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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!)
Even though most of us have probably never in our lives seen a shepherd, the Lord Jesus’s being our Good Shepherd seems to appeal to the very depths of our souls (Morris, ad loc John 10:11, p.453). In today’s Gospel Reading for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, which is affectionately known as “Good Shepherd Sunday”, the Divinely-inspired evangelist St. John uniquely records the Lord Jesus’s for the first time identifying Himself as the Good Shepherd and then describing His laying down His life for the sheep; His knowing His own and their knowing Him; and His taking up His life again. Considering today’s Gospel Reading, this morning we direct our thoughts to the theme “Laying down and taking up lives”.
In today’s Epistle Reading (1 John 3:16-24), that same St. John writes, by that same Divine inspiration, both that we know love by Jesus’s laying down His life for us and that we ourselves are indebted to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ. As an illustration of that debt, St. John describes someone who has the world’s goods, sees a brother or sister in need, but closes his or her heart against the brother or sister, and then St. John asks how God’s love abides in that person. St. John encourages us to love not in word or talk but in deed and truth.
How do you and I do with laying down our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ? Are we blessed with an abundance of the world’s goods, see brothers or sisters in need, and close our hearts against the brother or sister? If so, how does God’s love abide in us? Do we love not in word or talk but in deed and truth? Surely at times we wrongly are selfishly more concerned with preserving our own lives than with helping a brother or sister in need. Our sinful nature leads us to commit countless numbers of all sorts of sins: thinking, saying, and doing things that we should not and not thinking, saying, and doing things that we should, any one of which sins merits temporal and eternal death. Our Good Shepherd perfectly carried out the charge that He had received from His Father, but we carry out the charge that we have received from God the Father im-perfectly, if at all. In fact, by nature we do not even know the Father (John 17:25).
When we think of the Lord as our Shepherd, we probably think mostly of the comforting images of Psalm 23, as in today’s Introit (Psalm 23; antiphon: John 10:14): the lack of need, the green pastures, and the still waters. And, to a certain extent, thinking of such comforting images is fine. But, as long as we remain both saint and sinner in this world, we dare not forget that the Lord as our Shepherd also judges between His sheep and destroys the fat and the strong, those who abuse the weak and scatter them abroad (Ezekiel 34:16-17, 21-22; confer Matthew 25:31-33). So, the Lord Himself seeks out and rescues us who are lost, bringing us back, binding us up, and strengthening us (Ezekiel 34:11-12, 17, 22; confer Luke 19:10), with much joy in heaven over even one sinner who as a result repents (Luke 15:3-7), for the Lord does not desire that even one person should perish (Matthew 18:12-14). And, the Lord Who is our God sets up over us one Shepherd, like and descended from the shepherd-boy-turned-king David, and that one Shepherd is prince among us and feeds us (Ezekiel 34:23-24).
In today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord Jesus describes a hired hand, who neither owns the sheep nor cares about them, and who sees the wolf coming and flees, leaving the sheep for the wolf to snatch and scatter. And, to some extent, Jesus contrasts such a hired hand with Himself as our Good Shepherd. The Lord Jesus, our Good Shepherd, knows His own in the greatest of love (John 15:13), and He willingly lays down His life for us, on our behalf, as an atoning sacrifice for our sin. With His death on the cross, Jesus was not a victim of circumstances that went beyond His control; rather, He willed to die and did die, by not using the powers that were available to Him as God in human flesh (Pieper, II:77, 162 n.227, 285, 353). And, what is more, the Lord Jesus, our Good Shepherd, rose from the dead, taking His life back up again, as no other shepherd could ever do, and in the process arguably proving that He was Almighty God in human flesh (Pieper, II:289, citing Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VIII:25). Jesus had the authority by way of His Father’s charge to lay down and take up His life for us, and He remained the Father’s beloved Son even while bearing our despised sin. With Holy Spirit-worked faith, we recognize and receive His love for us, and in turn we know Him in love.
The Holy Spirit gathers us into the flock that is the Church, holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Good Shepherd (Smalcald Articles III:xii:2), in which Church the Holy Spirit daily and richly forgives all our sins and the sins of all who repent (Small Catechism II:6), through those under-shepherds of the Good Shepherd whom He calls and ordains, to feed and tend His lambs and sheep by preaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments (confer John 21:15-17). In Holy Baptism, the Good Shepherd Himself calls us each by name and leads us out (John 10:3). In Holy Absolution, the forgiveness from the pastor is as sure and certain as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself (Small Catechism V). And, in the Sacrament of the Altar, the Good Shepherd feeds us bread that is His Body given for us and gives us to drink wine that is His Blood shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Faithful under-shepherds not only so pasture the flock but they also guard against whatever threatens the flock by identifying those who teach other than the truth (Formula of Concord, Rule & Norm:14, citing Luther, ad loc 1 Peter 5:2 [1523], as in Plass, #3351, p.1053, and AE 30:135; confer also Acts 20:28-29).
Thus the sheep see whose the flock is, and so they follow their Good Shepherd. Jesus laid down His life for us, and we lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ, including giving of our God-given abundance of the world’s goods in order to help those in need, loving not in word or talk but in deed and truth. We lead others to the Church, where they hear the voice of their Good Shepherd and are made to be part of the one flock under the one Good Shepherd. They, like we, judge whether the teaching we hear is the teaching of the Good Shepherd. And, like the apostles in today’s First Reading (Acts 4:1-12), we are undeterred by wrongful threats from those with authority over us and boldly confess Jesus, the only Name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved. Like our Lord, we desire unity in the Church that bears His Name, but, as St. John tells in the verse that follows today’s Gospel Reading, division resulted because of Jesus’s words then, and so division results because of Jesus’s words also now.
This morning we have considered the Gospel Reading under the theme “Laying down and taking up lives”. Jesus laid down His life for us and took it back up again. We lay down our lives for one another. As we sang in the Introit, surely goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives, and, on the Last Day, when He takes up our lives again, 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 + + +