Two cockroaches were munching on garbage in an alley when one engages in a discussion about a new restaurant.
"I was in that new restaurant across the street," said one. "It's so clean! The kitchen is spotless, and the floors are gleaming white. There is no dirt anywhere--it's so sanitary that the whole place shines."
"Please," said the other cockroach frowning. "Not while I'm eating!"
Jesus took away the garbage of sin not by the violent destruction of evil, but by voluntarily laying down his life on the Cross; although the Biblical picture is that to "take away" is parallel to "destroy." In fact, in both Jewish apocalyptic judgment, and in the Book of Revelation, it is a conquering lamb who destroys evil in the world (The Testament of Joseph 19:8; Enoch 90:38, Rev. 14:1).
The prepositional phrase “of God” shows that humanity is reconciled by God, who is Jesus, who takes away the sin of the world. For example, in the Holy Mass, the Lamb of God prayer or Agnus Dei refers to Christ present in the Eucharist as a sacrificial offering to take away sin.
[Source: The Lamb of God as Sacrifice, Covenant, and Ecclesiology by Brendan Gormley, The Dunwoodie Review, January 1, 2011.]
1. The Lamb of God will take away resentments.
Hebrews 12:15 says, “See to it that….no bitter root grows up to cause trouble.” Ask Jesus daily to take away your anger, resentment and bitterness.
Since Jesus died for the sins of the world, no other human act of individual retribution is necessary, and resentments are therefore not justified. As the saying goes “Resentments are like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die.”
E.g. A man said that he met a former friend before a funeral. He said, “We stepped aside to a quiet corner. He looked me straight in the eye and got right to the point: ‘Dean, I've come to tell you how deeply sorry I am for the sins I have committed against you. I ask you to forgive me.’"
Dean later wrote, “Bam—just like that! I knew by the earnestness of his words and the piercing intensity in his eyes that he spoke from the depths of his being and meant every word. This untimely but immensely powerful moment was the fruition of a long, complicated process of stocktaking. On that day, in that place, without forewarning, a John 1:29 moment arrived, “The Lamb of God” took away his resentment and mine.”
[source: John 1:29-42, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, Isaiah 49:1-7, by F. Dean Lueking, The Christian Century, January 4, 2011].
2. In John 1:29, John the Baptist said: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Ecce agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccatum mundi).
“Beholding” is different than “taking a look.” Beholding has the connotation of taking a deep, long, contemplative look at something.
The adjectival participle, "who takes away," sin expresses the idea of the pardoning or forgiveness of sin, and the removal of guilt because Jesus was destined to be sacrificed like a spotless lamb as a sin offering to God. It shows the ugliness of our sins that drove Jesus to the Cross, and it also shows the infinite depths of Divine Mercy that is always available to us.
E.g. G. K. Chesterton was once asked the question, "Why did you join the church so late in life?" He answered, "To get rid of my sins."
[source: George Thompson, "Kissing The Joy," Pulpit Digest, Harper, San Francisco, May-June, 1992, p. 22]
The idea of removing or taking away sin, as expressed literally in both the Hebrew and Greek constructions, figuratively expresses the pardoning or forgiveness of sin.
[Source: Another look at 'the Lamb of God' by Christopher W. Skinner, Bibliotheca sacra, 161 no 641 Jan - Mar 2004, p 103].
The most effective way this is done is through self-disclosure, which is a very important part of mental and spiritual healing since we allow God to see and “behold us,” in our sin and neediness. For Catholics, it’s done directly to God in the Penitential Rite at Mass, but most importantly also in sacramental confession. In fact, in an American Psychological Association article, a researcher named Foucault, in 1980, “called attention to [Sigmund] Freud's appropriation of the technique of individual spoken confession from the Catholic Church.” The researcher noted, “however, [that] in psychoanalysis a break occurs in the long tradition of self-disclosure in the West, as confession loses its overtly ethical or religious purposes and becomes thoroughly directed to medical ends (Hutton, 1988). One wonders, as does Sahaya G. Selvam, a priest and psychologist, that if the Protestant reformation had not thrown away individual confession to a priest, than Freud would not have perhaps invented psychotherapy?
Counseling is a gift and certainly encouraged by the Catholic Church since we train counselors and therapists all over the world at Catholic Universities, with a strong emphasis on graduate psychology and counseling degrees rooted in faith, and based in science. They would be the first to say that the self-disclosure of one’s sins in sacramental confession and the resulting absolution by Jesus, through the priest acting in persona Christi, certainly also helps one’s mental and emotional health because it helps one “let off steam," or "get something off one’s chest," which are important as some of the fruits of the healing of one’s all-important immortal soul by absolution, which is the removal of guilt, so that the making of amends or producing fruit worthy of repentance as John the Baptist says in Matthew 3:8 can be done in peace.
Jesus taking away sin begins with the grace of God which touches a sinner’s heart, and calls one to repentance. This grace cannot be merited; it proceeds solely from the love and mercy of God. We may receive or reject this inspiration of God, he may turn to God or remain in sin.
A researcher named Rose, in 1990, noted that “although obligatory confession to a priest was rejected by the Protestant revolution, the practice of confessional self-inspection” still continued [in various ways] but the big difference was, in contrast to earlier [Catholic] Christian traditions in which confessions were made to a spiritual guide [called a priest] in the Protestant tradition, the individual now served as both sinner and judge of his or her own self” (Rose, 1990). Without digressing into the whole topic of confession, I am very sure that a non-Catholic Christian would be very quick to say that they confess directly to God, and not “a man,” like a priest; nevertheless, I think they run the risk of subjectivism—“was I really sorry? If so, how do I know that God has forgiven my sin because I keep doing it?” For Catholics, mortal sin, especially, is taken away by absolution; otherwise, the meaning of the phrase ‘to take away’ could be something like the moving of an object from one place to another by compartmentalizing in one’s conscience which could result in neurotic guilt in some form for mortal sins. We need to hear the words of absolution.
Source: A cultural and historical perspective on confession, Georges, E. (1995). A cultural and historical perspective on confession. In J. W. Pennebaker (Ed.), Emotion, disclosure, & health (pp. 11–22). American Psychological Association.
In conclusion, something happened on Calvary that bridged the gap between a holy God and unholy humanity. We see Christ in his majesty but also in his mercy. God is victorious in the spilt blood of Jesus. His body, broken in death, lives forever. In Revelation 5:6, in heaven we will see Jesus as the lamb who was slain for us who bears the marks of his death as emblems of his love.
In one of the Chinese languages, the word for “righteousness” is made up of two symbols: the word for “lamb” over the word for “me”- so righteousness in Chinese is “the lamb over me.”
Amen.
