Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)
So rare an unusual is the topic of sin in many churches these days that one of the first temptations, on considering preaching about sin, is to talk forcefully about someone else’s sin. And, oh, how delicious it is to sink one’s teeth into the failings of someone else - failings that are so plain to us, and, should, of course, be plain to them too, if only those poor, sinful souls were not so delusional and self-serving. It’s easy to shine a light on someone else’s sin so that others can behold it and see. Oh, pity the poor sinner, who should have known better! The more people divorce themselves from religion, as so many people have done these days, the more sin becomes a specialty topic of a dwindling demographic. You can accuse someone else of being a sinner, but if neither they nor anyone else cares, then what of it? You can’t have a witch trial if everyone agrees that witches are just living their own truth! But I don’t wish to suggest that I am nostaligic for the days of witch trials - far from it. I’m just meaning to acknowledge that it’s much easier to deal with someone else’s sin than with your own, and any clergy-person who has not learned this lesson is probably in some measure of peril.
I’m also willing to bet that not many of us showed up to church today because we are preoccupied with our own sin. We came here to be uplifted today, not beaten down. We came here to be fed, not to be put on a diet. We came here to bask for a while in beauty, not to be covered with the odor of shame. And right we are! We have come here for the right reasons - do not let me talk you out of that assurance. That is not my intention or my desire!
The Prayer Book gives us a prayer once a year that asks God to forgive us for “those things of which our conscience is afraid,” which sounds like a reasonable definition of sin to me. And the thing of it is, if we define sin this way, we’re only ever in a position to know about own own sins. And the possibility that someone else’s sins could be our problem to deal with begins to fade.
One problem with being distracted by other people’s sins is that the solution to someone else’s sin is also someone else’s savior. Using the language of John the Baptist, that would make Jesus someone else’s lamb. “Here is the lamb of God,’ he says, “who takes away the sin of the world.” This message is only important to you if you think you may have some sin of your own to deal with. I believe that John the Baptist included his own sins in this formula, since I think he had a powerfully active conscience, so I don’t think he is guilty here of addressing only other people’s sins. I think there was plenty of which his conscience was afraid.
The image of the lamb of God surely rests on the shared memory of the story of the Exodus and the Passover, when the blood of the slaughtered lambs was smeared on the doorposts of the houses of the children is Israel as the sign -for them and for God - of their impending deliverance from slavery. But I have another point of reference for lambs that I can’t get out of my head. It’s from an essay that Dr. Audrey Evans wrote about the first time she went to Scotland to assist in the birthing of lambs during lambing season on a farm there. She wrote about an “orphan lamb,” but she didn’t explain the circumstances of its orphanhood, only the fact that the little lamb was in need of a mother of its own. Audrey took the orphaned lamb and, by her account, she “smeared with uterine fluid and membranes” of a recently delivered ewe; and then presented the orphan to that ewe, hoping she would care for the motherless lamb.
“She accepted him for a few hours,” Audrey wrote, “but soon favored her own lamb and started pushing the imposter away. Getting ewes to accept lambs other than their own is successful in about 50% of the time.” Audrey also knew that sheep and shepherds each knowing who they belong to is a significant theme in Jesus’ teaching.
At Audrey’s funeral, I reflected that one of her greatest and most beautiful gifts was that she spent her lifetime accepting lambs that were not her own. And I think this was a fair assessment. But I also know that part of the reason Audrey could do that was because she knew that Jesus wasn’t just someone else’s savior, someone else’s lamb. She had accepted Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, which included her sins, too. I know for a fact that Audrey was intentional in assessing the things that the Prayer Book would call “those things of which [her] conscience [was] afraid.” And she did her best - not always successfully, like anyone else - to be accountable to her own conscience.
Here we are, early in a new year, with lots of reasons to be glad to see the year behind us gone. So many of the reasons I’m glad to see the back of 2022 have to do with other people’s sins. And since sin is not a favorite topic of mine to preach on, I have found it tempting indeed to spend some time stewing with you over other people’s sins.
I have a friend who used to ask me about “Saint Audrey” as he called her. And I always chafed when I heard him say this, since I knew how unfair it is for us to expect people - even someone like Audrey - to live up to such a reputation. And also because I knew that Audrey had spent time working out with God at least some of the things of which her conscience was afraid. Now that she’s gone, however, I think of the way saints - flawed though they may be - provide us with examples of how to live our lives in Christ. I never knew Audrey to be all that concerned about other people’s sins. But I knew her to be deeply concerned about sheep and shepherds each knowing who they belong to. Maybe that’s where her saintliness was to be found.
If we were to learn from her, maybe we could spend this year in part, learning to worry less about other people’s sins and more about those things of which our own conscience is afraid. And if we did that, I wonder if we would also be more ready to see Jesus not as someone else’s savior, someone else’s lamb, but as the Lamb of God who, if he takes away the sin of the world, surely takes away your sin and my sin too?
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
15 January 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
Dr. Audrey Evans