Love like a Lamb - The Power of Gentleness & Innocence
Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-11; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9;  John 1:29-42

Some people, especially here in Northern Ireland have had the privilege of growing up close to farms. Others of us have not. And that makes a big difference when we hear a phrase like “the Lamb of God.”

For those of us who have never stood in a field full of newborn lambs, we may not quite feel what the Bible is pointing to. But anyone who has had this experience would know that lambs are astonishingly vulnerable and also astonishingly joyful. They are all legs and awkward leaps, skipping and kicking for no reason except that being alive feels good. They trust the world before they have any reason not to. They are gentle, open and unguarded.

Fortunately for those of us who have not grown up on farms with live sheep, one can catch a glimpse of this watching short video’s of lambs on the internet. 

I watched a few lamb video’s on Youtube this week preparing for this sermon. It is seems that there is perhaps almost nothing more disarming than a little lamb at play.

And so when John the Baptist sees Jesus and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” I believe we should not assume that he only pointing to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, as most Christians theologians almost automatically assume. He is also pointing to a way of being in the world.

Yes, the lamb will later be associated with sacrifice, echoing imagery from the Old Testament, and that is an important part of the Christian story. But in Scripture and more specifically as it relates to Jesus, sacrifice is not ultimately about violence; it is about self-giving love. And before the lamb is ever to be regarded as some kind of ancient sacrificial victim, it is first a creature of innocence, joy, and trust.

And so when the writer of John’s Gospel has John the Baptist declare “Behold the Lamb of God” is it perhaps that he is saying: “This is what God looks like when God comes near”? Not armoured. Not weaponised. Not dominating. But gentle, open, vulnerable, innocent and full of life.

And John goes on: “Behold, here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

But notice that the word is not the sins, plural, as if it were only about individual moral failures that he is talking about, but rather “the sin of the world”, suggesting that the Lamb comes to take away the collective sin of the world, to heal the collective brokeness of humanity (which clearly includes individual sin, but is also something much bigger.. 

 The word ‘sin’ in Biblical Greek means to miss the mark. It is descriptive of someone who is aiming to hit a target (say with a bow and arrow) and the arrow misses the target, or falls short.  And so sin describes our collective human tendency to miss the target… to miss the point of life. To fall short. And what are we falling short from? The Way of Divine Love. And so when John speaks of the lamb who takes away the sin of the world, he is talking about all the collective ways in which humanity falls short of Divine Love. He is speaking of the deep, tangled web of fear, violence, domination, and separation that distorts human life. And we see it regularly playing out not only in individual lives around us, but almost every day displayed in some way on the news on the TV. 

And how does the Lamb take it away?

Not by overpowering it. Not by crushing enemies. But by exposing it. Violence is unmasked by gentleness. Hatred is undone by love. Fear is healed by trust.

The Lamb takes away the sin of the world by refusing to participate in it, and by drawing humanity into a new way of being.  This is exactly what Isaiah saw when he spoke of the servant of God:

“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” (49:6)

God’s servant does not save by conquest. God saves by light – shining the splendour of God’s light.

And this becomes breathtakingly clear in the Book of Revelation. In the great vision of heaven, the throne of the universe is not occupied by a warrior, a general, or an emperor. It is occupied by a Lamb. The writer of Revelation is suggesting that most powerful force in the cosmos is not domination or violence, as the early Christians were experiencing under Roman rule. The most powerful force in the cosmos is vulnerable love. As we read in the little Chinese book of wisdom, Tao Te Ching (the Way and it’s Power): Verse 42 “The gentlest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world.”

The Lamb reigns, not by killing, but by being faithful. Not by coercion, but by self-giving. This is how God conquers the world: by conquering hearts and minds.  Not through fear. But through and inspiring love that is so strong, pure, gentle and so true that it draws everything back to itself.

But we must not imagine that this means insipid weakness. In Revelation while Jesus is referred to as the Lamb who sits on the throne, he is also in other places referred to as a Lion.  But the strength of the Lion is lived in service of the Lamb on the throne otherwise it simply becomes unbridled power lived out under the motto ‘might is right’ as we are seeing displayed on the world stage right now.  For Jesus, might is not right. His strength and courage are in service of the inner Lamb who gives himself to the world in gentleness, innocence and joy. 

