“HIS LIFE FOR THE SHEEP”
Saint John 10: 11-16
Misericordias Domini: 26 April Anno Domini 2020
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
The Apostle wrote to the Romans: “there is none that doeth good, no, not one” [Rom. 3.12b]. The Lord Himself makes it clear that Paul was talking about creatures, humans, not Himself when Matthew records Him teaching: “there is none good but one, that is, God” [Mt. 19.17a].
Jesus is God. God is perfect. The Lord is Truth. If Jesus says He is the “good shepherd” then He is. This is so despite the fact that The Christ was known as “the carpenter, the son of Mary” [Mk. 6.3a]. So, while Jesus truly is The Shepherd, He is a different kind of Shepherd then Abel, Jacob, Amos, the shepherds in the Judean hills around Bethlehem, or even the young King David.
Jesus’ flock is not wooly and bleating but rather sinful and complaining, cursing, lying, slandering, and back-biting. The sheep of The Christ are all of you.
It’s not meant to be complimentary, but then again, it’s not meant to be insulting. It just is. Sheep have some good qualities. Sheep have limitations. The point of truth is that no lamb can make it on its own. There is no solitary sheep that marches through life fulfilling its destiny and actualizing its potential. You sin grievously when you act in such a “lone-ranger” rugged individualist way. You want to be the Clint Eastwood “man with no name” and you end up the man with no country—no heavenly home. You want to be the Lion, the “king of the beasts” and you wind up being a lone shark constantly swimming and consuming mammon with no rest or happy ending.
Sheep need to be in their flock. Sheep need to be guarded and taken care of by Christ their good shepherd. Sheep congregate. They are the perfect simile in nature of the congregation. The sheep together under their shepherd’s protection are safe. Lost and by themselves out in the wilderness they are easy “pickings” for the wolves, or the lion who roams seeking whom he may devour.
The sin that a Christian falls prey to is to voluntarily absent himself from the sheepcote, the Church. It is only where Christ attaches Himself in His Word that the beloved lamb is truly safe. This is not when one is sick or in self-quarantine to keep from getting sick. The voluntary absence that is sinful is to either take for granted or to despise the congregating of the Saints. As Paul writes in his letter to the Hebrews: “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together…” [Heb. 10.25a].
So, singly, alone and solo, a sheep makes not a fighter, rescuer, redeemer, or champion. But together the Church of the living God, is unconquerable. That is the Church, not the individual: “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” [Mt. 16.18]. “As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” [Rom. 8. 36-37].
How is hell thwarted in its attempts to devour you the flock? How are you, who are accounted as sheep for the slaughter, more than conquerors?
Jesus is not a hireling. Jesus is not a life-coach, motivational guru, empowerment mentor, or cosmic genii granting your every wish—including not granting you a perfectly healthy life forever and ever on a fallen and sinful earth. You are not the walking dead uber-vampire that never ages or contracts diseases. You will get sick. You may very well be afflicted with some deadly pathogen or decaying sickness. You will age. You will die.
But the wolf does not win. The parasite, the jackal, the beast does not consume your body. Not even death consumes your body—not permanently. Jesus is no hireling. He is your good shepherd.
The sheep does not contribute to its salvation, or, to its proper care, nourishment, and peace. The shepherd does all the work.
Your Jesus has led you through the + waters to the refreshing water of life—daily bread, yes, but the water of eternity. He has anointed your head + with oil. Jesus feeds you the bread of life with His words of forgiveness and peace and with The Word Made Flesh of forgiveness and peace. And while His rod and His staff comfort you…how so? Not the way the world, or some socialistic big-brother, nanny state fascist lab-coat would “comfort” you.
The Good Shepherd sees the wolf, the Serpent, and confronts it. His Rod and Staff, His Law and Gospel—The Word of The Lord—once sent the old evil foe running away after a forty-day battle. But The Shepherd also finally destroyed the wolf in a 6 hour battle where the rod and staff intersected in a cross of humiliation, suffering, pain, and death for the Shepherd.
He is good precisely because He laid down His life for His sheep—for you. The goodness is found in His Sacrifice and His Payment. The goodness is The Crucifix, not because of the wood but because of The Shepherd’s Body and Blood. Only The Shepherd, once lifted high, and now lifted from this altar to your mouths and ears; Only The Shepherd’s Body and Blood gathers the flock and brings home the fold…all the lost lambs.
You hear His voice. You know Him. You know Him because He first knew you. Here today, with one fold, and one Shepherd. He gives His life for the sheep.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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