Misericordias Domini – Sunday 14 April A✠D 2024
✠ Psalmody: Psalm 33: 5b, 6a, 1, 18–20;St. Luke 24:35b;St. John 10:14
✠ Lection: Ezekiel 34:11–16;1 Peter 2:21b–25;St. John 10:11–16
Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd, and the earth is full of the misericordias Domini, the goodness of the Lord. It is full of His mercy, for by His merciful works, our eyes have seen and our ears have heard His goodness toward us. Though we have not seen like Thomas, Peter, James, John, and the others, we believe that Jesus is the crucified and risen Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we have life in His Name. This is the mercy of God that is ever before us, never to be removed from the whole earth until the Last Day when the benefits of Christ’s reconciliation between God and man will be forever withheld from the unbelieving world. While there is yet time, God gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people. He rains down provision on the just and the unjust alike because the strife is over and the battle is done. That which stood between God and man has been washed away in water and blood that poured forth from our Savior’s side. The priceless mercy that God has, especially in how it is applied to us, is seen most in the Father’s lack of mercy upon Christ upon the cross in our place. Because in the Son of God becoming Man and laying down His life as a ransom for many, you hear the true testimony of Jesus Christ that proclaims Him the Redeemer, the Good Shepherd, of the one true, universal flock of believers, which is the Holy Christian and Apostolic Church. In this Christian Church, we worship the crucified and risen Lord, are known by and know Him, and are shepherded under Him in His kingdom as one flock with one Shepherd.
But all we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. We stray when we think that we can find pasture where there is but rocky ground and wolf whispers enticing us to do what our sheepish hearts’ desire just to make them happy and feel good in their straying, forgetting that only dead things reside in hearts of stone. We stray as we seek not daily to know Christ more, contenting ourselves in spiritual stagnation and Christian minimalism. The Lord our Shepherd provides verdant pastures in which to feed upon His goodness, the only place where we can find food that doesn’t perish, for there are many things that are imitations, food faker for the soul than three-quarters of what’s in our grocery stores are for the body. A heart that seeks to escape the reality of a harsh life, and the pasture by which Jesus feeds us to endure and grow in it, is one that is lived among the fake pastures. We’d be better off literally eating astroturf than seeking joy outside the Way of Christ. Escapism is no replacement for the misericordias Domini, the mercy of the Lord. Beware of the sheepish eye that is distracted by flashy things, which do their wicked job if they are simply able to remove our eyes and hearts from looking upon the Shepherd of our souls, thus luring us to pastures that do not exist, to cliff’s edge, and to wolf’s den. Our devourer need not hunt when we stray and turn away from our Shepherd. Wake up. Never be content with venturing yonder while your risen Savior, with His verdant gifts of Word and Sacrament spreads before you feast after feast under His watchful, protective eye.
Jesus is the Good Shepherd because He gladly accepted the Father’s will, submitted His to it, and received the iniquity of us all, giving His life for us sheep though we stray, though we appreciate not the gift of the Shepherd dying as sacrificial spotless Lamb in our stead. God alone is good, yet by Jesus’ works of laying down His life for the sheep, we see that He fully and beautifully earns the designation of being the only one worthy of rightfully claiming to be the Good Shepherd.
By the provision of His own Body and Blood in place of yours, the Lord of Life makes it clear that not only is He able to know you, but that He also desires to. For the incarnate God of creation to say that He knows you means He has a desirous intent to intimately know what disgusts you, what frightens you, what hurts you, and even what sins you commit against Him. There is nothing about you that your Good Shepherd does not desire to know, for only in Him is there light to shine upon all of it. There is nothing in a poor sheep’s life with which this Shepherd is not compassionate and merciful toward with the goal that you come to know Him as He knows you. The sheep whose heart, mind, and will is centered on Christ, rests in Christ. Being centered on Christ means that we realize that catechesis isn’t only for those preparing for First Communion or Confirmation. The Scriptures aren’t equal to the subjects learned in school from which we are glad to flee and leave behind. The Catechism isn’t only for the young to memorize, recite, and meditate upon daily, but for all Christians, grown folk included; father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, brother, sister, worker, retired; all of us. Healthy sheep constantly graze upon the food Christ gives in Word, Catechism, prayer. We never in this life graduate from learning about God and practicing godly discipline through keeping His Word ever in our hearts. For all those who have received Christ’s gifts, especially the young who have recently had such great thing planted within, do not forsake the gift you possess. Treasure it instead and be persistent in reviewing it in your mind for the benefit of your soul, for apart from Him, there is no rest for the heart that wanders about in this wilderness seeking pasture where there actually is none. A blessing of memory is one in which you may graze upon food that always nourishes. Always.
In His divine, merciful activity among us, as He has come, died, and rose again to give us everlasting, peaceful pasture, Christ unifies what the devil, the world, and our sinful nature only scatter with their lies and deceit. He brings the despondent, the wandering, the crushed, the suffering into the fold of blessed strength, hope, peace, love, and endurance. That is what He gives to those whom He makes to lie down in His green pastures and there are other sheep He has which are not of this fold; them also He must bring. This means that He cares about those around you who do not have what you have, or at least they do not know that they have it. This Good Shepherd is also their Good Shepherd, having laid down His life for them, for He knows them, too, and desires that they know Him and the true rest that He gives to the weary soul. He must bring them in; not by lawful must, but by merciful, divine must, for He seeks to be the one Shepherd of all.
Behold the majesty of the King of Love that your Shepherd is. With such a magnificent example of what and Who good is, the wicked hireling stands out as one we desire not to be near. It is true that God calls men to stand in His stead as ministers to those He seeks to make into and tend to as His flock. Many fail at this calling and show themselves to be the bad sort of hireling. Yet, just because there are bad hirelings does not negate that the Lord desires, and makes, there to be good ones. Pastors are called to be good hirelings and to treat Christ’s sheep as their own, following the example of the Good Shepherd, by being willing, even as a hireling, to lay down their life for the sheep; not in a salvific way, for Christ has accomplished that task in full. It is finished. The good hireling seeks to serve as Christ bids him do regardless of the cost so that the sheep grow in knowledge and love of their Savior and see the unity that all sheep have in Him. This also means that, as Christ Himself has become one of the sheep, so, too, He makes all sheep to be and act like shepherds themselves, because there is unity in the flock in that we are to look out for one another, we are to be our brother’s keeper, we are to encourage one another, we are to admonish one another. The Son of God has not become incarnate, died, and rose again so that what is established is a religion full of individual sheep all off on their own, interpreting the Good Shepherd and His ways as each sees fit. We are not each our own flock, but part of a whole. Christianity isn’t about what Jesus means to me, to me alone, and how He and I privately interact within my heart. His is a kingdom in which all those who belong to Christ live and breathe together, gathered in Christ and by Him where His Word is preached and His sacraments administered.
Thus, our Good Shepherd not only warns us about wicked hirelings that flee from one another when what seeks to destroy our fellow sheep comes a threatening, but He encourages us, in the goodness and mercy of the Lord, to take up the blessed mantle of being rather faithful hirelings to one another, following the example of love, sacrifice, and service that Christ has left for us, for how we live all this out together is also how we know and love our Good Shepherd more, just as He loves and knows us and has laid down His life for the sheep.
Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.