Fourth Sunday of Easter (B)
Good Shepherd Sunday
April 22, 2018
Text:
John 10:11-18
He is
risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
The Good Shepherd loves His sheep. Each and every one
of them. He will do anything to keep
them as His own. Like King David, He will fight the lions and the bears
with His bare hands. He will face down robbers and wolves. He will leave the 99 to seek and to save the
lost one. He will go any distance, through any weather, any terrain,
scale any mountain, descend into any ravine, risking life and limb for His
precious lamb. He will bind his wounds.
He will lead his sheep to green pastures and quiet waters and provide
His sheep safety and rest. The Good
Shepherd gives His life for His sheep. A hired hand will not do this. Sure, he’d rather keep the sheep alive and
healthy and with the flock if he can.
That’s how he makes his money.
But he will not risk his life, and he certainly won’t give his life into
death for the mangy little animals. He can always get another job, and
there are plenty of other sheep. The
hired hand watches over the sheep for a living, but he does not love the sheep.
The Lord is our Good Shepherd. Jesus is the Good
Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. You are the sheep. Jesus lays down His life for you. That is how He loves you. By dying for
you, for the forgiveness of your sins, that you might not die, but live.
He knows you by name, He says. “I
know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14; ESV). Jesus doesn’t just
care for the flock in general. He cares for you individually. He knows you intimately. In fact, He
knows you better than you know yourself.
And this is important. He knows your sins. All of them.
He knows your deep, dark secrets, the ones you keep buried in your mind
and heart. He knows your rebellious nature, how prone you are to wander,
how you get yourself into all sorts of mess and mischief, munching on poisonous
weeds (the things that are not good for you and poison your faith), bumbling
right into the jaws of the predator (the old wiley foe, the devil). He
knows about all of this, and it is precisely from this that He rescues
you. He snatches you out of the clutches
of the demonic dog, warning you of the dangers by the preaching of the Law and
turning you from sin to Himself in repentance and faith by the preaching of the
Gospel. He purges the filth and washes
it away in the precious bath of Baptism, anoints your wounds with the medicinal
oil of His Spirit in His Word, and binds your injuries in Holy Absolution.
And He sets a Table for you, right here in the Church, in the presence of
your enemies (the devil, the world, and your own sinful nature). Your cup runneth over, the Chalice, the Cup
of salvation.
Of course, the Good Shepherd always wants more sheep in His
flock. That’s what He says in our text: “I have other sheep that are
not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my
voice” (v. 16). In its original context, our Lord is talking about
the Gentiles who will come to faith in Him. That’s most of us, all of us
who are not Jewish, and so this is very good news for us this morning.
The Good Shepherd wants us, too.
The Gentiles who believe in the Lord Jesus are added to the Jews who
believe in the Lord Jesus, and thus there is one holy Christian Church, “one
flock, one shepherd,” and Jesus is that Shepherd. We tend to use this
as a mission text, and that is absolutely right. Jesus isn’t done adding
Gentiles, or Jews, for that matter, to His flock. He still has other
sheep, and He preserves the world for the sake of bringing those sheep into His
fold.
There are a couple of things we should take into account
about this text, though, if we’re going to use it as a mission text. The
first thing is, it is not the case that Jesus wants more sheep for His sheep
fold because the bigger the numbers, the better. Jesus isn’t interested
in a massive flock of sheep for its own sake.
And this is first of all a point of Law for us, because the Church too
often gets this wrong. We need to do missions and evangelism, which is
absolutely true, but what we too often mean by that is that we need more
members to preserve the congregation (as if it isn’t really Jesus who preserves
His congregation! The arrogance of us sinners!). We too often mean that we need more people in
the pew to put more dollars in the plate so we can keep going, and it doesn’t
hurt to inflate the congregational statistics, either. Of course, we’d never say these crass things
out loud (well, I guess I would…), but that’s the truth of the matter.
Beloved, we must guard against this sin of lovelessness and looking for
salvation in our own mission efforts and bigger numbers. Especially as a
mission congregation, where the future is always a little uncertain. Remember, this is God’s congregation, Jesus’
flock, and He’ll do what He wants to do with it. It’s up to Him to
preserve it, and it’s up to Him to grow it. He’s the Savior. We’re not.
We are given to be faithful and to proclaim the Word of God in this
place and love people, body and soul. Jesus, remember, is concerned with
the individual sheep. You. Your neighbor. Actual people. Individuals.
