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Grace, mercy, and peace be upon you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning, Good Shepherd Sunday, is found in the Gospel reading. You may be seated.
Every year on the fourth Sunday of Easter, the texts and the hymns all go together with the theme of sheep and shepherd, flock, and the one who is the overseer of the flock. Many of you have been hearing his voice since his parents, your parents, brought you to that font. Most of you don’t remember the time when you didn’t hear the voice of the shepherd. Some of you do. So whether the time has been a long time, decades, or whether it’s been a short time, you’ve heard the voice of your shepherd and you have followed him.
And in following him, you have proclaimed the Easter message, which is the glorious message of the church. Amen. That God sent His own Son, that His Son was crucified, died, and rose again. That which we confess in the Creed. And that having risen from the dead, we who die in Him shall not die, but shall live forever. And whether a child is taken from you at a young age, or whether a parent is taken from you at an old age, you will see them again if they died in that same faith that you proclaim. Amen. You will not be apart from them, ever.
But the two go together, hearing his voice and following him. And you can’t follow him unless you first hear his voice. And in hearing his voice, you can do no other but follow him. Notice, he does not say how you follow him. That’s Satan’s domain. Satan loves to put a quantity or a quality of how you follow God. God could care less whether you follow him grumbling, or whether you follow him limping, or whether you follow him sad in tears, or whether you follow him with joy. He cares not. His voice calls you and you follow him. That’s what the text says.
The text does not get off in Satan’s domain of how you follow him. Let it not take you there either. That you follow him is what the text says. Now his voice has led you to grow in your faith toward God and has led you to grow in fervent love toward one another. But in doing so, he has led you to accomplish small things in your life. And aren’t we happy about the small things because they’re the ones that don’t take long? Upon finishing, we look back and say, God did it, didn’t he?
It’s the more exacting ones and the more testing ones that sometimes God’s voice calls us to follow him. And the time to look back and see it completed doesn’t take a short amount of time. It takes a longer amount of time. And along that road, Satan loves to harass you. And you sometimes, just like I sometimes, listen to Satan’s voice and think, maybe he’s right. And then the voice of your shepherd cries through the midst and says, follow me. And though you limp and though you cry and though you’re weak and though sometimes joyful, you follow him.
Isn’t it great that God does not quantify or qualify what it means to follow him? You follow him with these three promises that are in our text. Listen to them and hold tight to them. They are your food. They are your meat and drink.
The first one is, I know you. See, we love to be known by other people when that which we put forth is our best. Oh, we know we are irresistible when our best is put forward. That’s not only when God knows you. He knows you when you are at your worst, when you are your ugliest. When you are most filled with shame and guilt, he knows you. Did he not know Adam and found Adam hiding from him when Adam was at his worst? So when he knows you, he finds you at your worst. Like the parable of the 99 left on the hillside and the shepherd went to find the one lamb. And so happy was he about finding the one lamb, he put it on his shoulders and went back and had a party. That’s what it means when God promises you that he knows you.
The second is that you follow him. Now, I said about this a little bit earlier, Jesus does not say how you follow him, but that his voice guides you by the Spirit to follow him. And whether you want to or don’t want to, you follow him. Because he will get you to follow him. He is not impotent. And he will use all kinds of means and ways to push you or pull you to follow him. And don’t worry, you can’t thwart him. He’s so much more powerful than you. He’s so much bigger than you. You follow him is what the text says. That’s a promise.
The third thing is no one, no one can snatch you out of his hand. You can’t and no one else can. No one can snatch you out of his hand. That is a comfort. That is a promise to keep you knit to him, to keep you beside him. To keep you hearing His voice and following Him. No one can snatch you out of His hand. Not Satan. Not all the demonic powers. Not even other human beings who make you feel insignificantly small, including yourself. No one can snatch you out of His hand.
Now you would think, just like I think, that people would rush to embrace this good news. And you and I know that our message is not always received by everyone who hears it. Paul, in this morning’s first reading from Acts, he speaks very, very open and transparent about himself and hearing the voice of the shepherd and following his Jesus. He says in his text that he’s serving with humility, but note what he adds. He says, “I’m serving with humility and with tears and with trials.” He does not say with great power and glory, but with tears and with trials.
