As may be expected by the season that we are in, both the Bible study and sermon this past Sabbath focused a great deal on the New Testament Passover and on the implications of the sacrifice of a perfect Lamb of God for our sins, so that we may be reconciled to God. I was reminded of the innate response I have to an innocent creature like a lamb, in wanting to hold them and take care of them and feel protective for them. In the ninth grade, I was assigned as part of my English class a reading of a poem by William Blake called “The Lamb,” which comes from his Songs of Innocence collection and goes as follows:
“Little Lamb, who made thee
Does thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing woolly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice.
Making all the vales rejoice:
Little Lamb who made thee
Does thou know who made thee
Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb I’ll tell thee;
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by His name,
Little Lamb God bless thee,
Little Lamb God bless thee [1].”
After services, when some friends and I were at dinner, the discussion went to an aspect of the Passover law that struck me as deeply relevant. I wonder how many people understood the sort of point that God was making with the sacrifice of a Passover lamb, especially given the fact that lambs are cuddly and cute and sweet little animals that it is easy to adore. In examining Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world, I wanted to ponder one particular aspect of the biblical Passover, one I do not think has been sufficiently recognized or reflected upon. Indeed, I wonder myself just how often this particular part of the Passover law was kept in its full intent and spirit, because its implications are deeply troubling and upsetting.
This law is written in Exodus 12:3-7: “Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.” On the surface, this appears to be a simple and straightforward law. Every family was to take a young lamb without blemish (unlike our own characters) and to keep the lamb for a few days before slaughtering it and using its blood to smear the doorposts and lintels, so that the death of the innocent lamb would allow the less innocent people of Israel to live without the loss of their own firstborn sons.
I wonder how many people got what seems to be the point. What happens when you take a little lamb and adopt him for a few days. Do your kids play with him, view him as a pet, give him a name and see him as a kindred innocent soul? Do you tell the children angrily that this lamb is not a pet, but a sacrifice? What do they say the first time they realize this animal is to be slaughtered? The questions go on and on, and I wonder if the people of Israel sought to keep the slaughtering at a distance, done by a butcher rather than done by the head of household on behalf of his family. It is understandable that slaughtering animals, especially for sacrifice, around one’s family (especially children) is more than a little awkward, but I wonder if that was not part of the point. After all, lambs are innocent and cute and cuddly, and few people would want to kill them, especially as a reminder of one’s own sinful and fallen state. God makes it clear that He does not delight in sacrifice, other than the sacrifice of a repentant heart (see, for example, Psalm 51).
Yet God commanded the Israelites to kill a lamb in a special way, after having separated it for three days. There was time in those three days to reflect upon the death of the lamb, and how in our fallen state innocent life must be taken to pay the price of sin for the guilty. Perhaps there would be a sense of horror if someone really saw the death and loss that resulted from sin. Truly, we are all broken and deeply warped by our own longings and compulsions, but seeing the full price of what we do might at least lead us, if we are not driven mad by the anguish, to earnestly desire to be made whole and pure, so that we may be more like the lamb slaughtered for our sakes. If it is not good enough to finish, at least it might be good enough to start.
Edge Induced Cohesion 