Behold the Lamb of God who existed before John the Baptist.
Be-hold.
Hold in your awareness that He existed from before the beginning of the world:
that in Him and through him all things, every living thing, came into being.
Be-hold how He, the Lamb of God, exists before John ever existed
and always acts to save.
He is the lamb who is offered by Abraham in place of Isaac on the altar,
saving Isaac from death and Abraham from sorrow.
He is the Passover Lamb whose blood spares the Israelites from the angel of death
and whose body energizes them to flee from slavery in Egypt
into the freedom of being God’s people.
He is the Lamb upon whose head the sins of the people of Israel are placed every year
and then He is driven into the desert, taking away the crushing burden of their offenses.
Be-hold the Lamb who is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, who comes not to be served
but to serve, to give his life as a ransom for the many.
Be-hold with John in Jesus of Nazareth the eternal lamb of God in the flesh.
Hold in your awareness his very being, that He is the sinless one
who comes to be one with sinners, to take away the sin of the world.
Be-hold the One who comes as one like us in order to take away all the separates us
from God.
For He is God-with-us, Emmanuel.
Look and see how he removes all that separates us from one another.
In every encounter Jesus offers forgiveness, freeing others from the burden of sin.
This is the healing he gives, bringing back to His Father wayward children, those who have wandered away from their true home, their real identity, as beloved children of God.
He does so by going into their homes, into the homes of sinners,
and breaking bread with them as they feast on his saving forgiveness.
By making them one with him, he reconciles them to God, restoring their dignity.
Be-hold the Lamb of God whose blood is poured out on the altar of the cross.
The Lamb sacrificed for the sin of the world.
Be-hold the victorious Lamb of God, risen from the dead, conqueror of sin and death,
triumphant over the power of the Evil One.
Behold the Lamb leading the holy ones in heaven in praise of the Father
in the eternal liturgy of thanksgiving, rocking the vaults of heaven
with grateful songs of adoration.
Be-hold the One who shares with us the gift of new life by the gift of His Spirit.
Be-hold the One who in baptism has immersed us in the life-giving waters of the Spirit,
so these waters of eternal life might bubble up within us always.
As the Living Lamb of God shares with us the gift of his life-giving Spirit,
we are strengthened to love as he loves, to lay down our life for others.
As we drink more deeply of the life-giving waters of our baptism,
the fire of the Spirit sparks in us a desire to know the Lamb of God
and offer our lives more fully to Him in love as his disciples.
To follow Him where he leads and to make Him known to others as John did.
To point others to the Lamb of God, the Savior of the World,
by what we say and what we do, by how we live enlivened by his Spirit.
The wind of the Holy Spirit moving us from resentment to forgiveness,
from fear to trust, and from slavery to sin to freedom in Christ.
The Spirit lights in us a fire of desire to love the Lord and moves us to want to spark
in others a desire to know and to love the Lamb of God who takes away their sins.
The fire of the Spirit sets our hearts on fire with His merciful love, to have empathy
for others who are broken like us, other sinners who like us need a Savior.
Behold the Lamb of God who not only shepherds us to the Spirit-filled waters of baptism
but also spreads this banquet before us, feeding us with his very life.
At every Eucharist we feast on the Lamb of God who takes away our sins,
who has mercy on us and grants us His peace.
The angel of death sees His blood on the door of our lips and passes over us,
because we drink of Him who shares with us eternal life.
Death no longer has a lasting hold on us.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Blessed indeed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.