that Jesus is the Father’s beloved Son, we
have John identifying Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world,” as “the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit,” and as “the Son of
God” (1:33-34).
In John the Evangelist’s telling of the
story, John the Baptist begins his testimony by announcing, “I did not know
him, but the reason why I came baptizing with water was that he might be made
known to Israel” (1:31). How is it that
John didn’t know Jesus? Weren’t they
kinsmen? (Luke 1:36) Hadn’t he
recognized Jesus even while both of them were still in their mothers’ wombs?
(Luke 1:41-44).
When we read the gospels, we should read
each in its own terms, not conflating one with another. Here, we don’t assume that St. John knows all
the traditions that St. Luke has preserved for us. But even granting that there’s a blood
relationship between John and Jesus, we wouldn’t know how much contact the 2 had
in the 30 years after the Visitation.
Would the adult John, coming out of the wilderness to do his mission,
know the adult Jesus, coming to the Jordan from Nazareth?
Supposing they’d had occasional meetings
at family gatherings over the preceding 30 years, they wouldn’t have been
frequent, given the distance between Nazareth in Galilee and Ain Karim in Judea
(traditionally identified as Zechariah’s home). Supposing he would have known his cousin by
sight, would John have “known” Jesus? We
all know that we can be acquainted with someone for years, even live with him
in community, and not really know him.
It’s this deeper knowledge that John seems to be speaking of when he
confesses, “I did not know him.” He did
not know who Jesus of Nazareth really was.
But he has come to know him by
revelation: “I saw the Spirit come down
like a dove from heaven and remain,” and so he has come to understand that
Jesus “is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit,” as John had already
been preaching about the one, unknown to him up till then, to “come after me
who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me” (1:30).
That much of John’s testimony is
consistent with what we read in the Synoptics, even tho it’s expressed in a
different form. But in John’s Gospel
John the Baptist manifests Jesus to the Jewish world with his personal
testimony (in the Synoptics, the testimony comes only from heaven): Jesus is the Lamb of God, and Jesus is the
Son of God.
The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the
world, John proclaims (as we do daily at Mass).
The allusion probably is to the Passover lamb, whose blood is shed to
mark the doors of the homes of the Hebrews so that the angel of death will pass
them by; implicit is a link between the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery
and the liberation of Jesus’ followers from sin; a link between a life of
freedom following the Passover and the freedom of the children of God, born of
water and the Holy Spirit.
There could be other biblical allusions
at play, as well, such as the ram who is substituted as a sacrifice in Isaac’s
place (Gen 22:13) or the scapegoat who bears away the sins of all the people on
the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:7-10) or the servant led, silent as a lamb, to
slaughter as he justifies many and takes away their guilt (Is 53:7,11). In the Book of Revelation John the
Evangelist, or some other John, presents the Lamb who has shed his blood as a
conqueror, a redeemer, as the one who leads people to God, as one who is worthy
of adoration and praise.
John the Baptist, then, is manifesting
Jesus as the one who will save Israel in a way completely unexpected in the
fervid time of Roman occupation, of Herodian oppression, of rising
nationalistic expectations: not driving
away the Romans but taking away sin; offering himself as a sacrifice to set
people free.
“I have seen and testified that he is the
Son of God” (1:34). In the Jewish
tradition, the king was a son of God; those who faithfully kept the Law were
children of God. John the Evangelist
presents John the Baptist as saying more than that. Jesus is not a son of God but the Son
of God (the Greek text uses the definite article), who “existed before
me.” The Gospel’s prolog has already
introduced its readers to the pre-existing Word who became flesh and made his
home among us, possessing “the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace
and truth” (1:14); the Word whose acceptance empowers all believers “to become
children of God” (1:12). Jesus, then, is
not just a son of God but the
only-begotten Son, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, with
the power also to lead others into the divine family.
As a matter of history, we can be
reasonably sure that John the Baptist didn’t grasp the divinity of Jesus. That doesn’t change the truth of the words
put into his mouth by the Evangelist.
Like John the Baptist, the earliest disciples came gradually to know
him, to understand what sort of a Messiah he was, the meaning of the cross and
resurrection, the nature of the redemption offered “to those who believe in his
name” (1:12).
How do we know Jesus? Who is he in our eyes, in our minds, in our
hearts? That’s pretty much the same
question that he asked the apostles at Caesarea Philippi: “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt
16:15). Like John the Baptist, like the
apostles, we can come to know him only gradually, by walking with him, by
listening to him; like Mary, by pondering on these things in our hearts (Luke
2:19). One commentary offers this
suggestion:
This progressive knowledge of Jesus is the fruit of unceasingly
renewed reading of the Gospels … as it is done, above all, in the framework of
the liturgy, within a group, or in one’s “inner room” (Matt 6:6), by the light
of the Spirit and in a prayerful climate.
This reading must be coupled with a conscious, full, and complete
participation in the sacraments of the faith, which celebrate and unveil the
mystery.[1]
… the mystery which will be fully made
known to us, as St. Paul says, only when we see Jesus and his Father face to
face (1 Cor 13:12), when we’re part of that great host gathered around the
throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev 22:3).
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| Adoration of the Mystic Lamb The Ghent Altarpiece, by Jan van Eyck |
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