(the Lamb occurs 34 times in 29 verses in 27 songs)
Return Oh holy Dove, return
(this meaning of Dove only occurs in two other songs)
"The Lamb" is Jesus Christ, e.g.
John 1:29 (KJV)
The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
Revelation 22:1 (KJV)
And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
"the Dove" is the Holy Spirit, e.g.
Matthew 3:16 (KJV)
And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him.
(It looks like the four references to Jesus' baptism in the four Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - are the only places where this association is made. It has been a very common subject for artists.)
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Okay, this may seem a bit too basic -- if so I invite you to reflect on how many people now are growing up without even the most basic knowledge of Biblical stories, the stuff needed just to understand and appreciate great swathes of European/western culture. After 25 years of preaching I am still caught off balance by what people haven't been exposed to in any helpful way.
3 comments:
I appreciate your reflections on this literacy gap. I wasn't raised a Christian by my parents nor did I turn out to be one, but I went to (a rather dysfunctional) Sunday school in the summer, and I still have the King James Bible I was given on "graduation" to show for it.
But religous symbols are bottomless and context-rich. I wonder how much is knowledge is enough. What did the designation "lamb" mean in a pastoralist society which lived by their sheep and sacrificed lambs? And how must the once-and-for-all proxy sacrifice of Jesus have played in evangelized societies that still practiced human sacrifice?
I've experienced shock similar to yours to find that people don't know the first thing about Eastern thought, can't grok how polytheists can cheerfully add new deities (including Jesus) to their pantheon, don't know that Islam gave rise to a profound and delightful mystical tradition which still exists, and so on. I recently finished one of Thomas Cahill's books, and even Cahill, whom I admire greatly, showed a lack of fairly elementary knowledge of Buddhism. The world is smaller now, and knowing one's own culture isn't enough.
But as always, study is for those who are inclined to it. Which has nothing to do with Sacred Harp. As Jessica would say, "Let's Sing!"
Good thoughts - thanks for the feedback.
As a note on one level of the meaning of Lamb for early Christians, in the first three gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) the last supper is the passover seder. But in the chronology of John, the last supper takes place the day before, so that when Jesus is crucified he *is* the passover (paschal) lamb being slaughtered. And that requires a very quick trip into Judaism -- the original passover involved marking the doorways of the Hebrews in Egypt with the blood of the lamb so that the angel of death would pass over those houses and not strike their firstborn dead. So, it follows in the metaphoric world of John, Jesus' blood protects us from (ultimate) death.
On the polytheism note, a related thought -- one of my first religion profs talking about Christianity arriving in Japan said the initial reaction was, "Great, I'm already a Buddhist, and I practice Shinto, now I'll be a Christian too. More wisdom is always good." The exclusivist nature of the traditional Christian theology was at best a puzzle to them. I don't know but I suppose that had something to do with the ruthless suppression of Christianity in Japan for a time.
The other reason for the suppression of Christianity in Japan (there were forced conversions to Buddhism) was that the emperors had the Buddhist temples pretty much where they wanted them, and they weren't about to start over again with uppity foreigners. Temples that didn't want the interference of the rulers had to fly under the radar. There's a story that a monk of Dogen's visited the governor's court and received a fine robe, whereupon Dogen burned the monk's clothes and sent him packing, even destroying the tatami where the man had sat.
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