Pax Domini and Agnus Dei
This sermon is part of a midweek series on the parts of the liturgy.
Text: Isa. 53:7-11, 2 Cor. 15:11, John 1:29-37, Rev. 5:6-10
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There is a dark mathematic to the universe ever since the Fall in Eden. The terrible calculus is that for anything to live, another must die. We’ve walled ourselves off from this truth in our own modern society through panes of glass and sheets of plastic in the grocery aisle. But the truth, terrible as it is, still remains. Animals must kill plants or other animals to survive. Even plants require the death of other creatures to get what they need to from the soil.
It’s a startling truth, and a properly sobering one. But that’s what this season of Lent is for, pondering hard truths, as we watch our Lord walk toward the cross, pouring out His life as a drink offering. His death, every drop of vivid crimson life that drips from Him as He sweats blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, every lash of the whip from the Roman torturers, every cruel word hurled at Him—all of this is done because of that awful equation—for one to live, another must die.
It’s in this stark reality of Lent that see God find the solution to this equation. For our God would not stand idly by and watch His creatures crushed under eons of death piled up. He would do what He has always done and turn evil into good. He would take death and turn it into life. To this end, to hijack the formula of death, He established the sacrifice of the lambs in the Old Testament. If—or rather, when—one of His people sinned, breaking the commands the Lord had given to show the best way for humanity to live and thrive, the equation of death would be short circuited by the sacrifice of a lamb. Something, a substitute, would die so that another could live. And when death ran rampant through Egypt as the angel of death passed over, hours before the Israelites’ exodus out of slavery, they would be spared by the blood of their sacrificial Passover lamb. Another would die so that they would live.
But even more than that, the sacrificial lambs would do something even greater. They would point forward to a time when the deadly math would be broken. God Himself would step into the cold equation of the universe and overwhelm it. For the dark formula of death would be unable to calculate what to do when eternity enters the equation. It wouldn’t balance when the Son of God Himself took one side of the equation. When the weight of infinity, contained in the flesh and blood of Jesus, entered the scales, it would break the old math—eye for an eye, tooth and nail red in nature. When sins are dissolved in the blood of God, there is nothing left but life. When the daily warfare to survive, the battle between prey and predator stands silenced by God’s death on a cross, there is nothing left but peace; the wolf lying down with the lamb, the cow and the bear grazing together. So after our God who has died, but who now lives forever, enters the Divine Service on Sunday mornings in the Lord’s Supper, when His life-giving words, “This is my body, this is my blood, given and shed for you,” are spoken at the altar, all we can do is sing in recognition of that life. So we do sing; we sing the song known as the Agnus Dei, or “Lamb of God” in Latin: “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us…grant us peace.”
This song has been in use just before the Lord’s Supper since at least 700 AD. Its position just before we receive the sacrifice that gives us life—the fruits of Jesus dying so that others can live—helps to give us time, to take a breath from the pace of the liturgy, so that we can really consider what it means to receive our Lord’s body and blood for the forgiving of our sins and the strengthening of our faith to everlasting life. It gives us the words to praise Him for what He has done in taking on death for our life. It lets us explore the words of Scripture, the words of John the Baptizer, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” the words of Old Testament prophets and priests, of apostles and martyrs, who recognize that Christ is the Passover Lamb that was slain. It gives us another way to ponder what it means that God loved us so much that He entered this whole mess of sin and death and defeated it for us.
So in the moments before we sing, the pastor, messenger of the Lord, gives you the message of peace from the Lord of life: “The peace of the Lord be with you always.” Your fight is not with God. Your fight does not exist anymore at all. You have no battles left to be fought. Your Lord is at peace with you. Those words are an absolution, words of forgiveness again in the service. God has done everything so that you have daily bread, so that you have forgiveness, so that you will live with Him forever. That means that you are at peace, with God and with your fellow believers, who are also blessed with this peace. And because this message is for you, because this is what Jesus wants to say to you right before He comes to you in His body and blood, because it’s absolution from the crucified and resurrected Jesus, all you can offer back in return is the word “Amen,” which means “Yes, yes, it shall be so. I am forgiven. I am at peace. Message received.”
This is the week before Holy Week, the sacred time of year when salvation was completed and sealed. The sacrifice is finished. Forgiveness and life has been won. Peace with the Lord has been established. As we move into that week with Palm Sunday, no matter what turmoil you’re going through, no matter what stress or drama or conflict with others, no matter the flux of emotions (and there are a lot of them in Holy Week), no matter what you like or dislike in what you hear, your smiles, your frowns, or even your weeping or laughing, may that peace of the Lord abide. May that peace find a place in you. Your conflict is over. Your Lord has done the math, the equation is solved. The peace of the Lord be with you always. In the name of Jesus, who gives peace beyond understanding. Amen.
