On this second Sunday in ordinary time the church moves us from the celebration of Christmas and the Baptism of the Lord into the public ministry of Jesus. Today’s gospel is quite simple, and yet deeply profound. John the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him and says: “behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. These words are so familiar to us that we might overlook how extraordinary they are. Every time we come to mass, just before communion, we hear them again. Today the church invites us to slow down and truly behold the Lamb.
When John the Baptist says “behold” he does not say, ‘look quickly’ or ‘notice casually’. He says ‘to stop, to focus, to recognize something sacred. In a world that rushes, scrolls, and moves on quickly, faith begins with learning how to behold, how to truly see Jesus’ present and activeness in our lives. Many people looked at Jesus that day and saw only a man from Nazareth. John guided by the spirit saw the son of God. The question for us today is simple but challenging, do we truly see Jesus, or have we grown accustomed to him? John calls Jesus the Lamb of God, this image would have been powerful to his listeners. The lamb recalled the Passover Sacrifice, the blood that saved God’s people from death in Egypt. It also recalled the suffering servant of Isaiah, who would be led like a lamb to the slaughter. Jesus is not a political hero or military savior. He comes as a Lamb, gentle, obedient, willing to give his Life. He does not take away sin by force, but by love, sacrifice and mercy. This tells us something essential about God: God saves the world not through domination, but through self-giving love.
When John speaks “who takes away the sin of the world” we should notice that John does not say “sins’ in the plural, but ‘sin in the singular. Jesus comes to address the root of all brokenness, everything that separates humanity from God: fear, pride, violence, selfishness, despair. And He does not merely cover sin or ignore it. He ‘takes it away’. This is the heart of the Gospel. We are not trapped by our past, we are not defined by our failures. In Christ, sin does not have the final word.
Our first reading from Isaiah reminds us that God’s call is never only personal, it is always missionary: ‘I will make you a light to the nations’. And St Paul reminds in the second reading from the letter to Corinthians and also to us that we are called to be “Holy” not because we are perfect, but because we belong to Christ. Like John the Baptist, we are not meant to draw attention to ourselves. Our task is simple but demanding: to point to Jesus by the way we live, forgive, love, and serve. Every Mass brings us back to this moment, we hear again “behold the Lamb of God”. Before we receive Him in the Eucharist, we are invited to look with faith, to recognize who stands before us not only on the altar, but in our neighbor, in the poor, in our daily struggles. If we truly behold the Lamb, our lives cannot remain the same. Amen