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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!)
This past week after our Rotary Club meeting, I heard again some tales from Kilgore’s history, specifically about the slant-hole scandal. Long before fracking with its legal horizontal drilling, inspectors reportedly found, on land without oil underneath it, nearly 400 wells going across property lines into the Woodbine formation. No tall tale this one: they legitimately estimate that over several decades 100-million dollars worth of oil was stolen from its legal owners. After hearing the old-timers talk, I could not help but reflect on the slant‑hole scandal as I prepared to preach this morning on the Gospel Reading with its twice mentioning snatching sheep, for native or not, most of us in East Texas may relate better to stealing oil than to snatching sheep. Nevertheless, the theme for this sermon based on the Gospel Reading this Good Shepherd Sunday is “Giving and Snatching Sheep”.
The Gospel Reading tells about one Jewish Feast of the Dedication (we know it as the Festival of Lights or Hanukkah), when Jesus was walking in the Temple (almost like a teacher of Peripatetic or Stoic philosophy), in the colonnade of Solomon (where He probably was sheltered from any winter weather). Having been divided because of Jesus’s earlier teaching that He was the Good Shepherd and His miraculous opening of a blind man’s eyes (John 9:1-7; 10:19-21), the Jews encircled Jesus and commanded Him to tell them plainly whether or nor He was the Christ. Jesus’s answer pointed to His previous words and deeds, and Jesus continued to teach of Himself as the Good Shepherd, perhaps especially because shepherd readings may have been appointed for the Feast. Jesus told the Jews that they were not of His sheep, and Jesus said that His Father gave Him His sheep and no one will snatch them from His hand.
Jesus’s statements that no one will snatch His sheep from His hand and that no one is able to snatch them from the Father’s hand are sometimes wrongly taken by some of those in the Reformed tradition (such as many Baptists) to mean that a person once‑saved is always‑saved, that one cannot fall from grace. If a person who appeared to believe later does not believe, they might say that the person never really believed to begin with. Such a meaning is not consistent with what the Bible teaches overall: people can fall from grace, something others in the Reformed tradition (such as Methodists) acknowledge. Truly people can fall from grace, but not because the wolf snatching such sheep (John 10:12) is greater than the Father Who gave the sheep or the Son Who holds them in His hand. Rather, people fall from grace when they are pastured by a hireling, follow the voice of a stranger, or in some other way do not abide with the Good Shepherd but turn from Him and perish of their own accord (John 10:5, 7-12; 15:6).
By nature, you and I are like the Jews in the Gospel Reading, not of the Good Shepherd’s sheep. Even once the Father gives us to Jesus as sheep, our sinful nature still clings to us and would have us be pastured by a hireling, follow the voice of a stranger, or in some other way not abide with the Good Shepherd but turn from Him and perish of our own accord. Do you and I live with the realization that according to our sinful nature we very much deserve to and still could perish eternally? Our lack of control can keep us from persevering. We dare not rely on ourselves to remain Christians. God’s law always needs to teach, reprove, correct, and train us in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). God’s law serves His calling us to repent.
In today’s First Reading (Acts 20:17-35), St. Paul reminded the elders (or pastors) of the church in Ephesus how he had proclaimed the need for all to repent and believe. And, truly God wants all to repent and believe. Even in the Gospel Reading Jesus wanted the Jews to believe. He offered them and offers us grace to repent, believe, and have the resolve to live a godly life. So, we turn in sorrow from our sin—from our sinful natures, from our sin of relying on ourselves to remain Christians, or from whatever our sin might be. We repent, believe, and resolve to live a godly life. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, whatever it might be.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, but, oddly enough, Jesus identifies Himself as the Good Shepherd only in the Gospel Reading appointed for Good Shepherd Sunday in the second year of our three year series of readings (John 10:11-18), which was last year. Yet, today’s Gospel Reading is clearly linked with that Gospel Reading (compare John 10:27 with 10:14). The Jews want to know whether or not Jesus is the Christ perhaps precisely because He appropriated for Himself the figure of speech of the shepherd, which the Old Testament used for God (for example, Psalm 23; Jeremiah 23:1-8; Ezekiel 34:1-24). In today’s Gospel Reading, as earlier in St. John’s divinely-inspired account (John 1:1), Jesus claims to be a person distinct from the Father, but yet He also claims to be of one substance with the Father. And, the Jews understand what Jesus is claiming, for, immediately after today’s Gospel Reading, St. John goes on to tell us how the Jews wanted to stone Jesus for blasphemy, for being a man but making Himself God. They did not kill Jesus on that occasion, but later, for essentially the same reason, they had Him crucified. Jesus, God in human flesh, our Good Shepherd, laid down His life on the cross and took it up again from the grave for us, His sheep (John 10:11, 17-18). God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). When we believe in Him, then we do not perish, as we deserve on account of our sins, but instead we are forgiven of our sins and so given eternal life.
Native or not, most of us in East Texas probably know more about training young people to work in the oil field than about training young people to be shepherds. For example, did you know that there is an annual World Young Shepherd’s Competition? Competitors are judged on such things as lamb selection, sheep shearing, calculating vaccine dosage, and flock management. Not only is there a need for raising up literal shepherds, but there will always be at least some need to raise up spiritual shepherds. That the Lamb once slain but alive again is our Shepherd, as today’s Epistle Reading makes clear (Revelation 7:9-17) is true, but the Lamb our Good Shepherd pastures us with shepherds under Him, such as St. Paul and the elders (or pastors) from Ephesus in today’s First Reading (Acts 20:17-35), who care for the Church of God, which the Good Shepherd obtained with His own blood. As Jesus said in the Gospel Reading that He had previously told the Jews that He was the Christ and that the works He did in His Father’s Name bore witness about Him, so the Good Shepherd’s under‑shepherds preach His Gospel and administer His Sacraments. By the preaching of His Gospel He calls us to be His sheep, and by the administering of His Sacraments—Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion—He keeps us with Him forever.
Though our sinful natures that still cling to us tempt us to rely on ourselves to be Christians, our redeemed natures draw security from the ways God deals with us in preaching, Baptism, Absolution, and Communion. In these ways we hear Him, He knows us, we follow Him, and He gives us eternal life. In these ways God protects us against ourselves and assures us that we are saved. Even as we continue to sin, we do not despair but instead repent and believe. We will never perish, and no one will snatch us sheep out of our Good Shepherd’s hand. His Father, Who has given us sheep to Him, is greater than all who would snatch us sheep out of His hand.
Here in East Texas, native and non-natives alike can all understand “Giving and Snatching Sheep”. According to our sinful nature we are not too confident of our salvation, but according to our redeemed nature we do not despair. Sinful and redeemed, we live every day with sorrow over our sin and trust that God forgives that sin for Jesus’s sake. We live every day that way, until, in the words of our Epistle Reading (Revelation 7:9-17), the Lamb in the midst of the throne, our Shepherd, guides us to where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
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 + + +