Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s Gospel lesson from John 1:29-42 contains John’s testimony that Jesus is God’s Son. This was first seen in the descent of the Holy Spirit “like a dove” that remained on Jesus. The One on whom the Spirit descended is the One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. In the same passage, John refers to Jesus as the “Lamb of God.”

This name has become foundational for our Christian understanding of Jesus and of his death and resurrection. John’s Gospel places Jesus’ passion in the context of the celebration of the Jewish Passover. At the time of Jesus, the Passover was celebrated as a temple festival in Jerusalem and was the occasion for pilgrimage to the city. At the same time, Jesus observed a more familial Passover meal with his disciples.

Taken in context, we understand that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Passover in its various manifestations. He is the Lamb of God, fulfilling the role of the Passover lamb that was slain, and whose blood was placed on the lintel of the doorways. At the time of the Exodus, this meant that God would pass over the firstborns of the Jews, who were eventually delivered from slavery to the Egyptian state.

In Jesus, the Paschal Lamb, God delivers us from the power of sin and death, bringing us into the Kingdom of God. Similarly, just as Jesus instituted a new Paschal meal with his disciples, which was a sharing in his body and blood, so we celebrate our eucharistic feast today by offering bread and wine—the bread itself, which is broken and dropped in the cup, is sometimes referred to as the “Lamb.”

Regardless of theological system espoused, may Christians understand the eating and drinking of the bread and wine as a real sharing in Christ’s body and blood. This is why Communion is so important for us: it actually connects us to Christ, who has delivered us from the the power of sin and death and brought us into God’s kingdom.

I have been listening quite a bit to the Agnus Dei (that’s Latin for Lamb of God) from J. S. Bach’s great Mass in B Minor. It’s divided into two parts, which you can hear in the video below.

The first is a plaintive aria for alto (here a countertenor). Bach, in his faithful exegesis, points musically to Jesus as the Lamb of God by including jagged, “harsh leaps” (as Baroque musicologists call them) in the melody, cross-shaped figures in the bass line, and lament-like pairs of stepwise movements (George Stauffer points all of these features out in his book on the mass). All of this highlights the suffering experienced by Jesus in his passion.

The second part is a particularly solemn, uplifting, and majestic dance to the final words, “dona nobis pacem” (grant us peace), both rigorous and yet sublimely expansive and joyful.

Agnus Dei and Dona Nobis Pacem from the Mass in B Minor, BWV 232, J. S. Bach

Yours in Christ,

—Justin