The Second Sunday of Epiphany

Reception

Good evening! Good to see you all after just a week in this Epiphany Season. We will get to celebrate together this upcoming Second Sunday and the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany, meaning I won’t be here next week. Nevertheless, we continue tonight going through the Christian calendar that a large portion of Christians are studying through this week. Our readings naturally flow from last week’s passages on the Baptism of Christ. As we contemplate our own spiritual rebirth in that baptism we are invited to imitate through Christ’s actions, now we are invited to partake of His blood, the blood of the lamb.

Collect for Purity/Collect of the Day

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Old Testament

A reading from the Old Testament, the Book of Exodus,

Exodus 12:21–28 “Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families, and slay the Passover lamb. “You shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts; and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning. “For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you. “And you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children forever. “When you enter the land which the Lord will give you, as He has promised, you shall observe this rite. “And when your children say to you, ‘What does this rite mean to you?’ you shall say, ‘It is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared our homes.’ ” And the people bowed low and worshiped. Then the sons of Israel went and did so; just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.”

New Testament

A reading from the New Testament, the letter to the Corinthians,

1 Corinthians 1:1–9 “Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Gospel Reading

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, According to St. John,

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

John 1:29–42 “The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! “This is He on behalf of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’ “I did not recognize Him, but so that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water.” John testified saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him. “I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’ “I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.” Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turned and saw them following, and said to them, “What do you seek?” They said to Him, “Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are You staying?” He said to them, “Come, and you will see.” So they came and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He found first his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which translated means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).”

Thus Ends the Readings of the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Sermon

About a half a year or more ago I prepared us through a month-long weekly sermon series on the Eucharist before a Sunday Hope Street Chapel service. One of those sermons was on the shared and exchanged meanings behind water and wine in the Scriptures. Simply summarized, water represents our spiritual rebirth and an explicit affirmation of our entrance into the body of Christ, which is the church. And wine represents that blood, once bled for us, so that the washing of our sins in baptism may be re-applied by the continual remembrance of Christ’s bloody sacrifice.

Driving in this point, in which we should keep in the back of our minds, of the connection between water and wine, one of the three significant events celebrated in Epiphany Season, which occurs after Christ’s baptism (entrance into His public ministry), is his first miracle (presentation of His public ministry). This miracle, performed at a wedding in Cana, displays Christ turning water into wine.

Even though the Advent Season (of which Christmas is the finale) is most remembered for Christ’s birth, and the Easter Season (of which Easter is the finale) is most remember for Christ’s death and resurrection, I believe that none of the events of Christ’s life can be separated from his ultimate sacrifice. Not only are his eventual doings foretold in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, but he lived a life truly unlike ours. He had a defined purpose from the beginning, in which he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit (as St. John begins his Gospel).

What better proof do we have of Christ’s unique life than in the image of the Lamb of God (or the Agnus Dei). And it begins, as Christ’s life is generally foretold, in the books of Moses, the second book of the Bible, in Exodus.

So in the background of our Old Testament reading situates Israel on the eve of liberation from Egypt. After suffering under the oppressive rule of the Pharaoh, enslaved to a foreign nation, and at the climactic moment of the tenth plague (the killing of the firstborn child), Moses instructs the elders to select a lamb. And with this lamb they were to slaughter it, and mark their doorposts with its blood so that the LORD’s judgment will “pass over” their houses. This is the origin of the Jewish holiday, in which Christ himself was celebrating when he instituted the Lord’s Supper. And from this passage in Exodus draws together themes of covenant obedience, substitution, and divine deliverance: Israel is saved not by power or revolt, but by trusting the word of God and taking refuge under the sign he provides. Historically, the ritual both explains Israel’s escape from slavery and institutes a perpetual memorial (Passover) by which later generations would re-enter the story of redemption, understanding their identity as a people redeemed by God’s decisive act of judgment and mercy.

While the Old Testament is chock full of animal sacrifice, this moment, a fulfillment of God’s promise visible to them by the blood of a lamb over their doorpost, stands out as that proof of covenant faithfulness. They fulfilled their promise to God as He did to them. Yet, animal sacrifice was never the ideal. These works, no matter how great, could never fulfill the debt gathered between Creature and Creator. As I discussed last week, even a minutia of sin has one infinitely greater at fault to the One that cannot sin. Even the most “unholy” man is closer to the most “holy” man than that man is to God. And Israel certainly was not the most “holy.” There are countless stories of her unfaithfulness and of God’s continual mercy. But, nonetheless, Israel kept falling back into sin.

Thus, Israel must be reborn, it must be renewed, it must be fulfilled towards its original purpose of being a nation to be modeled. Thus, Christ came to be Israel, to represent and model the best of man and the best of living. Divine revelation came down to our condition to heal us. And as last week we spoke in depth on Christ’s baptism, St. Ambrose combines the ideas when he says,

“For he who is baptized is seen to be purified both according to the Law and according to the Gospel: according to the Law, because Moses sprinkled the blood of the lamb with a bunch of hyssop; according to the Gospel, because Christ's garments were white as snow, when in the Gospel He showed forth the glory of His Resurrection. He, then, whose guilt is remitted is made whiter than snow. So that God said by Isaiah: "Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow."

Not only is there reference to Christ’s remittance of sins, but it’s displayed in the vivid imagery of our sins, scarlet (red) like blood, being washed by his blood such that we are cleansed, or cleared from all stain. I really enjoy the imagery of the wine (being Christ’s blood) in the Eucharist effecting a renewal of one’s baptism. That forgiveness of sins promised in baptism is reapplied and re-effectual in the sharing of Christ’s blood that washes us. Our own blood is washed away by Christ’s blood and all that is left is that unstained, unadulterated water.

