Second Sunday of Ordinary Time A.  January 16, 2011.  Our Lady of Grace. 9:30, 6PM.  Isaiah 49:3, 5-6.  I Corinthians 1:1-3.  John 1:29-34.

The sacrifice of animals was an important part of worship in the Hebrew Scriptures. In Book of Exodus God told the Jewish people “This is what you are to offer on the altar regularly each day: two lambs a year old. Offer one in the morning and the other at twilight”. Human sacrifice was never allowed in the Scriptures.  Other religions of that time encouraged human sacrifice, even of a person’s children. In the Bible human sacrifice was always regarded as a great atrocity forbidden by God. Lambs were sacrificed to God because the lamb was an important sign of wealth and security in the life of the people. The perfect lamb killed and sacrificed to God was a way of recognizing that everything belongs to God.

When the Jewish people were about to leave slavery in Egypt God told Moses: “Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.”  They must slaughter the lamb at twilight and take some of the blood of the lamb and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lamb.  God’s angel will pass over the homes marked with the blood of the lamb and the first born children of the Hebrew people will be saved from death.  (Exodus 12)

While human sacrifice was strictly forbidden, the prophet Isaiah spoke about a mysterious human  figure who gave his life in service to God an his people.  Isaiah said.  “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” ( 53:7)

When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him he said “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  From the very beginning of John’s Gospel Jesus is presented as the sacrificial lamb that would once-and-for-all take away the sin of the world and restore us to a deep and life-giving relationship with God.  Hundreds of thousands of lambs had been offered in sacrifice for hundreds of years.  None of them was able to be the perfect once-and-for-all sacrifice.  As Jesus hung upon the cross he was the perfect love-offering to God and the perfect sacrifice with power to take away the sins of the world. There is a sense in which Jesus is the only sacrifice.  He did everything needed to restore the human race to a vibrant relationship with God.  Jesus is everything and apart from Jesus our sacrifices amount to little or nothing.

There are some who say that Jesus suffered so that we would not need to suffer.  Jesus died so that we would not have to die.  All we have to do is accept what Jesus did for us. If nothing more is expected of us than an accepting, passive faith, why did St. Paul in his Letter to the Colossians say, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.”? (1:24) We are called not only to honor and trust in Christ’s sufferings, we are also called to participate in his sacrifice and become a living sacrifice with and in Christ for the life of the world.  Every time we celebrate the Eucharist the Holy Spirit makes Jesus and his once-and-for-all sacrifice present in our midst.  Jesus says “this is my body given up for you,” and “this is my blood poured out for you.”  Jesus adds the words “Do this in memory of me.”   We do this in memory of Jesus in two ways.  First we gather every Sunday to participate in the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. We come back over and over again because we need to enter more and more deeply into the sacrifice of Jesus.  That takes us human beings a long time to do.  But doing this in memory of Jesus doesn’t stop there.  We are empowered here to live the sacrifice of Jesus so that his sacrifice is offered through our lives for the life of the world and for the people that we meet.  A spirituality that lets Jesus offer sacrifice alone is a very lazy spirituality no matter how much we honor Jesus and worship Jesus.

We are all called to be stars that light up the darkness of our world.  Henry Nowen tells the story of a great trapeze artist who was well known for the spectacular way that he flew and sommersalted through the air from one trapeze to the next.  The great star said, “You know I really do almost nothing.  The real star is my partner Joe who catches me as I fly through the air from one trapeze to the other trapeze.  After I make my sommesalts I just hold out my arms and Joe opens his arms to catch me.  Without the perfect timing of my partner there would be no show at all.  The secret is that I hold out my arms to Joe and he hold out his arms to me and we do it together. My partner is my secret strength.”

Jesus is the Lamb of God who holds out his arms to us on the cross.  His arms are always stretched out to us as we offer our lives in sacrifice for the life of the world. Without his outstretched arms we could do nothing.  The Eucharist makes us partners with Jesus, the Lamb of God.  For the gift of self-sacrificing love we give God thanks and praise.