Sermon on John 10

Alleluia, Christ Is Risen!

Christ is Risen Indeed.

Happy Good Shepherd Sunday! Admittedly, crafting a sermon for this day is somewhat challenging. As I prepared for this morning, I kept thinking what else is there to say about Jesus being the Good Shepherd? Isn’t this one of the most familiar messages of all of scripture? I’m sure we can think of the image of Jesus with a sheep around his neck. Not to mention the numerous Lutheran churches named Good Shepherd. Jesus as the Good Shepherd is so familiar that one can’t possibly say anything new about this!

And perhaps this is quite all right. This morning, I am not delivering new news, but I certainly hope I am delivering good news.

Because no matter how familiar our understanding of Jesus as the Good Shepherd indeed is, we gather ourselves in places like Nativity week-after-week specifically to be reminded of things we already know.

We gather to be reminded that we are flawed people in need of forgiveness.

We gather to praise and sing songs we often know by heart.

We gather to hear familiar words of scripture.

We gather to see familiar faces, our siblings in Christ.

We gather to taste and see God’s love for us after hearing and praying familiar words.

If you ask me, Church is all about gathering and reminding.

When I was doing a unit of clinical pastoral education at a hospital in Columbia, I can’t tell you how many times people asked me to bring a Bible—a King James one specifically—and read Psalm 23. Those familiar words bring great comfort, especially in some of our most challenging times. And thanks be to God for that!

I was recently at a baptism, and the grandmother of the child being baptized came up to me and talked about my path toward ordained ministry. She shared how important the Bible is for her daily routine. And no matter how many translations she has, there is so much comfort in reading the King James. She said something I thought was pretty quotable so I actually wrote in my notes app right after: King James is like mashed potatoes.

Now this is not an advertisement for the King James Bible. But I hope the point is clear. We benefit from being comforted and reminded who God is, how God leads and guides us, how God shepherds us. And no matter how much we already know or how familiar it may be, thanks be to God!

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Don’t forget—we are still in the Easter season.

In today’s gospel, Jesus declares that he is the Good Shepherd who “lays down his life for the sheep.” But things don’t end there. Jesus lays down his life in order to take it up again…and no one else can take it from him.

By his own accord, our God leaves the tomb, defeats death, and gives resurrection life.

Right before today’s passage, in the same chapter, Jesus says that he is the door or the gate of the sheepfold.

I love this image as Jesus as the door.

For this Good Shepherd Sunday, the poet Malcolm Gight has a beautiful sonnet which opens up this image of Jesus as door, when he writes:

Not one that’s gently hinged or deftly hung,

Not like the well-oiled openings that swung

So easily for Pilate’s practiced pace,

Not like the ones that closed in Mary’s face

From house to house in brimming Bethlehem,

Not like the one that no man may assail,

The dreadful curtain, The forbidding veil

That waits your breaking in Jerusalem.

Not one you made but one you have become:

Load-bearing, balancing, a weighted beam

To bridge the gap, to bring us within reach

Of your high pasture. Calling us by name,

You lay your body down across the breach,

Yourself the door that opens into home

—

Jesus is the door.

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As a seminarian, one of my greatest learnings is dwelling in the ways God meets us in what seems like the opposite way that the God of the universe should appear.

In a feeding trough.

In labor.

In death on a tree.

In water. In bread. In wine.

In these plain things, the God of the universe meets us in the opposite, transforming what seems mundane into the extraordinary.

Bearing our burdens, bridging the gaps, bringing us to green pastures, calling us by name—yes that is our Good Shepherd Lord.

Jesus the Good Shepherd lays his life down—and rises again—so that we might have life and have it abundantly.

So that we may gather and hear familiar words.

So that we may be one in Christ Jesus.

So that we may taste and see the goodness and mercy of God.

So that we may continue to find comfort —comfort like that of mashed potatoes even—in the overflowing love of God.

We encounter the God of the universe in the image of a shepherd, a caretaker of a flock, one willing to even die for that flock.

And the God of the universe meets us here—again—just like the first time.

Bringing us together around his very body as we become his body for the world.

There’s no news here, but this is most certainly good.

Amen.