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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!)
Ah, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, one of people’s favorite Sundays of the Church Year, for its Readings describing the Lord, especially the Lord Jesus Christ, as our Shepherd, with the result that we lack nothing. As comforting as the pástoral imagery of the Sunday is, I will let you in on something: sometimes today’s Gospel Reading can be hard for people who are pastors to hear. For, Jesus contrasts the Good Shepherd, Who lays down His life for the sheep, with the hired hand, who saves his own life with the result that the sheep are snatched and scattered. In some sense, people who are pastors are hired hands, who do not own the sheep, who see threats to the sheep, and who at times leave the sheep. Yet, some people who are pastors may leave the sheep precisely because they in fact do care for the sheep (compare John 12:6). Of course, as we consider today’s Gospel Reading, which we this morning do under the theme “For the Sheep”, we will realize that people who are pastors are not the only ones who should feel at least a little accused by today’s Gospel Reading.
Largely unique to St. John’s Gospel account, today’s Gospel Reading comes in that account as Jesus is criticizing the Pharisees, one of the groups of the Jews of His day, who were supposed to be shepherding the people but who were not doing so faithfully and who refused to repent of their sin (John 9:40-41). So, Jesus began talking about shepherds and sheep, but they did not understand what Jesus was saying to them (John 10:1-6). Then, in today’s Gospel Reading, we hear Jesus say that He is the Good Shepherd, we hear the contrast between the Good Shepherd and the hireling, we hear Jesus again say that He is the Good Shepherd, and we hear Jesus demonstrate that saying’s truth by the inward fellowship He has in connection with His voluntarily laying down and taking up His life for the sheep, what He presents as the decisive mark of the Good Shepherd and what is new to the Old Testament’s description of the Lord as Shepherd (largely following Jeremias, TDNT 6:495-497).
A fellow former‑broadcast‑journalist‑turned‑member‑of‑the‑clergy by the name of Greg Kandra yesterday wrote online in his blog about his recent ten‑day trip to Jordan, where he observed both contemporary shepherds and their sheep. With a reference to the nursery rhyme about Little Bo Peep, Kandra described the sheep he saw in Jordan as having fleece as white not as snow but as white as mud. Therein not only people who are pastors but we all must see ourselves: as dirty sheep in need of cleansing by the Good Shepherd’s death and resurrection. Essentially five times in today’s Gospel Reading Jesus says the Good Shepherd lays down His life, and the first two of those five times He specifically says He lays down His life for the sheep. If not for both our sinful natures and our actual sins, the Good Shepherd would not have to lay down His life and take it back up again. As for those actual sins, some sheep might think not of their shepherds’ leaving them but of their driving their shepherds away. We might think of our own failures to know—that is to love and obey—our Good Shepherd, to listen to His voice (confer John 10:3-5, 27), and to fulfill the charges we have received from His and our Father. The Old Testament promises our judgment in imagery of the Lord as our Shepherd (Ezekiel 34:16), but that judgment only comes to us if we, like the Pharisees, do not repent and receive God’s forgiveness.
Henry Baker, the author of today’s appointed Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 709) was a clergyman in the Church of England during the 19th‑century. His friends reported hearing him on his deathbed whisper the third stanza of that hymn’s “exquisite rendering of the 23rd Psalm” (Pollack, 431, 478; Precht, 424-425; 538). That third stanza was also influenced by Isaiah 53 (v.6) and Luke 15 (vv.3-7); recall these words:
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, / But yet in love He sought me
And on His shoulder gently laid / And home rejoicing brought me.
The stanza’s “tender sadness, brightened by a soft, calm peace” is said to epitomize Baker’s poetical style (Pollack, 478), but the stanza also is a good example of repentance’s sorrow over sin and its faith in God’s forgiveness. When we—both pastors and people—so repent and believe, then God forgives us our sin. God forgives our sin of failing to know Him, our sin of failing to listen to His voice, our sin of failing to fulfill the charges we have received from Him. God forgives all our sin, whatever it might be. God forgives our sin for the sake of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, Who both laid down His life and took it up again for us sheep.
