4th Sunday of Easter
May 3, Year of Our + Lord 2009
Trinity and St John Lutheran Churches
Sidney and
Fairview, Montana
(This sermon is from three years ago, as I was on vacation this past weekend! Your Good Shepherd, thankfully, never takes vacation.)
It’s Good Shepherd Sunday. Today, along with King David, we express remarkable confidence in
God. “The
LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of
righteousness for his name's sake.”
This most famous of Psalms has
offered great promise and great comfort
in times of trouble to the children of God for 3,000 years. The prophet Ezekiel draws on the same imagery
in his preaching against the religious leaders of Israel, who instead of caring
for the flock entrusted to them, were preying on the flock themselves. In
response, the LORD makes this promise through Ezekiel.
' For thus says the Lord GOD:
"Indeed I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. 12 "As a
shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so
will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were
scattered on a cloudy and dark day.
"And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from
the countries, and will bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the
mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in all the inhabited places of the
country.
These wonderful promises of God
our Shepherd have sustained the faithful for many generations, and they
continue to do so today.
This is not to say that the
faithful always are perfectly content, frolicking like lambs on a warm spring
day. We do not always wait patiently and
happily for the LORD to come and care for us.
We are not always at peace.
Throughout the years the faithful have faced great evil: invasion by
foreign powers, civil war, famine and disease.
We too face danger and evil, from financial crisis to moral decay, from
AIDS to Swine flu. The world is a
difficult place, it’s hard to keep the faith. The prophet Ezekiel despaired in
the face of the persecution he suffered, even begging God to take his
life. And sometimes we too, with David
and the faithful of every generation, cry out, “How long, Oh LORD, how
long?” How long until You deliver
us?
We don’t face the fierce
persecution and severe trials of King David and the prophet Ezekiel, but we do
struggle. A sober look at our
situations, of the world and our place in it, may lead us to doubt that the
promises of Psalm 23 are true. Christianity, we are told, is declining. Life today seems very uncertain. If the promises of God are true, we may think
they are meant for someone else. For we
do not always see green pastures. We sense
that we are passing through the valley of the shadow of death, and we
fear. Sometimes we feel content, well fed and safe. But sometimes we are afraid of being sheared,
of being robbed of our warmth and comfort by illness, injury, and the ravages
of time.
Worse yet, we may feel like
fools, trying to follow the Lord our Shepherd.
For we sheep look around us and see a world where it seems looking out
for #1 is the name of the game, for everybody.
It’s a dog eat dog world, and the wolves are eyeing the sheep. Friends betray friends, the words of your
family members so often cut you deeply.
You try to open yourself up to others and end up wounded. Why should we even want to be sheep, when we
sense we may be slaughtered for someone else’s benefit? Can we really trust in the LORD, our Shepherd? Is there a place where we can we look to gain
the confidence that David had?
We are not sure, so sometimes we
try to hide from it all. We try to carve
out a safe existence behind high walls and quick defenses. But God has not made us to live this way, we
are made for relationships. And besides,
it doesn’t work. We can try to make for
ourselves a safe place, away from the danger and evil of the world, but we will
find that evil and moral decay and dangers follow us into our safe places. Because it’s not just the world around us that
is evil. Evil follows us into our safe
places because we are evil.
I know, we all appear
to be civilized, good people. We are
here in Church, for goodness sake. We
may never act on our most wicked thoughts, but they are in our hearts and
minds. We are not so different from
David, who was an adulterer and a murderer, in thought and in the actual
deeds.
And yet this same King David, an
adulterer and a murderer, trusted that the Lord was truly taking care of
him. David knew his sin and guilt. David dealt daily with evil people who tried
to take away everything he had. Yet he
could still declare with confidence, “the Lord is my Shepherd.” How is this possible? How can it be that we
can know the truth of our own sin, and the reality of our world, and yet still
have faith in a loving God who promises to be active in our lives? Where can we look to gain the confidence of
David?
In a Word, look to Jesus. It was
the promise of a Savior who would come with healing and forgiveness in His hand
that sustained King David. Look with
David, to our Lord Jesus, who came from heaven seeking His flock. Look to the Christ, who took on your
humanity, and walked among us scattered sheep, seeking and saving. Look to Jesus, who knows your pain and fear,
because on a cloudy and dark Good Friday He suffered the ultimate persecution
and evil, in order to be your Good Shepherd who delivers you. Listen again to His words:
I am the good shepherd. The good
shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep,
sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them
and scatters them. He flees because he
is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my
own know me, just as the Father knows me
and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this
fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will
be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay
down my life that I may take it up again.
No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have
authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge
I have received from my Father."
Yes, there
is great evil in the world, all around us.
Yes, you suffer real pain. And
yes, you are a sinner, there is evil in you that you cannot control by your own
power. But your salvation does not
depend on your power. You do not walk
alone, you do not face evil unprotected.
The Good Shepherd is with you, listen to His voice. He has removed the power of evil and
suffering. They cannot cause you
permanent harm. When He laid down his
life, and when he took it up again, that is when He died on the Cross and when
He rose from the dead, Jesus destroyed the power of all the wolves. In His victory over them, Jesus also forgave
you all your sins. They can no longer
destroy you. Jesus has anointed your
head, with his river of living water, which bubbles up to eternal life, the
prize He won for you, at Calvary. He
fills your cup to overflowing with His life-giving blood, poured out on the
Cross, now given for you to drink in His Supper, for the forgiveness of sins,
life, and salvation.
This is
the table which he prepares for you here, now, in the presence of all the
enemies of this world. This little
feast, a mysterious meal with the power to destroy evil, points us to and
qualifies us for the heavenly feast to come, where your enemies, which today
still prowl and seek to hurt you, will be forever cast out. Yes, the evil and suffering of this life is
real, and on our own we cannot face it.
But you are not alone. In the
midst of your suffering, in the midst of trial, your Good Shepherd is with you,
to comfort you, and point you again to Himself, in whom all suffering and evil
is forever gone. In Jesus Christ,
Crucified and Resurrected, goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of
your life. It is through and with Jesus
Christ that you shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever, Amen.
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