Fourth Sunday of Easter - Good Shepherd Sunday
May 11, 2014- Pastor Adam Moline
Acts
2:42-47, 1 Peter 2:19-25, John 10:1-10
Hymns
– LSB 710, 709, 711 Communion – LSB 740,
480
Christ is
risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Amen. Our text for today is from
the psalm we prayed together earlier, especially these words, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Thus far our text for today.
Dear friends in
Christ. We speak these words so often. At funerals.
In times of struggle, or if we ever want to prove that we are able to
memorize a bible passage. “The Lord is
my shepherd.” And it is good for us to
have these words memorized, because they are the truth. Jesus himself says, “I am the Good Shepherd,
who lays down his life for the sheep.”
And so these words give us great comfort is all sorts of times of
sorrow, because these words are a confession of what we believe: namely that Jesus is my Lord who has redeemed
me by his suffering on the cross.
We need the
promises of the Good Shepherd Jesus. We
cannot live on our own, we can only die.
We can’t trust our own decisions as sinful people. We sinful sheep cannot make ourselves lie
down in green pastures. We can’t find
our own quiet waters. We cannot restore
our own souls. We need a shepherd to do
all those things for us, to care for us.
And the reason is,
ultimately we are incapable. Oh, yes, I
know we can scrounge out a measly existence for our time here on earth. But we never really feel safe or secure here
do we? We are always just one accident
away from our life falling apart. We’re
always just a few dollars away from bankruptcy, or a few words from a fight
with family that won’t be solved for 20 years.
We sinful sheep wander
about, trying to find what will finally make us happy in this world, and we
fail. We try and try to keep a grip on
all the events and people of our life, and they fall apart, far beyond our
control. We take pill after pill, eat
right, exercise, and yet still we ever grow day by day closer to our own
death. If we sheep are left to our own
devices, we will not survive to make it to eternity, but will perish is the
harshness of this world.
But we are not
just loose sheep, we are sheep of a flock, sheep of our shepherd’s hand. And our shepherd is the Good Shepherd, Jesus
Christ. It is he who leads us, restores
us, and guides us through the terrors of this world, at times even carrying us
upon his own shoulders. We hear the
voice of our shepherd and we follow him.
He knows us each by name, for it is his name that is upon us in our
baptism.
And he leads, and
we follow him. When we wander he calls
us back with his own voice. And we
follow him no matter where he goes. And
that’s the thing about our Shepherd Jesus.
He gives up his life for the sheep, and we follow him through it. He goes to the cross, and as baptized people,
we go to the cross with him, following our good shepherd. He bleeds and die, leading us the whole way,
suffering in our world as he suffered on the cross. He leads us to the tomb, mourning as we stand
at the graves of our loved ones, and as we ourselves await our tomb.
And Jesus leads
the whole way – by his cross, and death – through the valley of the shadow of
death that we live in. And he leads us
through death, into life. We hear his
word, gently calling us, and leading us into life everlasting. He leads us to the heavenly pasture land that
our psalm speaks of. It is because of
the Shepherd Jesus that we are beside still waters. It is through the suffering of Shepherd Jesus
that our souls are restored. And it is
Shepherd Jesus who sets a table before us, here on this altar, in the midst of
the enemies of sin, death and the power of the devil, to feed us with his own
body and blood for forgiveness.
You see, in the words of the 23rd Psalm, it is God who does everything through Jesus. It isn't our work, it isn't our desire, it isn't our decision. It's all Jesus. Jesus leads
us. Jesus calls us. He is the gate to heaven. He is the Good Shepherd. He is the reason we have hope beyond this
world. A hope to dwell in the house of
the Lord forever. He calls us each by
name, and he leads us through death into life forever. The Lord is truly my shepherd, and I shall
not want. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