Jesus wants them for Himself. Jesus wants you for Himself. Our district president is fond of saying,
“God counts by ones.” He’s got that one
right.
The second thing is, Jesus is very clear in our text that
He will be the One doing the bringing of the sheep into the flock. “I
must bring them.” Did you get that? Jesus, not you, will do the
bringing. Oh, He’ll use you in the doing of it. You will confess Christ. We call it
evangelism, the speaking of the Gospel.
The best way to do it is simply to invite people to Church. Use
the postcards we have in the narthex. Or
just ask, face to face. I’m not talking
about knocking on the doors of total strangers, although you can do that if you
want. I’m talking about individuals that you know and love, or people
with whom you have these kinds of conversations. It’s never wrong to say, “Hey, we’d love to
have you at our Church sometime. Come visit us. I’ll send you a postcard with all the
information.” That’s very easy to
do. And, of course, the person may say
“No thanks.” That’s not all that
painful, is it? What it is is a very
important indication that you need to be praying for that person. Then
again, the person may show up! And if
so, praise the Lord. Because here’s the
point. You have no responsibility to
bring a sheep into the sheepfold, which is to say, make a believer out of an
unbeliever, make a member of this congregation.
That’s not your job. Jesus is the One who does that, as He says in
our text. He may do it through you. That’s a glorious privilege when that
happens. He may do it through someone
else. But He’s the One who does it, so
there’s no pressure on you. I’ve said
this before, but it bears repeating, the pastors and synodical bureaucrats who
guilt everybody for not loving the lost enough and doing enough evangelism need
to knock it off. They’re trying to make saviors out of us all. It’s not right. Jesus is the Savior. He brings the sheep into the fold. And He tells us here how He does it. “They listen to my voice.”
He does it by the Word. Not by gimmicks. Not by “changing the way we do church,”
pandering to the world, letting unbelievers set our agenda and dictate what we
should do and how we should do it. No, that’s making us and our brilliant
and oh-so-cutting-edge ideas the saviors again.
Jesus gathers the sheep to Himself in His Word. He does it in preaching. He does it when you tell your co-worker about
Jesus. He does it when parents bring their child to the font of Baptism
and raise that child in the faith, bringing that child Sunday after Sunday to
the Divine Service and Sunday School, making them do their Catechism homework
(Catechism students, your parents are loving you when they make you repeat your
memory work!). The Spirit blows in on the vehicle of the Divine
Word. He’s in the preaching and the
Scripture readings and in the visible manifestation of the Word in Baptism and
Supper, doing His Holy Spirit thing, bringing the dead to life, creating faith
where faith is not, out of nothing, and strengthening faith where He has
already planted it, causing it to thrive. And He does this on an
individual basis, to every individual sheep gathered here with the flock in the
sheepfold, which is the Holy Christian Church.
So here’s what we do as the Church: Preach, preach, preach. And hear and believe the preaching. The results are up to God. He knows what He is doing. Relax, and let Him drive. Do you hear what He is saying in His Word?
That Word is for you. Believe
it. Trust it. Cling to it.
And know that that Word is for your neighbor, the very neighbor you love
and wish would believe in Jesus and join the Church. Jesus wishes that, too. It’s up to Jesus to do it. Invite that person here, to hear the
preaching and come under the care of the Good Shepherd.
For the Good Shepherd loves that person. The Good
Shepherd loves you. And He loves you to
the utmost, to the ultimate self-sacrifice. He loves you to hell and back
(print that one on a t-shirt!). He loves
you to the laying down of His life on the cross for your forgiveness, and the
taking up again of that life in His resurrection, that you be raised from the
dead and be His own forever and live with Him in His Kingdom. For this
reason the Father loves Him, because He does all of this willingly, for
you. The Father sent Him to do this very
thing. Because the Father loves
you. And this is the Father’s
House. And these, your brothers and
sisters, are Jesus’ sheep. And He loves
each and every one of you, despite what He knows about you, which is all
forgiven in His blood. And the Spirit goes out on the wind of the Word
and enters your ear and mind and heart and takes possession of you whole. Every evil spirit is cast out. Here you are in the Good Shepherd’s
fold. Your every want has been provided. The pastures are green. The waters are still. The rod and staff comfort you. The Shepherd leads you through death and out
the other side alive, risen, and free. And here is the Table. The altar is the Table. Your enemies cannot harm you here. Eat and drink and rejoice. You will dwell in this House forever. He is risen!
He is risen, indeed!
Alleluia! In the Name of the
Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
