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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. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, alleluia.)
Many of us probably grew up at least hearing, if not also singing along to, the popular song “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?”; the song was originally from the 19-33 Walt Disney cartoon Three Little Pigs, but also featured in its subsequent sequels and various versions that followed. You may recall that the flute-playing and fiddling pigs, who were not afraid of “the big bad wolf” and who lived in houses of built of hay and twigs, respectively, made fun of the practical pig, who took “the big bad wolf” as a serious threat and so built his house out of bricks. (Wikipedia; YouTube.) We might say that there is a “big bad wolf” in today’s Gospel Reading, too, though in the Gospel Reading not pigs but sheep are at risk of being snatched and scattered. On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we sheep benefit from considering today’s Gospel Reading and asking the question, “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” (compare sermons.com).
Today’s Gospel Reading is largely unique to St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, but similar teaching about the threat of literal and figurative wolves can be found both in the Old Testament and elsewhere in the New Testament. For example, through Jeremiah God told the people of Jerusalem that an apparently literal wolf from the desert would devastate them (Jeremiah 5:6), and through Ezekiel God called Israel’s princes figurative “wolves tearing the prey” (Ezekiel 22:27). Similarly, our Lord Jesus called false prophets figurative “ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15), and St. Paul told the pastors from Ephesus that after his departure figurative “fierce wolves” would come in among them, not sparing the flock (Acts 20:29).
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus does not say precisely who the “big bad wolf” is, as He emphasizes the serious nature of the threat, the un‑faithfulness of the hired-hand, and the faithfulness of the Good Shepherd; still, we might think of the serious threat posed to the flock that is the community of God’s people in the Church by the enemy of God (Bornkamm, TDNT 4:311). Snatching, in particular, elsewhere is attributed to the evil one, the devil (Matthew 13:19), who also is not with Jesus but against Jesus and does not gather with Jesus but scatters such as the sheep (Matthew 12:30; Luke 11:23). To be sure, the devil in part works through unfaithful teachers, and so with the Lutheran Confessions we also favorably quote the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s writing that, “Faithful shepherds must both pasture or feed the lambs and guard against wolves” (Formula of Concord Solid Declaration Introduction paragraph 14, Tappert, 506, citing Luther, ad loc 1 Peter 5:2 [1523]: Weimar Edition 12:389; American Edition 30:135; Plass #3351).
Yet, when faithful shepherds not only present the true and wholesome teaching correctly but also accuse the adversaries who teach otherwise, people are not always willing to hear it. Are you? Are you sufficiently afraid of “the big bad wolf”? Can you recognize false teachers? Do you truly know the Good Shepherd? Do you want to be taught? Do you attend to teaching, whether Sunday Adult Bible Class, Midweek Bible Study, or our Special Congregational Studies? If we all do not sin in those ways, then we all sin in other ways, for we all are sinful by nature. All we like sheep have gone astray, God says through Isaiah; we have turned—every one—to his or her own way (Isaiah 53:6). Snatched or scattered, on our own we will be lost and die in this world and be tormented for eternity, as our sins deserve. But, the Lord Jesus came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). He does not want even one to perish. He goes after even one lost sheep until He finds it, and, when He has found it, He lays it on His shoulders rejoicing, and He calls others to rejoice with Him over His finding even one sheep that was lost but now repents (Luke 15:4-7; Matthew 18:12-14).
Long prophesied (for example, Ezekiel 34:23; 37:24), Jesus is the Good Shepherd. All of what the Old and New Testaments say about literal and figurative shepherds can help us understand Jesus’s identity as the Good Shepherd, but Jesus as the Good Shepherd also surpasses any and all other shepherds. Jesus is the Good Shepherd uniquely. In contrast to the hired-hand, Jesus as the Good Shepherd cares about the sheep and stays with the sheep and protects the sheep, even at the cost of His own life. And, true God in human flesh, Jesus as the Good Shepherd does something that no other shepherd could ever do: He not only of His own accord laid-down His life on the cross, but He also took‑up His life again as before. In today’s Epistle Reading, St. John said that Jesus’s laying down His life for us makes us know love (1 Peter 3:16-24), and, in today’s First Reading, Peter and John were proclaiming Jesus’s resurrection and that there is salvation in no one else (Acts 4:1-12). Jesus laid down His life for the sheep, for every last one of them, including you and me. Jesus died as our substitute, the death that we deserved, in our place. In a bit of a mixed metaphor, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world is the Good Shepherd (Revelation 7:17). In the words of today’s Psalm, we each individually can say the Lord is my Shepherd (Psalm 23; antiphon: v.6; Elmore, CPR 34:2, p.41). When, led by the Holy Spirit, we each are sorry for our sin and trust God the Father to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us. God forgives us through His Means of Grace, His Word and Sacraments.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus as the Good Shepherd describes His sheep as hearing His voice. We sheep hear our Good Shepherd’s voice as His Word is read and preached to groups such as this group. We sheep also hear our Good Shepherd’s voice as His Gospel is applied to us as individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with a pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine in the Holy Supper. Especially in the Holy Supper, anticipated by Jesus’s compassionate and miraculous feeding of thousands who were like sheep without a shepherd (for example, Mark 6:32-44), Jesus as the Good Shepherd prepares a table before us, giving us His Body with bread and His Blood with wine and so also the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
St. Paul equates the flock to the Church of God (Acts 20:28), and with our Lutheran Confessions we similarly say that the Church is holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd (Smalcald Articles III:xii:2). As under-shepherds of the one Good Shepherd, pastors are charged by the Lord and given His authority to preach the Gospel and hand out the Sacraments (Augsburg Confession V:1), feeding His lambs and tending His sheep (John 21:15‑17), not only forgiving sin but also, when necessary, retaining sins in excommunication (Augsburg Confession XXVIII:5-6). Through pastors, God equips the saints, does the work of ministry, and builds up the body of Christ, so that we attain the unity of the faith and are not tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine (Ephesians 4:11-14). Gathered into the one flock of the universal Church by Jesus as the Good Shepherd, we are protected from snatching and scattering (confer Bornkamm, TDNT 4:311). When you attend to faithful teaching of Holy Scripture, then you can and should judge other teaching on the basis of Holy Scripture, knowing how to distinguish the voice of Jesus as the Good Shepherd from the voice of anyone else, including hired‑hands (Pieper, I:351).
“Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” Ultimately you and I do not need to be afraid of “the big bad wolf”—not because we, like the third pig, dwell in a house of bricks, but because God’s goodness and mercy for the sake of Jesus Christ follow us all the days of our lives, so that we dwell forever in the house of the Lord.
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.
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