The Lamb

 

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” John 13:1.

 

The first image we have of Jesus in the Upper Room is that of knowing and loving; He was knowing that “His hour had come” and He was loving “His own.” The words “that He would depart out of the world to the Father” seem to be an understatement, in that the avenue of His departure would be betrayal and crucifixion.

 

It was Passover and He was the Passover Lamb. All week Jerusalem was proclaiming, “It is Passover!” Visitors to Jerusalem filled the streets, the atmosphere charged with anticipation, the priesthood and its supporting players geared up for the great event, the merchants catering to the wants and needs of the observant, the motels overflowing.

 

There were many lambs in and around Jerusalem that week, but only one Lamb of God. Did anyone recognize Him? How many people passed Him by that week, giving Him no notice? What about those who, on what we call Palm Sunday, welcomed Him with shouts and rejoicing and the red carpet? What did they see that day? What did they think of Him throughout the week, if they thought of Him at all?

 

Consider that the red carpet of Palm Sunday will turn into the Way of Sorrow within hours of the supper of John 13 – much can change within a week. One day Jesus is welcomed into the city, another day He is pushed out of the city to Golgotha. One day the crowds are shouting, “Hosanna!”, another day, “Crucify Him!”

 

Are we any different than the crowds? Is the professing church any different today than the scribes and Pharisees and religious crowds of two thousand years ago?

 

In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, John the Baptist cries, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).  Then the following day John says it again, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36). What kind of language is this? It must be figurative…or was it? Certainly it is figurative, how could it be otherwise? How could a man be a lamb? How could a lamb be a man?

 

How could anyone or anything take away the sin of the world? Why if a man cannot take away his own sin, try as he might, how can we contemplate one person taking away the sin of the world?

 

But if, but if, John’s cry is true in a sense other than figurative, then we have the unthinkable, for against the backdrop of the Torah, in the context of the sacrificial system of the Mosaic priesthood…lambs are sacrificed, lambs are slaughtered, blood is shed – most especially at Passover when every household offers a lamb and feeds on it. A lamb, until it is sacrificed, is but a lamb – but once it is sacrificed at Passover it becomes something else…something that we can experience but not comprehensively define…much like the Lord’s Table – and since holy Communion subsumes Passover and transposes it upward into the heavens, we should not be surprised at our inability to partake of Him but not explain Him.

 

After all, the Tabernacle and its offerings were reflections of realities in the heavens, they were “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just was Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for ‘See,’ He says, ‘that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain’” (Hebrews 8:5).

 

Passover requires a lamb, and the Lamb requires a Passover. But which Passover will it be?

 

I wonder if we have not reduced the forgiveness of sins to a transaction in which we say a few words and get on with our lives? Have we depersonalized the holy Lamb of God?

 

In the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of John, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem for the Passover, during which He says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). People did not understand that “He was speaking of the temple of His body” (John 2:21). Do we understand Him today? Have we packaged and marketed Jesus into our culture wars and worldviews and religious self-righteousness to the point where we no longer understand Him any more than the Pharisees of His time understood the Law of Moses and the prophets of God, anymore than they understood the Scriptures which testified of Him – the Lamb? (John 5:39).

 

When Jesus was twelve years old, He went with His family to Passover in Jerusalem. His parents, thinking He was with others in their group – a group that must have been large – left Jerusalem without Him. When they couldn’t find Him they returned to Jerusalem and after three days found Him in the temple, “sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard Him were amazed at Hus understanding and His answers” (Luke 2:46 – 47).

 

How many times do we go to Jerusalem and leave without Jesus? How many Sundays do we “attend church” but do not attend to Jesus? How many times is He not with us, but unlike Joseph and Mary, we don’t even know it – so accustomed are we to living without His Presence?

 

Consider Jesus’ words to Joseph and Mary, “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” Or, as the NASB margin tells us, literally “in the things of My Father.”

 

What about us? Are we so distracted by headlines and culture wars and the values of the present age that we can’t imagine devotion to the affairs of the Father? Are we so enamored with our own tribe within the Kingdom that we insist that the King and His Kingdom must center around us, and the further we get from Him and the New Jerusalem the more natural this thinking becomes?

 

How likely are we to wash the feet of those around us, just as Jesus did in the Upper Room at that ultimate Passover in John Chapter 13?

 

When Jesus was twelve and in Jerusalem at the Passover, He was there under the shadow of the Passover of Holy Week, a week yet to come. There was the Lamb in the temple, speaking with the teachers. The Lamb would be back, and back, and back again – until on one Passover, a Passover declared in eternity past, He would be sacrificed on the altar of the Cross for the sins of the world. The Lamb would be both our High Priest and Sacrifice and the veil of the temple would be torn in two, from top to bottom – making the way into intimate fellowship with God open for us all, for truly the Lamb of God was taking away the sin of the world (see Hebrews 10:19 – 22).

 

 I wonder how often Jesus walked by the building with the Upper Room during His visits to Jerusalem and thought, “One day I will be up there, in that room, with My disciples…one day My hour will fully come.”

 

Well, to be sure, “departing out of this world to the Father” begins, in a sense, in the Upper Room for us – what began in John Chapter One takes on a new character in John chapters 13 – 17 as we learn to “follow the Lamb wherever He goes,” having His name and the Father’s name written on our foreheads, written in our minds and hearts and in our souls (Rev. 14:1 – 5; 3:12).

 

Are we beholding the Lamb today?