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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Good Shepherd Sunday—perhaps no other Sunday of the Easter Season, or even the whole Church Year, is as loved by Christians as Good Shepherd Sunday. Jesus’s being our Good Shepherd seems to instantly appeal to the very depths of our beings. If His being our Good Shepherd so appeals to us, imagine how it appealed to Jesus’s original hearers! Their domestic sheep were a valuable export to Rome, and shepherding, tending sheep, was their most-common occupation. Yet, even though most of us have never seen “in action” the kind of shepherd to which Jesus likens Himself, statues, stained‑glass windows, and other images of Jesus as our Good Shepherd easily come to our minds: rescuing us from rocky crags, carrying us on broad shoulders, leading us beside still waters, pasturing us in green valleys, and petting our warm and fuzzy wool. Yet, for all the warm fuzzies of which we might think, Jesus’s emphasis seems to be elsewhere in today’s Gospel Reading from St. John’s divinely‑inspired account. There, no less than five times, Jesus makes reference to His laying down His life for the sheep. And, whether against an enemy like a wolf with claws and fangs, or whether against an enemy like Roman soldiers with whips and a cross, laying down His life is hardly warm or fuzzy. Nevertheless, the theme for this sermon today is “The Good Shepherd and His Life”.
We develop that theme of “The Good Shepherd and His Life” drawing on today’s Gospel Reading from the tenth chapter of St. John’s account, but today’s Gospel Reading is just one part of that tenth chapter, most of which is devoted to Jesus’s teaching about Himself as the Good Shepherd, and the Gospel Reading fits into a broader context of St. John’s account. The ninth chapter of St. John’s account tells how Jesus earlier had healed a man born blind and how the Pharisees investigated the matter, excommunicated the man, and objected to Jesus’s calling them blind. Next, the tenth chapter begins with Jesus’s using the figure of speech of a shepherd in contrast to both a thief and a stranger, but the Pharisees did not understand what He was saying to them, so Jesus identified Himself as the door of the sheep. Then comes today’s Gospel Reading, in which Jesus elaborates on Himself as the door of the sheep by identifying Himself as the Good Shepherd. Jesus says that, when faced with the wolf, the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep, in contrast to the hired hand, who leaves the sheep and flees because he does not own the sheep and cares nothing for the sheep. Jesus not only makes clear that a true shepherd is ready to give his life, but Jesus also proclaims that He is a shepherd in a sense no one else ever can be, for He will in fact die, and He will die willingly and for His own. After today’s Gospel Reading, St. John tells both how Jesus’s words divided the Jews and how, when they asked Jesus to tell them plainly if He was the Christ, Jesus continued to speak about His sheep.
Are you and I sheep? In any other context, we might want to say we are not sheep. The world describes as “sheep” people who do the same thing as everyone else without thinking about what they are doing, people who would rather follow than make an independent decision, people who are timid, defenseless simpletons readily preyed upon. We hardly want to be those kinds of “sheep”. Yet, when it comes to today’s Gospel Reading, we should want to be the kind of sheep for which Jesus lays down His life. But, in this context, the kind of sheep for which Jesus lays down His life are the kind of sheep who stray, end up lost, and cry out to God because of their sins—sins for which they deserve death now and for eternity.
So, here we are. Most of us have cried out to God and are crying out to God because of our sins. We are sorry for them, we trust God to forgive them, and we want to do better. St. Peter in writing to the “elect exiles of the Dispersion” tells them they “were straying like sheep, but now have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of [their] souls”. Not surprisingly he makes that reference to straying sheep from Isaiah chapter 53 right after writing that his recipients were healed by Jesus’s wounds, a paraphrase of the immediately-preceding line of Isaiah 53. St. Peter’s recipients had, like us, turned, every one, to his own way, but the Lord laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all.
“For the sheep the Lamb has bled,” we sang in the Opening Hymn, continuing “Sinless in the sinner’s stead. Alleluia!” Admittedly, the hymn is mixing metaphors (figures of speech) a bit. For, Jesus says He as the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep, though, elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel account, John the Baptizer—with reference to all the Old Testament sacrificial background but especially that of Passover—calls Jesus “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.” Yet, such a mixing of metaphors as found in today’s Opening Hymn is found already in the Old Testament, for that same 53rd chapter of Isaiah, which talks about God’s Suffering Servant bearing the sins of the sheep, also talks about that same Servant suffering silently, like both a lamb led to slaughter and a sheep before its shearers. Such mixing is not the only “problem” with the metaphor, however, for Jesus transcends it. If a Palestinian shepherd died in defense of his sheep, the shepherd’s death meant disaster for the sheep, but the death of Jesus our Good Shepherd means life for us sheep. God the Father gave Jesus the charge and authority both to lay down His life and to take it up again, and that is what Jesus did, He died and rose again for us. So, God the Father loves Jesus, God the Father knows Him, and Jesus in turn loves and knows us sheep, and we in faith love and know Him. Through that same faith, God graciously forgives our sins, whatever our sins might be. God graciously forgives our sins by means of the pástoral office.
You may know that the English word “pastor” is the Latin word for “shepherd”. So, in Latin, “Good Shepherd” is pastor bonus. I once gave my pastor at the time a beautiful icon, or picture, of Jesus Christ as our Good Shepherd, on which was printed that Latin title: pastor bonus. At one point several years later it became clear, to a number of people including me, that that man was no longer being so good to me. I as a man may, at some point, similarly have failed or fail you. All pastors, myself included, truly are sinful human beings, each with our own failings and fears, and we need to live in the same forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Jesus Christ as everyone else. However, in the end, the character and subjective faith of the man who serves as the “shepherd under Christ”, does not matter to the sheep, because Christ is our Good Shepherd. Even as the undershepherd pours water and speaks God’s Name in Holy Baptism, it is Christ Who Baptizes, Who provides “the streams of living water” that “flow” in the font, Whose “unction”, as the Hymn of the Day put it, “grace bestoweth”. Even as the undershepherd hears private confession and absolves the individual penitent, it is Christ Whose “rod and staff”, as the Hymn put it, “comfort still”. Even as the undershepherd distributes bread that is Christ’s body and wine that is Christ’s blood, it is Christ Who “feedeth” with “celestial food” and from Whose “pure chalice” flows forth the “transport of delight”. Individual men in the pastoral office can and will fail, but the Good Shepherd and His goodness, distributed in these ways, “faileth never”.
Through His Word in all its forms, the voice of the Good Shepherd calls His own sheep by name and leads them out, and the sheep follow Him, for they know and listen to His voice. So, there is one flock, one Shepherd. Jesus’s words about Himself as the Good Shepherd Who lays down His life divided the Jews originally hearing them, and His words similarly divide people hearing them today. There may not appear to be only one flock, one Shepherd, but appearances can be deceiving. The one, holy Christian and apostolic Church is holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd. For Christ’s sake, God receives as children all who believe the Gospel, for the true and only religion is following this Shepherd and His voice.
This Good Shepherd’s voice tells us a number of things. For example, He tells us that with Him as our Shepherd we “shall not be in want”, in other words, we shall “lack nothing”. Our eyes and other senses may see and feel experiences other than what our Good Shepherd tells us, but we judge not by what we feel but by what He says. We live every day with repentance and faith, doing what we have been commanded to do, even suffering with joy whatever is placed on us. We may still have to “walk through the valley of the shadow of death”, but we already have what we need most, eternal life. “The Good Shepherd and His Life” have made possible our eternal life. As He says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow [us] all the days of [our lives]; and [we] shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +