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The Fourth Sunday Of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday)
O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of thy people; Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calleth us each by name, and follow where he doth lead; who, with thee and the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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The Fourth Sunday Of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday)
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Scripture citation(s): Acts 4:5-12; John 10:11-18
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
Acts 4:5-12; John 10:11-18
✛
Jesus Our Good Shepherd
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In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
This fourth Sunday of Easter is called Good Shepherd Sunday because of the references each year from Saint John’s Gospel where Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd and to his people as his sheep. The Collect for the Day, the prayer which is chanted by the celebrant just before the Scripture readings begin, refers to Jesus as the Good Shepherd of God’s people, who knows and calls them each by name. Why is this theme appointed three weeks into the season of the Resurrection?
In today’s Gospel Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. By contrast, those who claimed the title of shepherd, Jesus says, are hirelings, hired hands who flee when the wolf comes to scatter the sheep. Jesus, by laying down his life, faces down the wolf for his sheep; and he says an extraordinary thing concerning this laying down of his life: He says the Father loves him, because he lays down his life that he may take it again. No one takes the Shepherd’s life from him, but he lays it down of his own accord. “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.”
The great act of shepherding by Jesus consists of his willingness to go to the cross, to die, on behalf of his sheep, his people. “It is finished,” a last word of Christ from the cross, is the accomplishment of the Good Shepherd as he lays down his life for his sheep. This is a dramatic development of an ancient theme in Holy Scripture. One of the most beloved of all the Psalms is the twenty-third, the Psalm chanted today by the Choir. Perhaps the most meaningful verse to many is the one which says, “Yea, though I walk the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.” I have this Psalm as a bookmark which was given out at a funeral. The twenty-third Psalm was written nearly a millennium before Jesus’ time; but Jesus gives it a meaning deeper than could have been imagined by King David himself. Jesus, God’s eternal Son, the Good Shepherd, himself has gone through the valley of the shadow of death in our human nature. He faced down the wolf. He has died our death, and on the third day he rose again from the dead. He has passed through death on our behalf. He feeds us with that very body and blood which he took through death’s valley into glory. We need not fear.
Saint Peter famously feared. When Jesus came face to face with death, Peter denied him three times. It was in the courtyard of the high priest Caiaphas, who was trying and condemning Jesus for calling God his own Father – for making himself equal with God. Three times out in that courtyard Peter was identified as one of Jesus’ disciples. Three times Peter denied knowing Jesus. But look at Peter today, in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. There he is, standing before Caiaphas and company, on trial for healing a crippled man; and he says that the healing is nothing other than by the power of the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He indicts his accusers, before whom he had cowered in fear, with rejecting the Lord, and then boldly offers them salvation through the name of Jesus Christ.
Peter, together with the other witnesses of Jesus’ death and resurrection, has been transformed. He is a different person. He is no longer a hireling who flees at the coming of the wolf. He himself has become a shepherd after the pattern of Christ. He gives his own life to the calling. It is not that that Peter has taken his Lord’s place as a savior. It is that Peter, himself forgiven, cleansed and transformed by his Lord’s sacrifice and victory over death, is now filled with the Spirit to proclaim Jesus to fellow sinners and to offer them redemption in the same terms which have changed Peter. How did this change happen?
At the very end of St. John’s Gospel, in an appearance by the Sea of Galilee, the risen Lord appears, this time to restore Peter. Jesus was going back to the beginning in order to heal him. They were in the place where he had first called Simon whom he had named Peter, which means Rock. Peter and John and others had been fishing all night and caught nothing. Jesus told them to fish again, to cast the net off the right side of the boat, and, as Peter obeyed Jesus, they caught a great number of fish. They ate some with Jesus for breakfast. Afterward, Jesus began to question Peter about his love and loyalty. Three times Jesus asked him, Simon, son of John, do you love me? It hurt Peter to be asked that question three times. Each time Peter declared that he loved Jesus, the Lord said, “Feed, or tend, my sheep.” Then Jesus told Peter about the death he would die for his name.
Peter was restored, not only as a disciple, a follower, of Jesus but as an apostle, which means he was sent to be a shepherd by the command of the Good Shepherd himself. That apostolic shepherding by Peter is what we see at work with such courage and boldness in the Acts of the Apostles. Today’s readings shed light on each other, though Acts is by Saint Luke (volume two following his Gospel); and today’s Gospel is from Saint John. Jesus shows that he is the Good Shepherd of his sheep by passing through the valley of the shadow of death and by rising from death on the third day. Peter, preaching this good news to a crippled man and healing him, shows the power of the Good Shepherd at work in the ministry of the Church.
The ministry is still unfolding. We live in the time after Jesus’ Resurrection, and after the descent of the Holy Spirit with power upon the disciples. All through Eastertide we hear readings from St. John and from the Acts of the Apostles. They show the victory of Christ as the Good Shepherd of all God’s people and in the work of the Church. There is a sense in which the Acts is a book which implies that chapters are still being written in the life of Christ’s people. Some of those chapters may be written now, as people come to know the power of the name of Jesus Christ and to receive the blessing of that power into their lives. When this happens, we realize that we are indeed the Lord’s people and the sheep of his pasture.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
