READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Ezekiel 34:11-16
I Peter 2:21-25
St. John 10:11-16
To you all, my true children in the common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
Who speaks to you today, saying:
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”
If there’s one disappointment to be had on Good Shepherd Sunday its that instead of God, we must face a man as our shepherd on earth, our pastor. Our Good Shepherd sees fit to send men in His place when shepherding, or pastoring, His Flock. Thus, if we want to interact with God and His gifts, we must go through our shepherd we can see.
So it is that we hear the judgement against the shepherds today, from our Old Testament. Because the job of preaching the Gospel in its purity and administering the Sacraments according to it is crucial and must be done God’s way with the pastor or shepherd not getting in the way of Jesus at all.
The pitfalls and temptations of this office, Ezekiel tells us about today. We hear of how the shepherds eat up the Lord’s sheep as if they were bread. They scatter and mislead, leaving those in need to suffer. Truly, the Lord deems these shepherds as hired hands, in it only for the paycheck, for to them that is all that the sheep are worth. They are there as a means to an end. “If I take care of these, then my inheritance from God is secure”: they may say.
But can you really blame these shepherds? Really of what value are these sheep anyway? In verses 17-21 of Ezekiel 34, the Lord is going to also judge the sheep, not just the shepherds. He will judge them because He has visited them and found them lacking (Dan 5:27). They trample out and muddy the gifts that God gives; those of the green pastures and still waters of Word and Sacrament.
They push and shove and stamp, not loving their neighbor, not giving honor to their shepherd, and not fearing God only. Truly, what is so good about the sheep?
In St. John’s gospel, Jesus is rather favorable to sheep, for they are the one’s He has promised to go after. However, St. Matthew is not so kind. There are false prophets that somehow or another got a hold of sheep clothing (7:15). The sheep get lost (10:6), they fall into pits (12:11), they go astray (18:12), and they scatter at the drop of a hat (26:31).
At these descriptions, you begin to side with the hired hand and the Lord and want to judge these sheep that do nothing but the wrong things.
Repent. The value of the sheep is not found in the sheep, as the hired hand and false shepherds teach us today. We can look and look and look, but we will never be able to determine any worth. Sheep go astray.
While it may be true that the value of the sheep is not intrinsic, self-evident, or self-determined, it is in plunder. Yes, we are plunder, only able to sit and be dead in our sins as the strong man fights to defend us and the stronger man conquers him (Lk 11:22). So the Lord asks us, “Can plunder be taken from a mighty man? Can captives be rescued from a tyrant?” (Isa 49:24).
The Lord answers His own question in the next verse: “The captives of warriors will be released, and the plunder of tyrants will be retrieved. For I will fight those who fight you, and I will save your children.”
“shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Pet 5:2) Why? Because the value of the sheep is found in God and given by God alone. The value of the sheep is only found in the Shepherd Who becomes a sheep. Not only a sheep, but the Lamb Who was slain and takes away the sin of the world. “Worthy is the lamb who’s blood sets us free to be children of God” we will sing.
Before the Gospel reading, we sang what’s known as the Victimae Paschali, or the Passover Victim, which declared that the Lamb has ransomed the sheep and that Lamb is Christ, Who only is sinless.
In Christ, instead of false sheep or goats, the Lord makes true sheep that follow His voice. As Isaiah 60:17 says, “Instead of bronze I will bring gold, and instead of iron I will bring silver;
instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron. I will make your [shepherds] peace.”
Dear Christians, there is no getting around our sinfulness, but in a move one hundred times better than a pat on the head, a pen of safety, and defense against wild beasts, God becomes a sheep and in doing so, gives eternal value to all His creation.
The Good Shepherd Who will shepherd the sheep, make them lie down to rest, seek the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured, and strengthen the weak, is cast out, given no place to rest His head, injured, and weak in His Incarnation and on the cross.
Jesus even repeats Himself in our Gospel reading, saying that “the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep” in v. 11, 15. As in, the Good Shepherd “…will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day” (Mt 20:18-19) all in order to seek His sheep and lead them to everlasting life with Him.
The Good Shepherd is recognized in His suffering as a sheep. He suffers because His sheep are in distress. He will suffer because He will become the food for consumption instead of His sheep. He will suffer because He must leave His home in order to seek the sheep throughout the realm. He will suffer as His gifts are trampled and cast aside. He will suffer in satisfying the wild beasts that they no longer be enslaved.
The Good Shepherd leaves His heavenly home to seek us in His own sheeply Body, taking on our flesh to gather us as one of us. The Good Shepherd satisfies sin, death, and the devil with His holy, innocent, and precious Body and Blood upon the cross. And with that same Body and Blood becomes the meal that is consumed instead of His Sheep, in His Supper.
Our Savior is at once the Shepherd and the sheep. In being made a sheep, being made man, He gives the sheep their value. Our value is imputed to us such that not only are we God’s creation, but God’s recreation in His Son. In this sense, all people have value, because their Lord looks like them.
Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep (Jn 21:16-17), for these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation and have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:14). These are they who have not listened to thieves and robbers (Jn 10:8), attempting to usurp the Word and the Sacraments, but they hear the voice of the Lamb Who was slain call them out by name and follow (Jn 10:27). They follow to the Feast and they follow to the wedding hall, forever blest, thus saith the Lord.
In order to find our value, then, we look to the infinite value of our Savior Who credits us His value in Baptism. Our value is found in the forgiveness of sins, which we flee to, when we feel the guilt and condemnation of God’s judgment. For the voice of the True Shepherd calls out and repeats over and over again, “I forgive you all your sins.”
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