The Challenge of the Lamb

An article by Frank    1 Comment

Revelation 5 in the Bible offers a staggering picture – a lion who becomes a humble lamb offered as a sacrifice. The lamb is granted power and depicted in the following chapters as unleashing wrath upon the world.

This final book in the compilation of works that we commonly know as the Bible, The Revelation of Jesus Christ as offered to John during his time on the island of Patmos, is an amazingly layered book and is a book that many approach with different interpretational foundations. Many reduce it to historical or futuristic interpretation, turning the apocalyptic visions into mere symbols that point to something concrete, making them shallow and viewing the apocalyptic language as simply a thinly veiled disguise for one time events.

I personally think the book is much more layered than that and has much to say to the human condition, making it relevant to all people of all generations, not just those connected to certain historical events that some assume the symbolism to be pointing to, whether those events be past, present or future.

When I read about the sacrificial lamb of chapter 5 (the chapter many say is pivotal to the book) I am especially struck by something deeper than goes beyond a mere past, present or future time-bound and physical event. The lamb offers a completely unnerving picture that runs counter to my intuition and instinctive understandings of power and judgement.

At the beginning of chapter 5 the question is asked about who is worthy to open the scroll and its seven seals. The scroll and the seven seals themselves carry much meaning, but for the sake of brevity I will simply point to the fact that in chapter six, when they are opened they lead to wrath being poured out upon the earth. The answer given to the question leads us to the conquering lion of Judah, the Root of David as being the one who can open them. This is a distinctly messianic figure drawing on prophetic proclamations in the Hebrew scriptures. If we were to ground the symbol in a concrete figure, it would be Jesus as the New Testament writers point to him being from the tribe of Judah and from the line of David.

From the proclamation about the lion being able to open the scroll and the seven seals in verse 5, we are then presented with a different figure in verse 6, what is presented is not a lion, the traditional picture of power, but a lamb that appears to have been sacrificed. The lamb symbolically has seven horns and seven eyes, (horns representing power and eyes representing knowledge. Seven represents wholeness or being complete). Once again the lamb is distinctly messianic and familiar to the reader as images of a lamb are replete throughout the Hebrew scriptures and the Apocryphal works. The lamb represents many things and in the context of this passage in Revelation it acts as both an intermediary between the different characters within the immediate context of the vision (its placement here is ambiguous compared to passages such as Rev 7:17 where it is placed at the center of the throne), but also as the holder of power and dispenser of wrath.

Compared with the traditional picture of a conquering lion, the picture of the sacrificial lamb offers us a completely different source of power and wrath. It is not the all powerful conquerer, rather it is its very nature that issues power and wrath on the earth simply because it is.

When I face the picture of the lamb, weak, humble and sacrificial, all the misgivings of my human nature are judged. My pride is revealed. My selfishness is revealed. My greed is revealed. My inclination towards revenge is revealed. All those things that are antithesis of the weak, humble, simple, sacrificial lamb are revealed simply because the lamb is. It is not brute force that judges a corrupt world, but the nature of the things that are the antithesis of all that is wrong on our earth and within our ourselves.

When I look at the lamb, I see a power that does not reside in absolute strength, but in a weakness that bears witness to the failings of my humanity. It is perfect love, humility and selfless sacrifice that dispenses wrath on all that is wrong, simply because it is.

How should this affect our approach to the injustices we see committed around our world? Is our place to try and exert strength or is it our place to move in humility, weakness, service, love, mercy, compassion and understanding in such a way that as we simply “be”, that which is wrong faces wrath? As the lamb stands between the throne and the creatures while also “among” the elders, what does it look like for us to be “among” those whom we seek to serve?

This is a challenge and one that I, admittedly, do not like.