Sherlock Holmes is probably more
real to some folks than are many famous people from history who actually lived.
And the most familiar shorthand way to portray Holmes is his famous deerstalker
hat. You know what I’m talking about: the one with the bill in the front and
the back, with flaps for the ears carefully tied up at the top of the hat.
Really, just draw the hat and people know you’re talking about Sherlock Holmes.
Only, the hat isn’t directly
mentioned in the original Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It
was Sidney Paget, the illustrator, who used the deerstalker in a picture he
drew for the short story “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” published in the Strand Magazine in 1891.
That illustration became so iconic
that every decent actor playing Holmes almost has to wear that rustic country
hat, even when the character is in the city — something the real Holmes (if
there had been one) would never do.
The Lamb of God
In the same way, how many of us think
of Jesus as the Lamb of God? It’s the way he is addressed in worship in
churches all around the world, in the litany phrase “Lamb of God, who takes
away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.” The phrase is an integral part of
Handel’s masterpiece, The Messiah. Jesus is the Lamb of God!
But Jesus never calls himself the
Lamb of God. He calls himself the Good Shepherd.1 He refers to
himself as the Gate for the Sheep.2 But it is John the Baptist who
paints the picture we are all familiar with when he proclaims to all who will
listen that Jesus is the Lamb of God. Actually, he only does this twice: once
in John 1:29 in our reading — “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin
of the world!” — and the other in John 1:36 — “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”
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