'Common Ground' Song 13 - Behold the Lamb of God’
Words: John 1:29 / Music: John Bell. © Wild Goose / Iona Community
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMQlg2AOedQ
Featured image: Detail of a stained glass window in All Saints, Martin (Hampshire) (c) Maigheach-Gheal, 2012

This is a short chorus in four-part harmony: in the video linked above, it is the tenor voice that dominates. It is intended for small groups or congregations to sing unaccompanied, in the manner of a Taizé chorus. John Bell suggests it is suitable for “use repeatedly throughout a lengthy reading from the Gospel, or as an introit during Lent”.  I expect it would work equally well as a response to intercessions, especially when confessing corporate sin as I discussed in last Tuesday’s post.

This is the second in these first four songs with the theme of ‘Lamb of God’. But there is a difference. The first was explicitly a piece for the setting within the Mass, and therefore linked to Christ’s sacrifice for us on the Cross. But as the composer John Bell observes of his setting of the words ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world’: “It was actually said of Jesus before his baptism”. This opens up a whole new understanding of Jesus  coming into the world. If he was actively ‘taking away the sins of the world’ even before he was baptised at the start of his public ministry, can we therefore extrapolate this backwards and say that he was doing so even in infancy?  To return to our Epiphany theme this week, was he, by the mere act of being born of Mary, taking away even the sins of Herod who sought to murder him? I offer no definite answer here, but open the question.