Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 18, 2026
Fr Ben Riley
A couple of years ago, during the fall hunting season, I got a pretty good buck with my granddad’s old .308 Remington. It was a good sized deer, and for the first time in my life, I decided I wanted to process it myself. I had field dressed deer before, but Ihad never butchered one from start to finish. So I asked a man from our parish who hunts regularly if he would teach me. He walked me through the whole process.
We hung the deer by the hind legs, split the hide, peeled the skin back, removed the head and lower legs, and then began separating shoulders, hams, backstraps, and tenderloins. There was nothing clean or comfortable about it. There was blood. There was weight. There was resistance. There was a mess. There was real labor. It was interesting, and I learned a lot, but it was also exhausting and unpleasant at times. The whole time, I kept thinking about something the president rector of Saint Meinrad seminary once told my class right before we were ordained transitional deacons.
He drew the Jerusalem temple on the white board. The courts of the temple. Then the Holy of Holies. He drew the altar of sacrifice with its horns and trench for blood. After explaining it all, he stopped, became very serious, and said, “Men, priesthood is not a clean vocation. It is not comfortable, and it is not about you. It is about offering your life on the altar for the sake of the people of God. If you are not ready to put your hands into the bloody mess of the woundedness, the sin, and the suffering of God’s beloved children, then you do not belong here. Come talk to me after class, and I will pay your gas for you to go home.”
Standing there with that deer, hands cold and sore, clothes dirty, knife heavy, I realized how far removed we are from the world of sacrifice that fills the Bible. And yet, that world is exactly where today’s Gospel places us.
John the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Those words are not poetic decoration. They are sacrificial language. John is not calling Jesus gentle like a lamb. He is identifying him as a sacrifice.
John is the son of a priest. He knows the temple. He knows altars. He knows blood. He knows lambs. Lambs were offered constantly in Jerusalem. Hundreds of thousands of them each year. Sometimes in praise and thanksgiving, but most often for sin. The one bringing the lamb was meant to understand, “What is happening to this innocent creature is what should be happening to me.” Guilt was placed. Responsibility was acknowledged. Blood was poured out. Forgiveness was not sentimental. It was costly.
So when John points to Jesus and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” he is saying, “Here is the sacrifice. Here is the one who will finally do what all those lambs could never fully accomplish. Here is the one who will take away the sins of the world.”
Scripture has been training us for this moment from the beginning. Abel’s acceptable sacrifice. The Passover lamb whose blood saved the firstborn. Isaac asking, “Father, where is the lamb?” and Abraham answering, “God himself will provide.” Isaiah’s suffering servant, led like a lamb to the slaughter. The day of atonement. The scapegoat. The blood in the Holy of Holies.
And now John says, “There he is.”
Jesus identifies himself completely with that role. On the cross, he is not merely a good man unjustly killed. He is the Lamb. He is saying, “See, what is happening to me is what should, by right, be happening to you.” Jesus fully accepts the burden of our sinfulness. Because. sin is not ignored. It is not waved away. It is taken up. It is carried. It is paid for. Not because the Father is cruel, but because love takes sin seriously. Love goes into it. Love absorbs it. Love redeems it.
The Church Fathers said it bluntly. Jesus came to die. He came to offer himself. He came to be the sacrifice by which we are ransomed.
And here is where this becomes very concrete for us.
In the temple, no one’s sins were forgiven in the abstract. A person had to come. With a real animal. For real sins. They had to place their hands on the offering. They had to acknowledge, “This one is mine.”
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But he does not take away imaginary sins, generic sins, or theoretical sins. He takes away confessed sins. Named sins. Sins brought and placed before his cross.
And that is why confession is so central to the Christian life. Confession is not easy. It is not pretty. It is not comfortable. Like sacrifice. Like butchering that deer. It involves honesty. Exposure. Humility. It involves opening the wound we would rather keep hidden. It is work. It is spiritual labor. It is placing our hands, on the Lamb and saying, “This one is mine, and I am sorry.”
Many people drift away from confession not because they do not believe in mercy, but because they do. They want mercy without the altar. Healing without the incision. Forgiveness without the truth. But the Bible never offers that. Real healing always passes through the sacrifice. Real forgiveness always passes through the cross.
Confession asks us to enter into the mess with Christ. To let him touch what is painful. To let his blood be applied where we are actually sinful, actually broken, actually in need of healing.
My friends, how blessed we are. How blessed we are.
We do not bring a lamb from our flock. We do not stand in a line at the temple with blood on our hands. Instead, we bring our hearts. We bring our words. We bring our humility. We bring our lives. And the sacrifice has already been made. The Lamb already stands as though slain. The price has already been paid.
In confession, we are not creating mercy. We are choosing to step into it. We are not earning forgiveness. We are receiving it. We are letting what Christ did once for all be personally applied to us.
“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” If we want him to take away our sins, then we must bring them to him. Not vaguely. Not someday. But concretely. Personally. And Sacramentally.
And when we do, we discover that the altar, though bloody, is holy. That the sacrifice, though hard, is life giving. And that the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world is waiting for us in that little room.