Lutheran Church of Mahomet, The Invitation 2018 Easter Invitation | Page 4

“Worthy is the Lamb!” This is an extremely
odd phrase to begin the royal acclaim and
praise of a savior. Well, maybe it doesn ’t
seem odd to us, Christians who have been
worshipping a lamb for thousands of years.
To our modern culture, “lamb” is a natural
and routinely obvious metaphor for Jesus.
But, thousands of years ago, God ’s messi-
ah, God’s chosen savior, was expected to
be the farthest thing from a lamb. The Is-
raelite people had been enslaved, home-
less, oppressed, shattered and scattered,
occupied by foreign powers, and persecut-
ed for their faith. When Jesus came, the
Roman Empire still held sway over the Is-
raelite people as their governing power, a
collection of laws and militaristic power
that held contempt for the Israelite people
and their religion. Into this broken situa-
tion, many Israelites expected God to send
a militaristic messiah—they expected
God’s chosen savior to become King in the
truest sense of the word and drive away
the Romans with violent might and re -
establish the Israelite nation in glory and
wealth.
Well, we know that Jesus did not fit in with
these expectations. The messiah was sup-
posed to be mighty in arm, but Jesus was
mighty in heart; the messiah was to deliver
retribution, but Jesus demanded repent-
ance; the messiah was supposed to liberate
the Israelites, but Jesus liberated every-
body. Jesus accomplished his ministry not
with the sword but rather with the Word
and with love. That’s why this text from
the Book of Revelation is so surprising.
Praising a Lamb is like praising a fluffy
bunny, or a delicate flower, or the dome of
seeds on a dandelion before the wind scat-
ters them. This last book of the bible has
many images of violence, eruptions, death,