Bloghardt's Reflector

Misericordias Domini (The Second Sunday After Easter)
St. John 10:11-16 – St. Mark Lutheran Church
April 30, 2005
For Audio:  Listen Here

Christ is risen from the dead! He is risen indeed, Alleluia. Amen. In the name of Jesus. Amen. The Cross. It always comes down to the Cross. Even on the Sunday that has become known as “Good Shepherd Sunday,” everything boils down to the Cross.

The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. The hireling isn't the Good Shepherd. He doesn't lay down His life for the sheep. When the wolf comes, the hireling abandons the sheep and flees. The wolf then scatters the sheep. The hireling flees because they are not his sheep. He doesn't care for the sheep.

But Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the shepherd and overseer of your lives. He isn't the hireling. He actually cares for His sheep. He actually loves His own. He loves them until the end – to the Cross. He lays down His life for the sheep.

St. Peter tells us about sheep. Sheep stray – each goes his own way. You are sheep. You wander. You roam. You have this funny problem of not staying in the sheep pen. You get yourselves lost. You get yourselves in trouble. All by yourselves your are defenseless.

But as a shepherd seeks His flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so does the Lord seek out His sheep and deliver them... delivers you from all the places where you scatter yourself.

That's the “good” of the “Good Shepherd.” The Good Shepherd saves His sheep, His lost sheep. He seeks them out. He rescues them from their calamities.

What a wonderful picture! Jesus with a sheep on His shoulder. Jesus carrying you, caring for you, loving you.

The lost sheep are found. The sheep that have been driven away are brought back. The sick are tended to. He does it all – for the poor, the weak, and the sick. He does it all freely. That's the “good.”

But it's more than a picture. It's more than an image in a photograph of Jesus. There is a specific way that the Lord tends to His sheep. There is a way that He feeds them, cares for them, loves His own.

Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than He lay down His life for his friends.” He loves them by laying down His life for them. That's how He cares for you. That's how He loves you. He loves you by laying down His life for you – His life for your life.

For you, He committed no sin. No deceit was found in His mouth. He was reviled. He didn't revile in return. He suffered without threatening. He then left himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree. By His stripes you were healed.

That's the caring and love of God - The Cross. The Tree. That's what it means that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. The Cross – that's how He loves you. The Tree – that's how He cares for you, that's how He saves you.

But the hirelings of this world look so inviting. They preach to us to look to our sheepiness – to ourselves, our improvement, our lives. They tell us how to live. How to be successful or how to “have our best life now.”

And what great hirelings they are – famous and noteworthy. They may even mention Christ or even the Cross. But the central message of the hireling isn't about the Cross and what Christ did for us, but rather what we do, how we live, and what we can be.

And when they do preach Jesus, He is someone other than the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. Jesus is turned into the battery that energizes us, the means in which we become successful, or simply an example.

If you just live, if you just pray, if you just give your lives, if you commit your life, if you do this or that, if you just... you you you...then you too can have your best life right now.

It seems absurd that His sheep would take their ears off their shepherd and go to some other message. But, that is exactly what we do. Why? They flatter us. They tell us that there is something in us that God finds lovable, that He can't do without. Then, they tell us how to get better – as if we can.

And we being sheep that love to stray, want Christ to be a different sort of Shepherd for us and tend to us the way we want to be tended to. The way we think is “good.”

And when we feed on these other pastures, when we put our ears on hirelings, we stray from the Good Shepherd. It's not so much that we leave church and turn from the gifts of the Shepherd – we are tempted to do that. No, we stray by giving our ears and our hearts and our minds to hirelings who preach of a different Gospel or no Gospel at all.

But, when the wolf comes, the hireling will abandon you and you'll be devoured. They will let you be devoured you because they are not the Good Shepherd.

For you can have a successful life or your best life now and still be lost. You can have all the self esteem in the world and still find yourself in hell. In fact, directed back to yourself and what you do there is only hell.

Flee from those pastures, dear sheep. Run from the hirelings. Run from any preacher that directs you back to ... you.

The Cross. The Good Shepherd lays down in His life for the sheep. That's is the hope of little sheep. That alone is our salvation.

For thus says the Lord GOD: "Indeed I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out.”

The Good Shepherd who puts you over His shoulder and saves you from the dark and cloudy days of your life is the Good Shepherd who has scars on His hands and feet from the Cross. Who wears on His own body the scars He won saving us from the Wolf.

You are the sheep for whom He died. You are His sheep. How it goes with you in this world isn't determined by you and what you do to have a good life now. How it goes with you – good days and bad days – come as a gift from the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for you.

And where you go in this world with all your successes and failures is simply this: wherever the Good Shepherd takes you. You on His shoulders. Him carrying you through this life. You in His nailed-scarred hands.

Dear sheep, but the Gospel is more than just Jesus carrying you through tough times – The Gospel is that Jesus laid down His life for you.

He has already carried you through death itself. You died with Him - Having died in the waters of Holy Baptism. Now, you have been raised to life again with Him to live in the righteousness of the Good Shepherd, who lays down His life for the sheep.

Death and life are in the hands of that Shepherd. Then, we are free to tend to and care for those around us. Them first, then us. Their needs, then our needs. The weak first, then the strong. You first, then me. What you want, then what I want. You are more important. My life for your life.

But first, the Good Shepherd lays down His life for all – for His sheep. That's why Good Shepherd Sunday is traditionally called “Misericordias Domini.” That's means “the goodness of the Lord,”

The Cross. The Tree. It all boils down to the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep – for you and for me.  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead! He is risen indeed, Alleluia! In the name of Jesus. Amen.