Agnus Dei: Lamb of God
Easter is about God worshiping us.
by Everett J. ThomasPrint Article Email to a Friend
The Easter story—Christ’s death and resurrection—is not about man’s inhumanity to man. It is an act of worship; it is about God worshiping us.
The word worship means, literally, “worth-ship.” That means that when we worship God, we are declaring how much God is worth to us. But Easter demonstrates how much we are worth to God: We are worth so much that he gave us his only Son.
The first listeners who heard, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,” would have understood implicitly something we do not, that to give one’s only son was to give everything one possessed. Those first listeners would also have connected this statement to a story in Genesis 22: Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only begotten son. Being willing to do so was a sign of how much Jahweh was worth to Abraham.
The text specifies that this sacrifice of Isaac was an act of worship. Abraham said to the servants who were traveling with him, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship” (Genesis 22:5).
Sacrificing Isaac was Abraham’s single act of worship in this story.
Abraham had been childless for years in a culture that valued sons above all else. In this cashless society, progeny was wealth. One might appear prosperous, with many camels, servants and tents. But sons defined a man. Abraham, without a son, would die and leave no posterity. To the Ancient Near Eastern mind, that meant Abraham would disappear. When Sarah finally became pregnant and gave birth, Abraham’s total existence and essence was carried in one fragile vessel: the body of a small boy named Isaac.
But Jahweh asked Abraham to sacrifice this only son. It was a request for Abraham to sacrifice himself—his identity, his essence, his own life coursing through the boy’s veins.
In Genesis 22:2, Jahweh tells Abraham, “Take you son, your only son Isaac, whom you love … and offer him there as a burnt offering.” This request was really a test. Jahweh was asking Isaac, “How much am I worth to you?” Abraham’s answer was a statement: You are worth my very existence, my essence, my life.
The Lamb of God
The chain reference in the NRSV immediately connects Genesis 22:2 to John 3:16. To paraphrase John 3:16, “Abraham so loved (worshiped) God that he was willing to give his only begotten son.”
In the end, Abraham did not. In the end, Jahweh did.
During a unique moment in history thousands of years after Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac, God declared how much he loves humanity by participating in the most primordial of human experiences: He appeared in a specific place and at a specific time as a parent with a child. No other medium for engaging human life could have been as compelling and as complete.
Jesus often reminded his followers of this by calling himself the Son of Man. As a father offering his son, God demonstrated his love by incarnating himself as a sacrifice—the ultimate act of worship. God gave his essence to us in Jesus Christ. This is how much we are worth to God.
Unlike the story in Genesis 22, however, when the time came for God’s act of worship, there was no substitute. God followed through with the very act of worship he did not require of Abraham. Jesus became the “lamb” sacrificed as an act of worship. That is why we called Jesus the Lamb of God—“Agnus Dei.”
Many Mennonite congregations are reminded of this act of worship by the logo on the front of Hymnal: A Worship Book. It is fitting that in our tradition—we worship most deeply by singing—the sacrificial lamb adorns our hymnal (see end of article).
But this connection between Abraham’s willingness to worship Jahweh with his all and God’s willingness to sacrifice his all for us has even richer meanings. The near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 started a worship tradition that sweeps through the entire biblical story. Its meaning passes through Egypt and culminates at the Last Supper.
The Paschal Lamb
Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac inspired a tradition among his descendants. They, too, showed how much Jahweh was worth to them by sacrificing animals. This worship tradition settled on sacrificing young and unblemished lambs. The sacrificial lamb represented the offer of a son—one’s life essence given to Jahweh in worship.
In the book of Exodus, the descendants of Abraham—eventually known as the children of Israel—no longer were nomadic sheep herders in the wilderness but lived in cities in Egypt. In Exodus 12 they continued the worship tradition.
When the time came for Jahweh to free them from captivity, Jahweh asked them once again to declare themselves through an act of worship. As the angel of death visited each house in Egypt, the blood of a lamb sprinkled on the door indicated that the members of that household worshiped Jahweh. The angel of death passed over.
So profound was this moment in Israel’s history that the lamb used for this declaration became known as the Paschal Lamb (the Passover Lamb).
The Lamb of God
At the Last Supper, Jesus observed Passover with his disciples and completed the worship circle begun by Jahweh in Genesis 22. At this Passover, Jesus identified himself as the animal in the briar—the Paschal Lamb—and asked his disciples to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. To do so was to accept, viscerally, God’s declaration of their worth to him.
Today, when we eat of the bread and drink of the cup, we are confessing to God, “We receive your love for us.” We may also say with fear and trembling, “We are mortified—even scandalized—that eating these elements is an acknowledgement of how much we are worth to you.”
So how do we respond to this God who worships us and all humanity? Jesus’ words at the Last Supper tell us.
“Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus said (John 15:12).
Maundy Thursday
During the week before Easter, many Christians gather on Thursday evening to commemorate the Last Supper. During this commemoration we are reminded of this commandment to love each other. It is called Maundy Thursday because “maundy” means “commandment.” The Church of the Brethren—with whom we share Hymnal: A Worship Book—hold this as a particularly important moment in the church year. They call it the Love Feast. In a sense, we are to worship each other. Commemorating the Last Supper, we declare how much other Christian sisters and brothers are worth to us.
These truths are embodied in another commandment Jesus gave us in Mark 12: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength [and] … you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus dying on the cross was God’s way of loving us with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. This is the way God worshiped all humanity—those who lived before us, all who are alive now and those who are not yet born.
It is little wonder, then, that a prayer introduced by Sergius I (687-701) has become a universal response to this beautiful and awful truth:
“O Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
“O Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
“O Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace.
“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, Miserere nobis
“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, Miserere nobis
“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.”
Agnus Dei: Composer Lee Dengler’s 2006 composition “Agnus Dei” is available as streaming audio at the top of this Web page. The first pages of the score are also available as a pdf. Dengler is a member of the ministerial team at College Mennonite Church in Goshen, Ind., and teaches in the music department at Goshen College. The composition was commissioned for the Concert Choir of Souderton (Pa.) Area High School.
"Agnus Dei" by Lee Dengler. Copyright © 2006, Harold Flammer Music (a division of Shawnee Press, Inc., Nashville, TN 37212) Used by Permission. For more information call Shawnee Press at 1-800-962-8584.
The logo on the cover of Hymnal: A Worship Book appears to represent the ram stuck in the briar in the story of Isaac’s near sacrifice. Historian Jan Gleysteen alerted the hymnal’s designer to this image from Dutch Mennonite history. Gleysteen agrees that it is a reference to the Genesis 22 story but said there is no way to verify the connection. The hymnal’s title page says of the image: “The lamb in the midst of the briar is a traditional Anabaptist symbol. It illustrates the suffering Lamb of God, who calls the faithful to obedient service. Since in the past it has been used to represent unity among believers, it is an appropriate symbol of this cooperatively produced hymnal.”—ejt
Everett J. Thomas is editor of The Mennonite.
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Additional Notes
Genesis 22 and crucifixion-resurrection
“The connections some interpreters have drawn between the danger and drama of the near sacrifice of Isaac and the crucifixion-resurrection of Jesus has led at times to a blending of these two stories into one. This merging began early in the church’s interpretation of Genesis 22. Irenaeus and Tertullian related the wood which Isaac carried to the cross Jesus bore. Apparently the merging of the near sacrifice of Isaac with the Passion narrative of Jesus was reflected rather generally in the worship of the early church.” (Believers Church Bible Commentary, Eugene F. Ropp, Herald Press)
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