But when the first disciples hear John call Jesus the Lamb of God, they do not receive a theological lecture. They receive an invitation.  Jesus turns and says,
“What are you looking for?”
They reply, “Where are you staying?”
And he says, “Come and see.”
That is how the Lamb leads. Not by force. Not by command. But by invitation.
To follow the Lamb is not just to believe something about Jesus. It is to step into his way of being in the world to become people of the Lamb shaped by gentleness, joy, humility, and as the story unfolds, courageous love.

Isaiah puts it this way: “The Lord called me before I was born… He made me a light.”
To follow the Lamb is to become light in the world — not by shining harshly, but by quietly illuminating the world with kindness, mercy, and truth.

So what does it mean for us to follow the Lamb? It means choosing tenderness in a brutal world. It means choosing the courageous and vulnerable path of healing, reconciliation and forgiveness in a vengeful culture. It means choosing joy in a fearful age.

It means daring to live un-armoured. In a world that says, ‘Above all else protect yourself’ the Lamb says, ‘Give yourself’. In a world that says, Win at all costs, the Lamb says, Love with costly love.  In a world that says, ‘Be strong and don’t give anything away’,   the Lamb says, ‘Be faithful and open’.

And the story of Jesus tells us strangely, and wonderfully this is how is how the God heals the world.

But John does not say, ‘Understand the Lamb.’ He says, ‘Behold the Lamb.’ Look. Pay attention.  Let your heart be moved.  This is what God is like. This is what love looks like. This is the power that holds the universe.

And this is the way we are called to walk: Not as conquerors, but as companions of the Lamb - bearing joy, gentleness, and light into a wounded world.

In closing,  Jesus asks the disciples: 

“What are you looking for?” And that is perhaps a question directed to each of us today. What is it that you are looking for in life.  What is the deepest desire of your heart? What are you looking for? The disciples reply… Where are you staying?  They see something in Jesus that has drawn them to him. They want to know what it is that Jesus life is grounded in, rooted in. What is at the centre of his being that makes him so different? Where are you staying?  They ask?  

Jesus replies… ‘Come and See’.  

Where are we staying? What forms the centre of our lives. What are we grounded in or rooted in? What would it mean to hear the invitation of Jesus in the passage: Come and see?

Come and see, the Lamb, who takes away the sin of the world. The one who invites the whole world to begin again, with a clean, fresh slate. 

And that is essentially the journey of the Christian life… come and see.

​Baptism into the story of the renewed Israel. 

One of the most distinctive features of Matthew’s Gospel is the way it presents Jesus not simply as an individual religious figure, but as one who re-lives, gathers up, and fulfils the story of Israel itself.  Matthew presents Jesus as creating the church as the renewed Israel. 

And so Matthew, the most Jewish of all the Gospels appealing to a Jewish audience, wants his readers to see Jesus as walking the ancient path of Israel again, this time faithfully, this time fully, so that Israel’s vocation might at last be redefined and brought to fulfilment in Jesus. 

We see this from the very beginning.

Jesus is born under threat, as Moses was. He is taken into Egypt as Israel once was. Matthew explicitly quotes the prophet: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” What was once spoken of Israel is now spoken of Jesus. He is the Son who embodies the people.

In baptism he passes through the waters and then enters the wilderness, where he is tested for forty days, echoing Israel’s forty years of testing in the wilderness. But where the early people of Israel struggled with hunger, temptation, and idolatry, Jesus remains faithful.

Later on in Matthew Jesus calls to himself 12 disciples – Matthew, like the other Gospel writers presents Jesus as reconstituting and renewing the 12 tribes of Israel, not from the top down, but from the bottom up.

Matthew is not being subtle in his Gospel. He wants us to understand: Jesus is re-living Israel’s story, bringing it to its true fulfilment, not as a geographic and political entity, but as a servant people of God, that is (as shown at the end of the gospel) to embrace and comprise of all people and all nations. The new Israel – a servant people from all nations. 

