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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!)
Are you a sheep? In popular culture’s slang, being a sheep is a bad thing. Seemingly across the political spectrum, people who are regarded as sheep, sometimes called “sheeple”, are thought to be mindlessly timid or weak, and so easily swayed or led, for the worse. Some say people should be lion-like leaders and not sheep-like followers. Such is hardly the view of sheep that we find in today’s Gospel Reading, however, where the wolf is a threat and the only ones who benefit from Jesus’s being the Good Shepherd are the sheep. So, I ask you again: are you a sheep?
Of course, even in the Bible people’s being likened to sheep is not exactly positive. For, rather than being described as on our own following the Lord, we all are described as going astray, every one turning to his or her own way (Isaiah 53:6; confer 1 Peter 2:25). No doubt each of us can think of the ways we depart from the Lord’s way, His relatively simple way laid out by His Ten Commandments. And, to make matters worse, bad shepherds—such as the “hired hand” mentioned in today’s Gospel Reading—might lead some further astray (Jeremiah 50:6) or let them be driven away by lions, as mentioned by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 50:17), or snatched and scattered by wolves, as we heard Jesus mention in the Gospel Reading. Again, no doubt each of us can think of how we might actively seek out bad shepherds or otherwise let ourselves be influenced by them through what we read, listen to, or watch.
The result of our going astray, turning to our own way, being led astray, driven away, and snatched and scattered, is that we are strayed and lost. Left to ourselves, we would be eternally lost, separated out from one another on the basis of our works, as a shepherd separates sheep from goats, and ordered into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and angels (Matthew 25:31‑46). But, the Lord seeks us out to rescue us (Ezekiel 34:12, 22). The Lord calls us to turn away from our own ways and to turn to His way; in other words, He calls us to repent of our sin, and, when we repent of our sin, then He forgives our sin, all our sin, whatever our sin might be, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. The Lord seeks the lost, brings back the strayed, binds up the injured, and strengthens the weak (Ezekiel 34:16). And, as in a parable Jesus told, a man with one-hundred sheep goes after even one that is lost until he finds it, and, when he has found it, rejoices with his friends and neighbors over finding the one sheep that was lost, so there is joy in heaven before the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:3-7), for God does not will that even the smallest child should perish (Matthew 18:12-14).
Rather, the Lord has compassion on those who are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36; Mark 6:34). The occasion of Jesus’s statements in the Gospel Reading and their Biblical context contrast the people’s bad shepherds to Him as the Good Shepherd, but Jesus is more than just a better shepherd than they were, Jesus is the Good Shepherd in ways that they could never be shepherds: as charged to do by His Father, Jesus, of His own accord, lays down His life for the sheep and takes it back up again. Jesus knows His own sheep, and His sheep know Him, just as the Father knows Jesus, and Jesus knows the Father—such knowing is an active personal relationship of the closest kind. Where we fail to obey, Jesus obeyed, and God the Father’s love for Jesus radiates out through Jesus to us, as Jesus laid down His life for us on the cross and as He rose from the grave, making clear that the Father had accepted Jesus’s sacrifice on our behalf. As the Epistle Reading said, by this we know love, that He laid down His life for us (1 John 3:16-24).
Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies after the time of David that the Lord would set up one Shepherd, like David, Who would feed His one flock and be their Shepherd (Ezekiel 34:23; confer Ezekiel 37:24). Though this one Shepherd, Who was the Lord and yet was distinct from the Lord, would be struck and the sheep scattered for a time (Zechariah 13:7; confer Matthew 26:31 and Mark 14:27; see also Beckwith, CLD III:187-188), His atoning death makes us members of His one flock of the Church, holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd (Smalcald Articles III:xii:2, with reference to John 10:3), identified by the pure preaching of the Gospel and the right administration of the Sacraments. In His one flock of the Church, the Good Shepherd is known to His flock by His Word read and preached (Schlueter, CPR 28:2, 36), and we listen to His voice and follow Him (John 10:27). In His one flock of the Church, the Good Shepherd in Holy Baptism calls us by our own names and by His Triune Name (John 10:3), which, as we heard in the First Reading, alone saves (Acts 4:1-12). In His one flock of the Church, the Good Shepherd through those whom He sends in individual Holy Absolution forgives the sins of those who privately confess and withholds forgiveness from the unrepentant (John 20:21-23). And, in His one flock of the Church, the Good Shepherd in the Sacrament of the Altar gives us to eat bread that is His Body and give us to drink wine that is His Blood, and so He forgives our sins and also gives us life and salvation. (Here we also have that closest kind of relationship not only with Him but also with all who have gone before us and who will come after us in the faith, providing us the greatest of comfort when we miss our loved ones.) In short, in His one flock of the Church, our compassionate Good Shepherd teaches and feeds us (confer Mark 6:32-44), through His under-shepherds, whom the Holy Spirit makes overseers, to act as shepherds for the Church of God, Which Jesus obtained with His own blood (John 21:15-17; Acts 20:28-29).
By that blood, the God of peace, Who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the sheep, equips us with everything good that we may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ (Hebrews 13:20). As Jesus in the Gospel Reading confronted the bad shepherds, so did His apostles transformed by Pentecost, as we heard in the First Reading, and so do we, as we are given opportunities, confess in Jesus the resurrection of the dead (Genter, CPR 25:2, 33; Schlueter, CPR 28:2, 36). People may be no more receptive to our confession of that resurrection of the dead, than people were to the apostles’ proclamation or to Jesus’s teaching before that. For, as much as the Good Shepherd wants all in His one flock of the Church, division results from His words (John 10:19). Despite what some say, all people will not be converted and receive the Gospel; but, God receives as sheep all who trust in Him (Luther, 1533 or 1534 sermon on John 10:12-16, cited by Plass [#3836], 1206).
Are you such a sheep, who turns from your own sinful way and trusts in the Lord as your Good Shepherd? If so, then His laying down His life and taking it up again is for you! Your sins are forgiven, and you have eternal life and salvation. Rely on Him to tend His flock like a Shepherd, to gather the lambs in His arms, to carry them in His bosom, and to gently lead those that are with young (Isaiah 40:11). Rest assured that, though afflictions will come, goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life, and you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23:6).
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 + + +