The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
I love the days of the year when we really celebrate something very specific in our worship, and I’m not alone, because it is those days that we find are the best attended at mass. And so on Christmas, the specific thing that we celebrate is, of course, Jesus’s birth. All of the readings, all of the hymns, the special prayers, the sermon all have to do with Jesus’s birth. Likewise, on Easter, it’s the resurrection. Everything in worship points to the resurrection on Easter. On Pentecost, the theme is the Holy Spirit. A majority of people in the congregation even come dressed in red on that day in celebration of the Holy Spirit.
This is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, and even though the name for today doesn’t sound like it, it has an overarching theme. Every year on the Fourth Sunday of Easter the theme is the same—Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Officially, it is just the Fourth Sunday of Easter, and so many people don’t realize that the unofficial name for today is Good Shepherd Sunday.
Have you noticed how everything points to this theme today? While the hymn we sang at the beginning doesn’t have the word Shepherd in it, how can you think of anything but a shepherd, especially in the third stanza:
Fatherlike he tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame he knows.
In his hand he gently bears us,
rescues us from all our foes.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Widely yet his mercy flows!
The Collect of the Day says, “O God, whose son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads.”
What wonderful words that should warm our hearts when we hear them!
And while the first reading from Acts does not speak about Jesus as the Good Shepherd, it shows St. Peter in a pastoral role, continuing the work of the good shepherd in his own ministry. Upon hearing that a disciple named Tabitha had fallen sick and died, he went to her, “knelt down, and prayed, ‘Tabitha, rise.’ And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and lifted her up.” Jesus continues his work as the Good Shepherd not only through prayer and the Holy Spirit, but also through the ministry of the Church.
And did you know we have already recited the 23rd Psalm twice in this service? The psalm for today is the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.” And we sang a metrical version of the 23rd psalm as the Sequence Hymn: “The king of love my Shepherd is whose goodness faileth never. I nothing lack if I am his, and he is mine forever.” “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”
The second reading from the Revelation to John at first glance seems a little confusing for this day, for it speaks of Jesus not as shepherd but as the Lamb. “Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb.” It is referring to Jesus as the Lamb of God who was sacrificed on the cross for the sin of the world. But now the lamb is in heaven, is himself clearly God, and is seated on a throne. He is being worshiped by those who have suffered and died for the faith and are now worshipping him at his throne. St. John says “they shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
And finally, in the Gospel for today, Jesus the Good Shepherd says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.”
Jesus, our Savior and Lord, the second person of the holy Trinity, is our shepherd. In speaking of Jesus as shepherd, preachers like to remind people that the metaphor, in which we are likened to sheep, is not an entirely flattering one. The 20th century Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye, said “the metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.”
The fact of the matter is, from the candidates for President of the United States to the persons sleeping on the street, “all we like sheep have gone astray.” We follow too much our own way. We like to think we are in control of our worlds, building our mini kingdoms, feeding our egos, and the Lord lets us go our merry ways, until one day something happens, and we realize how fragile life really is, how difficult it can be to put Humpty Dumpty together again, and that our being in control was just an illusion.
Candice Millard, who wrote Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, said this of James Garfield: “He had already lived a long life for a young man, and he knew that change came without invitation, too often bringing loss and sorrow in its wake. ‘This world,’ he had learned long before, ‘does not seem to be the place to carry out one’s wishes.’”
When we come to that conclusion and realize we’re not in control, it’s often at that time when we realize personally what we may have learned as a kid in Sunday School—that we need Jesus, the Good Shepherd, that we are thankful that in his hands he gently bears us, and rescues us from all our foes.
Sermon preached by the Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
4th Sunday of Easter
17 April 2016