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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Second Sunday After Easter |
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April 22, 2007 Psalm 23, John 10:1-16 The Good Shepherd One of the most enduring and endearing images of Christ presented to us in the Bible is that of the Good Shepherd. The image has an ancient and revered tradition in Israel, which often considered itself a nation of shepherds. David, the most beloved king of Israel had himself been a keeper of sheep, and his beautiful Psalm 23 expresses in moving terms the relationship of God to His people as the Shepherd and His sheep. Many times the Old Testament writers refer to God as the Shepherd of Israel. In our reading for this morning Christ is presented as the Good Shepherd. This, of course implies that there are bad shepherds who would claim you as their sheep. They are thieves, robbers, and hirelings. Jesus is the Good Shepherd because He cares for His sheep. He provides for our needs. We all live and move and have our being in Christ. We are his people and the sheep of His pasture. It is He that created us, and not we ourselves. We are entirely dependent upon Him, and He is entirely faithful. He makes us to lie down in green pastures, He leads us beside still waters, He anoints our heads with oil. There is no material blessing that we enjoy that is not provided for us as the gift of His providential love. And yet, the gifts and provisions for our physical needs do not exhaust His provisions, for He generously supplies the deepest needs of our souls. We all remember the words of Augustine that our souls are restless until we find our rest in God. There is something in everyone of us that hungers for that special something only God can supply. In our sin we refuse Him. We reject Him and go astray like lost sheep. Indeed we do not want that very thing for which our souls hunger, nor are we able to turn ourselves around and seek Him apart from His grace. But we need Him, and our souls are empty and dead without Him. The wonderful thing is that He provides for this need in such overflowing abundance that truly our cup runneth over. He restores our souls. Jesus does more than care for His sheep. He cares about us. We have all been around people who see us only as another sale, or another problem, who take care of us, but obviously don’t care about us. Jesus talks about thieves and robbers who come to kill and destroy. To them the sheep are commodities to be fleeced or roasted. They are hirelings who take care of the sheep for money only. Their interest is the paycheck, not the sheep. When danger comes, they flee, because they care about themselves. By contrast, everything Christ does is for the benefit of his sheep. He faces danger for them. He fights the wolf, that is, the devil, for them. He lays down His life for the sheep. Let me emphasize again that it is not for His benefit that He came to this world to die on the cross. It was not for His benefit that he created us. He does not need us, nor does He derive any benefit from us. We are only burdens to Him. He created us for our benefit, to share the glory of existence with us. He created us to give us the opportunity to live and experience joy and beauty and love. He created us to know creativity and mastery, even as He does. He did this all for our benefit, not His. When we rejected the good he created us for, He came to us in the person of Jesus Christ, bearing in Himself the cost of our reconciliation rather than requiring it of us. Why would God do such a thing? Why would God concern Himself with us? Why would He bother with us, provide for us, and hear our prayers? Why would He enter the world as a human being and know hunger and thirst and all the limitations of humanity except sin, and then allow Himself to be tortured to death on a cross? The only possible answer is, LOVE. A love so high and so great we can only begin to grasp it. We can’t really understand it. We can only see it in the cross. And when we see it, we come to realize it was for “me” that He suffered there. He cares about us in the most radical way of all, of giving Himself for us. Imagine this in the image of the Shepherd facing the wolf. The wolf has come to take us. He sees in us something for his use, and he will kill us to get the meat he wants. But our shepherd faces the wolf. The cross is the battleground. There all the forces of evil are gathered with one intent, to kill the Shepherd so they may have free access to the sheep. And kill Him they do. But something else died on that cross too. The wolf died there. No, not literally, but spiritually. For the power of Satan was broken. His hold on our souls was broken and we were freed from the jaws of his everlasting death. And, the best news of all, the Shepherd is alive again. Even death could not hold Him. He conquered all, and He did it for us, because the Good Shepherd cares for his sheep and He cares about His sheep. The Good Shepherd cares about you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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