And it is within this framework that the baptism of Jesus must be understood.

In the Scriptures, water is never just water. It is the place of chaos and danger. But also the place of new beginnings. In Genesis creation itself begins with the Spirit hovering over the waters. In Exodus, Israel becomes a people by passing through the Red Sea. A generation later In the book of Joshua, they enter the Promised Land by crossing through the Jordan River.

And so when Jesus steps into the Jordan to be baptised by John, Matthew wants us to hear all of this resonating in the background. The parting of the heavens echoes the parting of the seas. Jesus is bringing the ancient story of Israel to it’s true fulfilment and restoring it to it’s true vocation. 

Just as Israel passed through the waters to leave slavery behind, Jesus passes through the waters as the one who will lead a deeper liberation, not from Pharaoh, but from everything that binds and diminishes human life including human sin and waywardness, the result of the inner Pharoah within each of us. 

And just as Israel crossed the Jordan to begin life in the promised land, Jesus emerges from the Jordan to invite people into the deeper and truer Promised Land of God’s Kingdom, which is not so much a place but a realm of the spirit that can be lived in even here and now.

And so in Jesus, the story of Israel is being re-capitulated, gathered up and re-enacted, and in the process redefined, restored and renewed. 

In Matthew’s version of the Baptism of Jesus, John the Baptist hesitates. He seems confused why Jesus needs to be baptised. And Jesus responds with words found only in Matthew: “Let it be so for now; so that we can fulfil all righteousness.”  In Matthew, righteousness does not simply mean private virtue or moral superiority. It ultimately means faithful participation in God’s saving purpose.

By entering the waters of Baptism Jesus is standing in solidarity with his people, identifying fully with their history, their sin and brokenness, their longing, and their unfinished story. He does not bypass Israel’s journey. He walks it from the inside renewing that story as he does so, and giving it fresh meaning and purpose, by entering it more deeply and faithfully than before.

And as Jesus emerges from the water, we read that the heavens open, the Spirit descends, and a voice speaks:  “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

This is a richly layered moment.

These words echo Israel’s identity as God’s son or child rescued from the land of slavery, but they also draw directly from Isaiah’s Servant Songs, especially the declaration in Isaiah 42 of the servant in whom God delights, upon whom God places the Spirit, and through whom justice will come to the nations. And the words of Isaiah 42 echo the voice from heaven at Jesus Baptism, the servant of God is described as follows: 

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. (This is Jesus Baptismal vocation… how is this vocation to be lived out…? Isaiah continues...)

He will not cry out or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.”

Matthew is telling us that Jesus is to fulfil Israel’s vocation as the Servant of God to bring justice to the nations not through military might and domination of its enemies (as many were hoping), but through servant-hood, gentleness, and faithfulness.

Jesus’ mission to bring justice to the nations through servant-hood flows not from striving, but from belovedness. 

It is important to note that Matthew connects baptism with discipleship. At the very end of the Gospel, the risen Jesus commissions his followers to go, make disciples of all nations, baptising them and teaching them to live the way he has taught. 

Baptism, in Matthew, is not simply simply a ritual of belonging. It is entry into a story, a way of life, a pattern of faithfulness modelled by Jesus. In Baptism we become part of the story of the renewed Israel reshaped and renewed by the life and vision of Jesus, the servant of God.   To be baptised is to pass through the waters with Jesus.  It is to leave behind the ways of domination that define much of our ego driven world, and instead to learn the way of the servant: a way of humility, gentleness, justice, mercy, and costly love.

This is why Matthew repeatedly links discipleship with self-giving. On his journey to the cross Jesus gathers his disciples together to remind them of the call to servant-hood:  

‘You know that the rulers of the nations like to lord it over the people, and their high officials enjoy exercising their authority and dominance over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave –  just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’

Did you hear the word servant in there that connects with Jesus - God’s chosen and beloved servant in baptism and in Isaiah 42 who will bring justice to the nations not with domination and military might, but through gentleness, humility, faithfulness, and courageous and costly love.  This is the meaning of Baptism and it all flows from that baptismal declaration of beloved-ness. 