Jesus, Whose birth was announced to shepherds (Luke 2:8, 15, 18, 20) is the Good Shepherd: the ideal shepherd, the model of the perfect shepherd, the unique and true shepherd. Jesus is the Good Shepherd Whom the Father in their intimate fellowship charged to lay down His life for us sheep, as an offering for our guilt (Isaiah 53:10). Mixing metaphors a bit, the first Distribution Hymn we will sing will describe His offering for us this way (LSB 463:2-3):
For the sheep the Lamb has bled … / Sinless in the sinner’s stead …
Hail, the victim, undefiled … / God and sinners reconciled. ….
Jesus’s sacrifice shows us His great love for us (John 15:13), and Jesus’s resurrection, which we celebrate in this ongoing Easter season, shows that the Father accepted Jesus’s sacrifice on behalf of us and all people (confer John 11:52). As Greg Kandra put it in that same blog post, “with the fragrance of Easter flowers still in the air and alleluias on our lips, we cannot forget the hard dead wood of Calvary.” Jesus’s apostles certainly did not forget: we heard in the First Reading (Acts 4:1-12) how, after healing a lame beggar (Acts 3:1-10), they were preaching about Jesus and His resurrection, annoying the Jewish leaders but, by the power of the Holy Spirit, bringing people to believe in Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected. As they said, there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other Name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Forgiveness and so salvation graciously come only when Jesus knows us and we know Jesus by faith.
That faith with its result forgiveness and so salvation may have first come to us when, at the Baptismal Font, our Good Shepherd first called us by name—both by His Triune Name and by our own individual names (John 10:3). Holy Baptism in a sense is “still waters”: water and the Word that works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation. The “rod” of the Good Shepherd’s law and the “staff” of His Gospel lead us to privately confess to our pastors the sins that we know and feel in our hearts, for the sake of receiving individual Holy Absolution in that same Triune Name given for salvation. So baptized and absolved, we sheep also seek Holy Communion with Him, the most intimate fellowship, bread that is His Body and wine that is His Blood, given and shed for our forgiveness, life and salvation. This Altar and its Rail are the table that the Lord our Shepherd has prepared before us in the presence of our enemies (confer LSB 625:2). Our Good Shepherd Himself tends His flock, but He tends His flock through His Word and Sacraments, as they are preached and administered by His under‑shepherds (John 21:16; Ephesians 4:11; 1 Peter 5:2). His under‑shepherds are our pastors (you may know that our English word “pastor” comes from the Latin word for “shepherd”). Faithful under‑shepherds both pasture the sheep with the true teaching and guard the sheep against the wolves who teach otherwise (Solid Declaration, Rule and Norm, 14), if necessary laying down their own lives for the sheep, as we heard St. John in today’s Epistle Reading call for us all to do (1 John 3:16-24).
Even though through today’s Gospel Reading the Holy Spirit might accuse us, pastors and people, through the same Holy Gospel Reading He also comforts us. Good Shepherd Sunday with its Readings describing the Lord, especially the Lord Jesus Christ, as our Shepherd, are a favorite, and for good reasons. All that the Good Shepherd has done, He has done “For the Sheep”—for us! As we and the many other sheep have one Good Shepherd, so there is one flock of the holy Christian and apostolic Church scattered throughout the world, marked as a whole by the true Means of Grace, even if we cannot tell for sure whether or not any one individual might believe. We are sent out into the world and live among wolves (Matthew 10:16; Luke 10:3; Acts 20:28-29), but our Good Shepherd compassionately provides us with under‑shepherds (Matthew 9:36; Mark 6:34), and even when they fail us and we ourselves fail, He still provides us who repent and believe with forgiveness and other overflowing blessings. 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 + + +