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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!)
Today, the Fourth Sunday of Easter is also known as “Good Shepherd Sunday”, and so the appointed Psalm and all three Readings have “shepherd” connections. The day may draw its name from Jesus’s identifying Himself as the Good Shepherd earlier in St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account (John 10:11), but the relevant context and background for today’s Gospel Reading is not only the tenth chapter or even all of St. John’s Gospel account but also the whole of the New and Old Testaments, which widely use both the shepherd figure of speech and shepherding imagery, so familiar at least to the people at the time the works were written. A much‑loved passage from that rich background is where God through Isaiah promises to gather lambs in His arms (Isaiah 40:11), and, since the Bible sometimes uses the words “arms” and “hands” synonymously, that passage especially may be linked to today’s Gospel Reading, in which Jesus promises that no one either will or can snatch His sheep out of His or the Father’s hand. This morning we consider that Gospel Reading under the theme, “The Good Shepherd hangs onto His sheep”.
Some two months may have passed between Jesus’s identifying Himself as the Good Shepherd and the events of today’s Gospel Reading, but the Jewish leaders still seem to be stung from that implicit indictment of them as bad shepherds. As we heard, the Jewish leaders “gathered around” Jesus (or, perhaps better, “encircled” Him with hostile intent), pressing Jesus as to whether He was the long‑promised Christ, Who was sometimes described as a shepherd and with shepherding imagery (for example, Ezekiel 34:23). Jesus answered the Jewish leaders that they heard His words and saw His deeds but nevertheless did not believe that He was the Christ.
We may not be like the Jewish leaders in not believing that Jesus was and is the Christ, but nevertheless we may have doubts about our security in the hand of our Good Shepherd. We may hear His words and see His deeds but not understand them correctly. Or, we may take other things as “signs”—such as difficulties at work or school, the loss of members from our congregation, or a loved one’s or our own failing health—and from them we may draw the wrong conclusions, such as about God and His regard for us. Even if we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice, and He knows us, and we follow Him, and He gives us eternal life, we may still fear our perishing or our enemies’ snatching us out of His hand, as a wolf snatches sheep from a fold (John 10:12).
To be sure, by nature, we all like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his or her own way (Isaiah 53:6 confer Psalm 119:176). We may even have followed or otherwise been victims of bad shepherds, who fed themselves and not the sheep; who did not strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strayed, or seek the lost; and who ruled the sheep with force and harshness and so scattered them, since they were not real shepherds, leaving the sheep to wander, to be lost, and ultimately to perish (Ezekiel 34:1-6).
But Jesus, the Son of Man, came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). His Father in heaven wills that none perish (Matthew 18:12-14). A human shepherd seeks even one of one hundred sheep until he finds it and lays it on his shoulders rejoicing with his friends and neighbors, but there is more joy in heaven not over ninety‑nine people who wrongly think they are righteous and do not need to repent but over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:3-7), as God calls us all to do.
When, enabled by God, we repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our doubting the Good Shepherd’s hanging onto His sheep; God forgives our sinful nature and all our sins, whatever our sins might be. God forgives us for the sake of our Good Shepherd, Who, of His own accord, out of God’s great love for the world, on the cross laid down His life for the sheep and then from the grave took His life back up again, with the charge and authority to do so from His Father (John 10:11, 15, 17-18). In the vision of the Second Reading (Revelation 7:9-17), our Shepherd is the Lamb in the midst of the throne, and salvation belongs to (or, “is from”) Him and God the Father. Not only Jesus and the Father but also the Holy Spirit are all distinct Blessed Persons of the one substance that is the Holy Trinity. Together they work to create, redeem, and sanctify us so that we can live together with them for all eternity. They do that work together through the ministry of the means of grace that they have appointed.
In the First Reading (Acts 20:17-35), we heard St. Paul give a warning of fierce wolves to the “elders” of the church in Ephesus, not lay but ordained men, pastors, who are sometimes called “under‑shepherds” of the Good Shepherd, who were to shepherd the flock of which the Holy Spirit had made them overseers (or “bishops”), portions of the one Church, Who Jesus obtained with His own blood. Such under‑shepherds of the Good Shepherd first call us by name (John 10:3) and put His Name upon us in Holy Baptism (Matthew 28:19), a spring of living water, wherein we are given robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. Those sent by Jesus as He was sent in Holy Absolution individually forgive the sins privately confessed to them for the sake of that absolution (John 20:22-23). And, in Holy Communion, those who hear the Good Shepherd’s voice eat with Him and He with them (Revelation 3:20): bread that is His Body and wine that is His Blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of sins, and so also for life and salvation. As the Triune God Himself ministers to us in these ways, we are sure that we are the Good Shepherd’s sheep, whom He has both chosen from eternity and hangs onto unto eternal life.
As sheep whom the Good Shepherd hangs onto unto eternal life, we hear His words and see His deeds and understand them correctly. We do not take other things as signs and from them draw the wrong conclusions, such as about God and His regard for us. For, we are not saved from all earthly disasters, but, in spite of all earthly disasters, we are saved eternally (Morris, ad loc John 10:28, p.463). Mindful of this Mother’s Day, we are thankful for our mothers but moreso for God’s comforting us in our troubles like a mother (Isaiah 66:13). We do not fear our perishing or our enemies snatching us out of God’s hand, as a wolf snatches sheep from a fold, for in the Gospel Reading Jesus rules out even the possibility of our perishing because there is nothing stronger than the God Who hangs onto us (confer Isaiah 43:13). As we with daily repentance and faith remain in Him (John 15:6), we are not troubled by anything, but we rejoice that we are so securely in His fold.
As we have considered the Gospel reading this morning, we have realized that “The Good Shepherd hangs onto His sheep”. By nature we may be sheep who go astray, but our Good Shepherd seeks us out, and, if we do not reject Him, He brings us into His fold, the Church. He gathers us into His arms that were stretched out on the cross for us, and no one is able to snatch us from His nail‑scarred hands. Nothing—not tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, nor sword; neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else—is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Good Shepherd and our Lord (Romans 8:35, 38-39).
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 + + +