Paul, in our readings, describes those in the church, which literally means chosen (and I would add by God), as who “have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.” Sanctification in this case is similar to how we might use the word “sanitize” as in “hand sanitizer.” The beautiful thing about this word in its usage is that is in its original Greek grammar it possesses a nuance not found in English, and with its place at the start of the letter, as an introduction/greeting, it establishes a summation of the journey after baptism, from water to blood. The verb here for “[has] been sanctified” implies not just a past, completed action, as in “I paid my friend $5,” but one that has a continuing effect, like, “I paid a friend $5 I owed him and now I feel relieved.” It is the same tense used by Christ when he’s suffering on the Cross and proclaims, “It is finished!” That is not to say Christ’s work in us is complete, but that his public earthly ministry (that began at his baptism) along with His life and prophecy has been fulfilled and will continue to effect those after Him as it does the church today. People did not just go about their day after Christ died, it radically affected those who believed.

That the cross was not a tragic end but the climactic fulfillment of everything the Passover lamb had foreshadowed. In the moment John the Baptist cried out, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” he was unveiling the divine mystery that had been prepared since the foundation of the world. That which came to fulfill, which came to turn take off the stain of our blood, of our death, of our sin—Jesus Christ. He bled so that we would not have to.

And think about the weight of those words. The Passover lamb in Exodus was a temporary provision in a temporary covenant: its blood shielded Israelite homes from the final plague, but it could not erase sin itself. That is, it was nowhere near as powerful as Christ but just a prefigurement. This is the same as when I’ve spoken of the Old Testament prophets as only a glimpse of the true power of Christ. So in this not entirely effective and certainly not once-for-all sacrifice: the lamb died, the family ate, the judgment passed over, yet sin remained in the hearts of the redeemed. Year after year, generation after generation, the ritual repeated because the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins. It pointed forward, whispering of a better sacrifice to come.

Jesus is that better sacrifice. He is the Lamb without blemish or defect, the perfect fulfillment of the Passover requirements: unblemished, selected, examined, and slain at the precise hour. Remarkably, John's Gospel notes that Jesus was crucified on the Day of Preparation for Passover, just as the lambs were being slaughtered in the temple. No bone of His was broken, echoing the command for the Passover lamb in our reading today. In this, we see the exquisite precision of God's plan: the Lamb of God dies as the Passover lambs die, so that His blood might be applied not to wooden doorposts, but to the doorposts of human hearts. That us, who have been washed in water, may then be washed in blood, and His blood de-staining our blood. That that water that turned into wine in Christ’s first miracle may also represent our life turn towards the cross, in which He was bloodily sacrificed.

But what does this mean for us? Again, the blood that once marked doorposts now marks believers. When we trust in Christ, His blood is applied by faith, and the destroyer—sin, death, and the work of the devil—passes over us forever. We are spared, not because of our merit, but because of the Lamb's substitution. He, the innocent one, takes the place of the guilty. As Isaiah prophesied centuries earlier, “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter... and God has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” Christ does not merely sympathize with our sin; He bears it, carries it away, removes it as far as the east is from the west.

This brings us back to the beautiful interplay of water and wine you may recall from our earlier series. In baptism, we are buried with Christ into His death and raised to new life, washed clean by water, reborn by the Spirit. The scarlet stains of sin are made white as snow, as St. Ambrose so vividly described. But the journey does not end at the font. The Eucharist re-presents that sacrifice: the wine, the blood poured out, renews the covenant, reapplies the forgiveness won once for all. Each time we take the cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes, remembering that the Lamb's blood continues to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And in this Epiphany season, we celebrate the manifestation of Christ to the world. The Magi saw His glory in the star; at Cana, water became wine, revealing His power; at the Jordan, the Spirit descended like a dove. But here in our Gospel reading, in John 1, John the Baptist points to the deepest revelation: Jesus is the Lamb who takes away the sin not of Israel alone, but of the whole world. The means in which God reveals Himself is now open to all. This is cosmic in scope. Sin's power, which enslaves humanity under Pharaoh-like bondage, is broken. Liberation comes not through our efforts, but through the Lamb's blood.

And notice what happens next in the Gospel. John proclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”—and two disciples hear it and follow Jesus. Andrew runs to his brother Simon and declares, “We have found the Messiah!” Jesus renames Simon “Cephas” (Peter), the rock. One testimony sparks another; one encounter leads to invitation. This is the pattern of discipleship: we behold, we believe, we follow, and we bring others to “come and see.”

This is our calling today. In a world still enslaved to sin—addiction, division, fear, injustice—we are invited to point to the Lamb on the cross. Not with judgment, but with the joy of those who have been passed over by wrath and welcomed into mercy. When your children, your neighbors, or even your own doubting heart ask, “What does this mean?” tell them the story: “It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over our houses of sin through the blood of the Lamb, sparing us and leading us into freedom.”

The early church lived this out. They gathered around the Word, the water of baptism, and the table of bread and wine, remembering the Lamb whose blood sealed a new covenant. They were enriched in speech and knowledge, not for self-glory, but to testify to Christ. They awaited His return with eager hope, confident in God's faithfulness.

So let us do the same. Let us behold the Lamb today. Let His blood wash us anew. Let us follow where He leads, inviting others to come and see the One who existed before us, who ranks above us, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit, who takes away the sin of the world.

Psalmic Prayer (ex Psalmo 40)

Everlasting God, we give thanks to all of you, particularly thanking you for the Son and for our patience in His doings. For you have heard our cry and delivered us from destruction. Guide us to put our full trust in you, for blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust, and to align with your will, for we will for your law to be in our hearts. Lord, you know our hearts and speak to them.

Benediction

Let us end tonight in a benediction, from the words of St. Paul,

1 Thessalonians 5:23 “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Go in Peace in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.