To remember Jesus’ baptism is metaphorically to remember our own. It is to recall that we, too as God’s beloved, are being drawn into a larger story, invited to become part of the story of the true and renewed spiritual Israel, not as an ethnic, political and geographic entity, but as a servant community made up of people from all nations defined by the story of God’s beloved servant: a story of healing, hope and costly and loving service to make the world a more just place.

A final comment on the symbolism of the story. The splitting open of the heavens in Jesus baptism, not only connects us with the parting of the waters in Exodus, but also with the splitting of the veil in the Temple near the end of Matthew’s Gospel. This suggests that the Way of Jesus costly servant love, breaks open the boundaries between the life of heaven and the life of earth, between the so-called sacred and the secular.. When we truly live as disciples of Jesus, living out our  beloved-ness in the world, so the way of heaven breaks open upon on the earth.  The whole world becomes the temple of God’s Spirit, the Promised Land of God’s Love… and all life becomes imbued with a sense of the sacred.

As followers of Jesus we are not asked to invent meaning from scratch. In the Baptism of Jesus, we are invited to step into a story already being fulfilled.  And as we do, the same promise holds:

The heavens are open.
The Spirit is present.
And the voice still speaks:

You are my beloved.
Now walk the way.

As Jesus says soon after in Matthew’s Gospel  “Come, follow me”. 

​Epiphany and the Magi: Seeing What Was Hidden in Plain Sight (Matt 2:1-12) 

In the Church’s calendar, today is designated as Epiphany Sunday.  The word epiphany comes from the Greek epiphaneia, meaning a "conspicuous appearing", a manifestation, an unveiling, a revealing. It speaks of a moment when something that was always there suddenly becomes visible, when the curtain is drawn back and we see more clearly than before.

We all would know epiphanies from our own lives. Moments, both large and small, when we suddenly see ourselves, another person, or a situation in a new light. And we find ourselves saying, “Aha! How could I not have seen that before?”

So perhaps the question for us today is this: What is the epiphany in the story of the Magi?  What is it in this story that might have caused Matthew’s original readers to sit up and listen? What new insight, hidden in plain sight, was being revealed?

And perhaps just a word of preface. Many scholars would suggest that the story of the Magi is not pure history, but rather that Matthew is wrapping the story of Jesus in images and themes from the Old Testament, in this case, using Isaiah 60:1-6) in order to bring out the deeper meaning and significance, as he sees it, of Jesus life. 

And so I read this story, I can see at least two perhaps three, moments of epiphany, moments where the early Christian community may have said, “Aha!”

The first moment of epiphany is this: God is not always found at the centre of power.

The Magi begin their search in the most obvious place, Jerusalem, the holy city, the seat of political and religious authority. They go straight to Herod’s palace, assuming that a newborn king must surely be found at the centre of power.

But what they find there is not joy or worship, but rather fear and constetrnation. Herod is “disturbed,” Matthew tells us, “and all Jerusalem with him” (Matthew 2:3). In other words when a tyrant is disturbed everyone else is disturbed. The coercive power of Herod feels threatened. The palace becomes a place of anxiety, manipulation, and violence rather than revelation.

The religious experts can quote the scriptures. They know Micah’s prophecy about Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). But knowledge alone does not lead them to worship or movement. They remain static, unmoved, unchanged.

And so the Magi must leave the centre in order to find the truth. The star leads them not to a throne room, but to an ordinary house (Matthew 2:11) (there is no stable in Matthew’s version of the story). Not to dominance, but to the seemingly ordinary. Not to force, but to love made vulnerable.

This is the first epiphany:  God’s presence is not guaranteed by proximity to political power, tradition, or religious authority – which often express themselves in coerciveness and attempts to control. God often meets us at the margins, in humility rather than control, where trust, courage and openness meet. 

That insight would have unsettled Matthew’s original readers - and it perhaps should still unsettle us.

