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Sermon for Misericordias Domini – 2nd Sunday after Easter
Ezekiel 34:11-16 + 1 Peter 2:21-25 + John 10:11-16
“I am the Good Shepherd,” says the Lord Jesus. There are lots and lots of pictures of Jesus with a shepherd’s staff, surrounded by sheep and by little lambs. What a tremendously comforting image for those who know and love Jesus! It pictures the peace and tranquility of the sheep under the care of the Good Shepherd. No matter what trials and afflictions you’re going through, no matter how wicked this old world becomes around you, it brings a sigh of relief to the Christian heart to come back to this Biblical truth and hear Jesus as He declares, “I am the Good Shepherd.”
In today’s First Lesson from Ezekiel, you heard God tell His people Israel ahead of time how He Himself would come as their divine Shepherd, and you heard God make several promises about His shepherding in those words: I will seek out My sheep and deliver them; I will gather them and bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in good pasture; I will bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick. That promise, that prophecy describes the office and work of Christ, the Good Shepherd, which He also discussed in today’s Gospel. But is it describing what Jesus did when He came? Or what He does now in this New Testament period? Or is it describing how He will shepherd us in heaven, when He comes again? The answer is, all three. Let’s consider the three times of the Good Shepherd’s shepherding.
When God came to earth in the Person of His Son, He came for a purpose. He came to seek and to save what was lost. He didn’t come to seek out all the good and decent people in the world, and it’s a good thing, because He wouldn’t have found any. No, He came to seek and to save sinners—the broken sheep, the sick sheep, lost and condemned sinners who couldn’t lift a finger to save themselves. Like a shepherd who goes out looking for lost sheep who have been scattered in a dark place. He came to seek and deliver them, to gather them, feed them, bind them up and strengthen them.
How did He do that shepherding when He came? The Gospels show us how Jesus went around preaching—preaching to all, to the prostitutes and to the priests—that they should repent of their sin and turn to God, for God had come to earth to deliver them, gather them, feed them and bind them up. How? By promising them forgiveness and eternal life.
First He preached it. Then He earned it. The Shepherd earned forgiveness for the wandering sheep. He says in the Gospel, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. Sin, death and the devil were like a wolf that threatened to pounce on sinners and devour them forever. But then came along the Good Shepherd who placed Himself between sinners and the wolf and allowed Himself to be killed in order to set the sinners free. That is the message of the cross, that Christ, the Shepherd, died for sin once for all, to cleanse your record from sin, to make you holy, to bring you to God. Because He willingly laid down His life, the righteous for the unrighteous, we rightly call this Shepherd ‘Good.’
But He also took up His life again, as He promised He would. That’s why we celebrate Jesus as our Shepherd so close to Easter. We do not come together on Sundays to honor the memory of a Savior who only died. A dead shepherd is of no use to anyone. No, we worship Him who died and rose again. We worship Him who lives and breathes and shepherds us still. Christ’s suffering, His sacrifice for sin is over and done and never needs to be made again, by Him or by anyone. But His office as shepherd—that continues for all eternity. As Jesus said in the Gospel, And 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.
“They will hear My voice,” He says. But how? Christ has ascended into heaven again. He isn’t among us in the same way He walked the earth before. That time is over. And yet He promises, “They will hear My voice.” He is still the Good Shepherd in this time in which we live, from the time of His ascension until His coming again. How is His voice heard? Through the ministry of Word and Sacrament.
St. Paul says in Ephesians 4, When Christ ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And gave gifts to men….He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. There is no other way in which people, in this time since Christ’s ascension, hear the voice of Christ. No one should dare say, “I have Christ as my shepherd, so I don’t need to go to church or to listen to the shepherds He provides”—the pastors, the ministers of the Word. There is no such thing as a stay-at-home Christian—that is, a Christian who willingly and regularly chooses to stay at home when he or she has the option to hear the pure Word of Christ and receive the Sacraments of Christ. Now, some are bound to their homes by illness or infirmity or inability to get to a place where the pure Word is preached. Some don’t know where the pure Word is preached. But many people want to consider themselves Christians who simply choose on a regular basis to stay away from the voice of Christ in Word and Sacrament. But believers in Christ don’t do that. Such people are not true Christians.
Christ the Good Shepherd speaks in this Gospel ministry, and His sheep hear His voice. He does through this Gospel the same things Ezekiel talked about the Shepherd doing. He seeks the lost sheep. He seeks sinners in every nation, tribe, language and people. He seeks them by putting His Gospel in the world, where and when it pleases Him, where and when He knows there are sheep to be found by it. The fact that you’re hearing the Gospel today means that the Shepherd sent it to you today.
He delivers. In Holy Baptism He delivered you from sin, death and the devil and made you His own. There He rescued you from the jaws of the wolf and forgave you all your sins.
He gathers His sheep into the pastures of Israel, into the Holy Church which is present wherever the Word of God is preached in truth and purity and the Sacraments are rightly used. In that Word He still sets Himself between you and the wolf. In this Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all sins, to me and all believers, as we say in the Catechism. He feeds His sheep with His own body and blood. And right here in the midst of the “hell” that surrounds us, He gives us heaven.
He also binds up the broken and strengthens what was sick. You know how wicked this old world has become. Your life has certainly been affected by it, too. You struggle daily with your own sin, and you mourn at the godlessness that pervades our culture, our country, and our world. Your brokenness, because of the sinful flesh that still clings to you, is never completely fixed and your sickness is never entirely cured in this life, during this time. But see! The Good Shepherd is still shepherding His flock. He began to cure you at your Baptism, and now He continues to tend to you. He continues to lead you and guide you, even as He continues to forgive you and strengthen you through Word and Sacrament. You are not alone in the midst of this struggle. As we say in the 23rd Psalm, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”
This office of Christ, this seeking, delivering, gathering, feeding, and binding up, will continue throughout this time of the New Testament, even while the world crumbles around us. And then the Shepherd will come at the end of time and usher in the final stage of His shepherding that lasts forever.
Just when it seems that Christ’s little flock on earth can’t possibly endure a moment longer, just when it seems that the wolf is about to devour them, then the Shepherd will come. He will seek His believers all at once, wherever they may be scattered throughout the world. Even those who already lie in their graves, He will seek. In a moment He will deliver us from this evil old world and destroy death and the devil forever. He will gather us into the perfect pastures of the New Jerusalem, the new heavens and the new earth, where no wolf can enter ever again. He will feed us with a banquet at His own table, and He will wipe away every tear from the eyes of those who believed in Him, whose faith was created and sustained until the end by His own Spirit, through His own Word and Sacraments. Then, at that time, the Shepherd and the sheep will truly resemble all those portraits of peace and tranquility. Then, at that time, the words of the Psalm will be truly fulfilled: You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever. Amen.
