Since living in Pennsylvania, I have noticed a lot of men here have. nicknames. Some of the ones I have come in contact with are Spunk, Spike,

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1 1 DATE: JANUARY 19, 2014 SERMON TEXT: JOHN 1:29-42 SERMON TITLE: What s in a Name? Since living in Pennsylvania, I have noticed a lot of men here have nicknames. Some of the ones I have come in contact with are Spunk, Spike, Mutt, Inky, Skip, Fats, Butch, Bud, and Jerk. I never had a nickname. The closest thing to a nickname I had was that when I was a child, my grandfather used to call my twin brother and me his bull pups. The nickname would only work when we were together however. I am always fascinated by how a person ends up with a nickname. I am sure it doesn t happen at birth. I buried a friend of mine a couple weeks ago. His birth name was Irwin, but everybody called him Mutt. I don t think when Irwin Geiger was born his mother looked into his beautiful little face and said, I think we will call him Mutt. I suspect that a nickname like Mutt had to have come from his guy friends. I ve never met a woman who had a real nickname. There are those called Sis or maybe a derivation of their birth names. But you never hear a woman called Chubs or Mutt, at least to her face. Nicknames seem to be a guy thing,

2 2 As we heard in our sermon text read this morning, it sounds like John the Baptist was attempting to hang a nickname on Jesus. It wasn t one of those masculine names like Butch. It was a nickname that sounds, at least to us, a bit strange. John sees Jesus out walking with his disciples and he says, Look, The Lamb of God, and he says this not once, but twice. The next day John sees Jesus again and says a second time, Look, the Lamb of God... What was the intent behind John s calling Jesus The Lamb of God? If you were lucky enough to make it to the Farm Show two weeks ago, you probably saw the sheep. When I take my grandchildren, it s their favorite place to go the sheep barn. You have to admit that there is something adorable about sheep, especially the lambs. Granddaughter Alex is the kind of child who has to touch everything she sees, and she could not keep her hands off the sheep, and rightly so. Sheep are soft and cuddly, especially when they have been bathed and shorn for the Farm Show. There is something soothing about watching sheep. For the most part they are docile animals. Was John implying that Jesus was this kind of lamb? I am sure sheep of the first century were not much different from the sheep of today, so when

3 3 John called Jesus The Lamb of God I suspect there were those present who may have taken John s words in such a manner. But these were not John s intentions at all, were they? Very quickly John qualifies his statement by saying Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. In John s eyes, when he saw Jesus as The Lamb, he was not looking at a man reminiscent of a soft and cuddly offspring of a sheep. What he was seeing was the sin offering given to us from the God most high. We know enough about Old Testament worship to know that the sacrificing of lambs was a prescribed practice. In Exodus 29 God instructs Israel to offer regularly two lambs for the purpose of the cleansing of the soul, or in our terminology, the cleansing of sin. The blood from these lambs was the atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins. Again, in language we can understand, the lambs bled so that we did not have to. Later in Isaiah 53:7, the prophet foretells of a man who will come as the sacrificial Lamb of God who will live and die for the atonement of our sins. We know that the man Isaiah was talking about was Jesus, The Lamb of God. And so did John. So what does this mean for the church today? What difference does it make in our lives that Jesus Christ came to this earth as the Lamb of God?

4 4 The primary significance of the event lies in the phrase itself. Jesus was The Lamb of God. He was not the Lamb of man. Throughout the centuries before Christ, humanity had been caught in a futile attempt to remain in covenant with God. Early in the relationship God realized that because of humanity s weakness, humanity needed some means by which they could remain in covenant with God despite their constant sinfulness. The notion of sacrifice seemed to be a way for humanity to both realize the seriousness of their sins and to atone to God or to repent for what they had done. The idea of sacrifice grew out of humanity s need to be faithful to the covenant. Needless to say, throughout the context of Old Testament scripture, a lot of animals gave of themselves because of humanity s weakness. The interesting thing is the fact that God s requiring a sacrifice of the best of Israel s livestock did not seem to be a deterrent to the proclivity of Israel s sinning, did it? Back to the Farm Show analogy: if animal sacrifice were to be a practice for today, it would mean that all of the supreme champions at the Farm Show would be the ones sacrificed on the altar for our sinfulness. It would not be the scrubs that had been left at home in the barnyard covered with mud and muck. What God required from the Hebrew people was the

5 5 best in show; the winners of the purple ribbons were the ones who would bleed on the altar of God. And we know enough about Hebrew scripture and history to know that this arrangement between God and God s people just did not work. Despite the offerings, humanity still remained sinful and the covenant continued to be broken. In the end the lambs given by humanity no longer were sufficient, so God so loved the world that he sent his only Son into the world, so that whoever believed in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus came into the world to be the sin offering given for us, once and done. Jesus came into this world to die for our sins, once and done. To put it in more graphic terms, the blood of Jesus Christ shed on Calvary will be a sufficient sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins for eternity. I remember a man in one of my former churches who always got a little agitated at me for the words that I used for the assurance of pardon. Most Sundays I would say, If you have truly confessed of the sins in your life, then because of the promise of the Gospel, you stand forgiven. He didn t like the wholesale forgiveness of sin offered in such a blanket statement. I guess his problem was that he thought we should do more. In

6 6 his eyes, forgiveness came too quickly and I would say this without enough cost. What John the Baptist reminds us of today is that our atonement, our forgiveness of sin, our reconciliation to God did not come too cheaply; it was bought at a tremendous price the very life of Jesus Christ. What John also reminds us of is that we have been liberated from the power that sin has over us. No longer are we burdened with the need to be about the constant bleeding of ourselves spiritually and emotionally for the sins of our lives. Jesus came into this world to take that burden from us. Our task as followers of Jesus Christ is to rejoice in our newfound freedom and to live as forgiven and forgiving people, not people burdened by the sin we have committed. There are some religious practices that use guilt as a means of keeping their people in check. That is not a part of my theology, nor is it part of the theology of this church. Our God is a God of reconciliation and forgiveness. There is no greater example of the sign of God s commitment to reconciliation than the gift of His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. We need to be reminded that we must not cheapen this grace of God by taking it lightly. The grace of God is not a license for us to sin while simply relying on the grace of God for our salvation. Our goal in life should

7 7 always be to live lives inspired by Christ, teaching and resisting at all cost the temptations that confront us. So leave this house of worship this day, my beloved, with your eyes fixed on the Lamb of God, the one who came into this world to take our sins away. Live your life as forgiven and forgiving people. Experience the liberating act of God s atoning gift, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.