Men, it’s okay to cry over these things. Paul did. And in Paul’s following Jesus, he did not follow Jesus with always joy in his heart, but with tears. Sorrow with himself, with his world, with the people. Tears. And Jesus never, ever says anything bad about Paul’s following other than, he followed me. Period. So he doesn’t disparage you. With all of your tears, with all of your grumbling and grousing, with all of your anxieties and peccadillos and insignificant anxieties, does he berate you?
The second thing that Paul says in this text is, “I didn’t shrink back from declaring.” That’s another way of saying, be confident because I’m going to push you to proclaim it. But I’m fearful. Paul was fearful. And yet he said, it is God who helped him not to shrink back from declaring what he declared. It is the same with you. When you fear and wonder whether what you say will be misunderstood or mistaken for something, he will still enable you to say it. And even if you don’t, don’t worry. He will allow you another opportunity to say it again because it’s not as if he is thwarted by your fears. It’s not as if he can be held back or you can make it a problem for him to proclaim it. He will work it.
But Paul did say this, and this is something that you and I have to face every day. We don’t know what will happen to us when we follow God. It’s funny, isn’t it? When a child is baptized and a child grows up in the faith and you were to ask any child, do you wake up every morning wondering, gosh, where will God lead me? A child does not even think about those things. So why is it that you do and I do? Oh, because we think we can outsmart this world. We think we can position ourselves and do all the right things to keep pain from inflicting itself upon our lives. Really?
Paul said, “I don’t know what is going to happen to me, but I know I will finish my course which I’ve received.” So will you. And some of the way along which you will pass will be gloriously fun. And some of the way along which you will pass will leave you scared and frightened, just like me. Crippled and scarred with tears and trials. But you hear his voice and you follow him. That’s what he said. This is what hearing and following mean for you and for me.
At some times in following, we are filled with joy and great confidence. And at other times, we look despicable, despised, even rejected. Jesus doesn’t care. He just says, my sheep hear my voice and my sheep follow me.
Oh Lord, how can that be? How can that be? We also know what is to be expected at the end of our life. The second reading, that John’s revelation, that is what you can expect to happen to you at the end of your life. It is locked and cocked and ready to rock, brothers and sisters, this end result that will come to you. John said, “…he will guide you to springs of living water.” And God will lead you and wipe away every tear from your eyes. That’s our final hope. We know it’s ours.
Whether we follow him with tears and with trial, or whether we follow him limping and grumbling, or whether we follow him with joy and confidence, we follow him and that’s what is to be expected at the end of our course. Like the 23rd Psalm speaks, “He leads us in paths of righteousness for his namesake?” Yes. And yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And he feeds us, doesn’t he? He feeds us and he waters us because we are the most important thing to him because the most important thing to the shepherd is the sheep.
Why? Because they’re his sheep. Whether they’re full of cockleburs, whether they’ve rolled around in their defecation, or whether they’re white and shiny like a lamb, he loves them all because they’re his sheep. He bled and died for his sheep. And he takes ownership very seriously.
Always his voice is leading you. Always you follow him. Doesn’t say how. Doesn’t say with what kind of an attitude. You always follow him. That’s what the text says. My sheep always follow me.
There is a phenomenal prayer in our hymnal that doesn’t get prayed aloud enough. And it fits this because as we follow him, like Paul was following Jesus too, he had no idea of what awaited him. This prayer talks about it. Listen to this prayer. “Lead us to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown, not knowing where we go, but only that your voice is leading us and your love is supporting us.”
Lord Jesus, give me faith to go. Because you and I fear. He takes fearful sheep and leads them. He takes overly zealous and confident sheep and leads them. He takes anxious and wringing hands sheep and leads them because they’re his sheep. His main and number one mission is his sheep. Because his main and number one mission as shepherd is to die for the sheep and be their shepherd. That’s all that this text is saying. You are safe in his care because you are his number one mission. Period.
And remember, you shall never be separated from the Father or the Son because the Holy Spirit always enables you to hear his voice. Follow him. He gives his sheep eternal life. They shall never perish. You shall not be snatched from his hand. You shall not be snatched from his Father’s hand. He and his Father are one, and they lead you all the way to the glory that awaits us.
In the name of the great shepherd of us, we, his sheep, Jesus. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