The second, and perhaps even more radical epiphany is this: The people of God are not defined by ethnic belonging or ancestry.

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, there is a creative tension, sometimes even a conflict, between two understandings of what it means to be Israel.

One understanding is exclusive: Israel is a chosen ethnic group, set apart from others, defined by bloodline, boundary, and separation. And chosen-ness very quickly into privilege, being chosen over others rather than for others.

The other understanding is vocational: Israel is chosen for a purpose, to be a blessing to the nations. To be, in the words of Isaiah, “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 49:6). To embody divine justice, mercy, and compassion so that others might be drawn into the Divine Light of God’s grace.

This second vision is beautifully expressed in passages like Genesis 12:3, “Through you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” And in Isaiah 60, where nations are drawn to Israel’s light.

These two visions exist side by side in the Old Testament, and the tension between them becomes especially sharp after the Babylonian exile. 

Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE, and many were taken into exile. When the Persians allowed the exiles to return around 538 BCE, after roughly 50 years, not everyone returned. In addition some had never been taken into Babylonian exile. Some had remained in the land; others had formed families and relationships across ethnic lines.

When leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah began rebuilding Jerusalem, they pursued a strict policy of ethnic and religious purity. Ezra 9–10 describes men being ordered to send away their foreign wives and children. Nehemiah likewise enforces separation from surrounding peoples (Nehemiah 13), reflecting deep tensions between the returning exiles and those whose lives and identities had been shaped outside the experience of exile.

This exclusionary vision became highly influential in Second Temple Judaism, shaping the religious atmosphere into which Jesus was born.  But it was not the only voice.

And this leads to Matthew’s Epiphany that Jesus restores Israel’s deeper calling.

Matthew’s Gospel makes a bold claim: Jesus comes to re-live the story of Israel, and to restore it to its original, expansive purpose.

This epiphany begins already in Matthew chapter 1. In a genealogy where women are rarely named, Matthew deliberately includes several, and not “respectable” ones. Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba and Ruth. Matthew is making a point that two of Jesus ancestors are foreigners, Ruth, a Moabite, and Rahab a Canaanite.  These are small clues. From the very beginning, Matthew signals that God’s redemptive story has always included outsiders.

Then in chapter 2, the curtain is drawn back even further. The first people to recognise and honour the Christ child are not insiders, priests, scribes, or king of Israel, but outsiders, Gentile Magi, astrologers, foreigners guided by a star. This is not incidental. It is revelation.

Later in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus will redefine belonging even more explicitly: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father” (Matthew 7:21).  And in Matthew 25, the will of the Father is made unmistakably clear: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the sick and imprisoned, clothing the naked.

Finally, at the very end of the Gospel, what was hinted at in chapter 2 becomes unmistakable. The risen Christ commissions the disciples to go to all nations (Matthew 28:19). God is not concerned with a single ethnic group, God’s concern is for all people everywhere. 

What was hidden in plain sight at the beginning is made explicit at the end.

In closing, this Epiphany story of the Magi could be described as a threshold story. It stands on the edge of something new, between old assumptions and a wider vision of God’s grace.  And that makes it especially fitting for the beginning of a new year. Like the Magi, we stand at a threshold. The road ahead is unknown. We do not have maps for the journey ahead, only signs like the star that sometimes appear, disappear and then re-appear. We are invited to move forward with curiosity and trust rather than certainty, courage rather than control. Following the light of the inner star that is often shines only enough light for us to take one more step ahead. 

So what is the invitation of this story for us?

Perhaps it is to look for God beyond the familiar centres. To expect divine wisdom in unexpected places and unexpected people.  Perhaps it is to allow our understanding of belonging to be stretched, to recognise that the family of God is larger, more generous, and more surprising than we imagined. And perhaps it is to trust that when we truly encounter the light of Christ, we too will be changed.

Matthew tells us that the Magi “returned home by another road.” You cannot encounter revelation and go back the same way.

So as we stand at the threshold of this new year, may we have eyes to see the light that still shines, courage to follow it, and grace to walk a different road, toward justice, mercy, and love that reaches beyond all boundaries.

Amen.