Lambs

In my message for this weekend I’ve decided to start with a question:  Are you lamb?  I’ve been puzzling over Luke 10 and Jesus’ brief and cryptic message:  Be lambs in a wolves world.  He obviously did not say be a wolf in a wolves world.  Nor did Jesus use, which is even more puzzling, standard Jewish symbols that evoked power or strength.  For example, he could have used a lion, or a bull, even a goat to symbolize how the disciples were to interact with the wolves. But he didn’t!  Instead, Jesus deliberately chose the lamb as a symbol that would characterize discipleship. What is even more provocative about this statement is that in the Jewish world lambs were used for sacrifice.  Theologically, they were to take the place and fate of Israel.  I find it remarkable that Jesus would choose a symbol that had no conspicuous qualities.  No superpowers!!! Lambs were the ultimate antihero in the Biblical world who had no extraordinary ability.  So, why then would Jesus intentionally use the lamb as a metaphor and symbol for discipleship?  Well, what seems to be going on is that Jesus was connecting the fate and destiny of the disciples to his own fate and destiny, albeit in a cryptic fashion. This was the path that disciples were to walk on if they intended to follow Jesus.  “Lambs among wolves” also makes a whole lot more sense when we become familiar with the storyline and the series of events that led up to this point in Luke 10.  Jesus knew he didn’t have a lot of time.  Herod was out to get him, religious leaders were plotting to arrest him, his hometown rejected him as a prophet and attempted to throw him off a cliff, and even his own family thought that he was out of his mind.  In other words, wolves were on the prowl and they were diametrically opposed to the agenda of Jesus.  They would do and they did what was in their power to remove this young prophet from the religious scene.  All of this has to make you think!  Has the world and western civilization become more tolerant of alternative points of view or has the church somehow compromised the revolutionary character of the Kingdom of God.  When was the last time that we got beat up or thrown into jail for Jesus?  For me, never!  Unless, of course, you count the time when I got beat up when I was seven but that is a completely different story.  I’m realizing that picking up ones cross wasn’t just a timeless ethical imperative passed down by Jesus.  But somehow it has been reduced to an ascetic discipline that if we get really good at we can become better Christians.  But that isn’t the point of the cross! The point, I think, is deeper:  If we follow the message of the Kingdom to it’s revolutionary end we will encounter forces that are antithetical to it’s agenda.  Thus, we must be willing to give up everything.

Why then did Jesus choose to use the lamb as a controlling symbol for the disciples?  Remember, lambs are weak not strong. And I think that’s the point!  We want to be strong but God wants us to be weak. We want to deal with the wolves in our life in our own way, on our own terms.  We like to play tit for tat and address evil by returning evil.  God simply doesn’t play that game and He certainly doesn’t address evil in the way that we would. It would never work!  The only way to overcome the wolves is by laying ones life down like the lamb.  This is what Jesus did!  This is what we are to do!