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Sermon for Misericordias Domini
Ezekiel 34:11-16 + 1 Peter 2:21-25 + John 10:11-16
What an image God paints for us of Himself in the three Lessons today. God, the Shepherd. God, the Shepherd, who knows His sheep, who cares for His sheep. God, the Shepherd, who sees His sheep in danger—wandering, scattered, hurt and lost. And what God reveals to us today in His Word is that He is a God who doesn’t sit back and do nothing. He is a God who goes out looking.
I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day.
What is the cloudy and dark day? How were the sheep scattered? Who are the sheep?
The sheep, first, are Israel. Once brought into God’s flock through Abraham and the covenant of circumcision and the covenant of the Law on Mt. Sinai, the sheep of Israel were scattered on many cloudy and dark days, in a few different ways. At times, they themselves wandered away from God. They broke His commandments and served other gods and didn’t trust in the Lord, but instead, trusted in themselves, and they were lost. At other times, it was the very shepherds of Israel, their teachers and their priests and their leaders, who abused them and abandoned them and led them astray from the true God. And at other times, the world and the surrounding nations abused and mistreated God’s sheep, from Egypt to Assyria to Babylonia, where the people of Israel were still in captivity as Ezekiel wrote the words of the Old Testament reading.
But the sheep are not only Israel. The sheep are also Christians, once brought into God’s flock through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. At times they wander away from Christ and His Word; they wander again after the lusts of the flesh, in rebellion against God, in apathy toward His Word; they wander, seeking friendship with the world, seeking careers and relationships and success. At times it’s the leaders—the pastors and priests—who abuse the sheep with false doctrine or with a scandalous life; or they abandon the sheep when the wolf comes in order to save their own necks. Jesus calls them “hirelings.” And at other times, it’s the world, family, friends, schools, governments, that abuse God’s sheep and hurt them and treat them unfairly. And they scatter the sheep.
Where is God in all this? Why doesn’t He do something? He does. He doesn’t snap His fingers and make it all go away. It doesn’t work that way. He does what He has to do to help His sheep. He goes out looking.
And not just looking; not like looking through a telescope or a pair of binoculars. He steps out into the fields and valleys and forests and mountains; He enters our race. He sent His Son to be born among the lost. I am the good Shepherd, Jesus says. He knows the sheep, that they are prone to wander, so He goes out looking. He faced the wolf and stared him down. He gave His life for the sheep. Every moment of His life, every word, every deed, every breath, every drop of blood—He spent it all on His sheep, to obey God’s Law where the sheep had gone astray, to suffer for their sins and to bear the wrath of God in their place. So every time you wonder, why doesn’t God do something about how His sheep wander, how His sheep are scattered and mistreated in this world—you remember. He did. He came. He suffered and died, the innocent Shepherd for the wandering sheep, the Righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
And He promises, I will bring them! I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries. Of course, He couldn’t do that if He were still dead. There’s a reason why we read the Gospel of the good Shepherd during the Easter season. A dead Shepherd, even one who gave His life for the sheep, would still be useless. A dead Shepherd can’t go out looking for His sheep and gather them up in His arms and care for them and wash them clean in His blood. But a living Shepherd can and does.
I will bring them out from the peoples. God did that for the captive people of Judah. He did lead them back to the land of Israel after 70 years of captivity. And Jesus did that in His own ministry on earth, too, as He went out looking for sinners—tax collectors, thieves and prostitutes—and called them to repentance and faith in Him as their Shepherd.
But He does this for us, too. How does God go out looking for you to find you and to bring you into Israel’s fold? He sends His Word into your life and calls you, first, to repentance. He calls you to see your sin for what it is—to recognize that you have not feared, loved and trusted in Him as God, and that you have not loved your neighbor as yourself. And once He causes you to see that, He calls you to turn from it and live. Live, by dying with Christ on the cross. How do you do that? Trust in Him who came looking for you; trust in Him who gave His life for you on the cross. Trust that, as Peter says, He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness— by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one should boast.”
Now what does Jesus promise to do for His sheep that He brings out from the peoples into His own flock? I will feed them in good pasture. Now, that “good pasture” includes heaven itself. And all who persevere in faith in Christ have that best pasture of all to look forward to. But there is good pasture, green pasture and quiet waters for you even in this messed up world. What does the Psalm say? The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. These very words of Jesus in our Gospel are the green grass that feeds our souls. Here is mercy and grace and forgiveness of sins. Here in God’s house, surrounded by God’s Word.
Here you find healing and rest—healing and rest that will sustain your faith and follow you throughout the week until you come back again next week for more. Here you have found a decent hospital. That’s all. Remember that. This is the hospital where the Shepherd brings His sheep that were lost to tend to them and care for them, to bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick, as He said in the Old Testament reading. This is not the place where God pats people on the back and tells you how good you are. He warns those who see themselves as strong and “good.” But I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment, says the Lord. No, the Church is a hospital that tends to people who have wandered and been hurt and broken by sin—by their own sin and by the sin of others. Here is the pasture you truly need: Forgiveness of sins. A gracious Father. The quiet waters of Baptism into God’s house. The bread and wine that revive us again with the body and blood of our good Shepherd. Our God has gone looking for you and has found you and brought you here, where Jesus is among us, What do you have to fear?
In the midst of this dreary world that is dead and brown and dried up like the desert without rain, faith in Christ shows you, at the same time, a world in which everything around you is green. Christ, the Good Shepherd, the risen and living Shepherd, is here. So what can be lacking to you? What shall you want? I shall not be in want, as the Psalm says. For You are with me, Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. Notice, the Psalm doesn’t say, “this world comforts me.” It doesn’t say, “my wonderful family comforts me,” or “my happy, problem-free life comforts me.” No, that doesn’t comfort me. Even if I have a wonderful family and a relatively problem-free life at the moment, that wouldn’t comfort me. Because my family doesn’t stand between me and the devil; my health doesn’t protect me from God’s righteous anger against sin. My money doesn’t shield me from death. But Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. The fact that Jesus is your Shepherd, and that He knows you. He knows you—wanderer that you are—and still wants you. He knows you and has committed His life to guarding you and shielding you and feeding you. And He has promised to walk with you through this valley of the shadow of death, where you needn’t fear, not because there’s nothing to fear, but because He is with you.
Remember, He spoke of you in our Gospel. Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. He was looking ahead, looking across the world, seeing you wandering, seeing you dying in sin and pain. All along, He knew you and planned how He would go out looking for you, and find you, and bring you into His flock, and keep you here through a living faith sustained by His Word and Sacraments. Truly we have a God who goes out looking. That is our peace and comfort and salvation. Amen.
