A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on April 25, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on John 10:11-18. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from John’s first epistle, the third chapter:
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! And Jesus tells us today that he has the authority to raise himself up from the dead. Now, this is kind of a strange thing. Why would someone need authority to raise himself from the dead, and beyond that, why would Jesus, who is God himself, need authority from the Father to raise himself up from the dead?
You know, I have worked in jobs, and perhaps you have as well, where you are given a whole lot of responsibility but no authority. You have been given a whole lot of things to do, but not the power to carry them out, not being able to actually do the things you have been asked to do. It's really a fascinating thing, isn’t it, to be stuck in that kind of position, because you sit there and you just wonder, what are they thinking in giving this to me? Why would they do this to me? It's like setting you up for failure, isn’t it?
Now, Jesus obviously has responsibility. His job is to come to this earth, to live a perfect life, to die for you, to be resurrected for you. That's a lot of responsibility. I mean, if you think about it, Jesus, just even in his humanity, had a lot of responsibility. He had to obey the law perfectly. He had to be tempted in every way that you are and still overcome it. He had to grow in wisdom and in stature, the scriptures say. That means he had to learn just like we learn all that God would say in his word and all the things that we have to learn about this earth, all the things that we have to do on a daily basis. He had a lot of responsibility and he carried that out to the nth degree. He did it perfectly.
But when you consider that according to his divinity, what it is that he was responsible for doing, which was set before the foundation of the world, that he would come and die and live for you, well, that's a lot of responsibility too. It's a responsibility that I don't think we can comprehend. It's a responsibility that I don't think any of us would be able to even get close to. It's a responsibility that if we even tried, we would fail from the outset. Still it's not just responsibility, but he had the authority to do these things as well. He had the authority to come and take on the flesh of Mary and be born into this world. He had the authority to grow up as a young boy. He had the authority to become a man. He had the authority to learn from Joseph to become a carpenter. He had the authority to go out and begin his teaching ministry. He had the authority to do miracles, signs, to show that he indeed is the Messiah, God in human flesh. He had the authority to go to the cross, to lay his life down, and he had the authority to raise himself up again. When we think of the times, when we lack authority, we find ourselves powerless. But when we consider that Jesus Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth, we find him to be the powerful one, the one with the most power.
And, in fact, it is a very attribute of God that Jesus would be omnipotent. That's your big Latin word for the day. We all know it. It means all powerful. Jesus is all powerful because he has the authority of God. Now that is a marvelous thing. And how does he use that authority? He gives it all up. He gives up everything to bring you into his fold.
Today actually is the celebration of Good Shepherd Sunday. It always falls right in the middle of Easter, that fourth Sunday of Easter. When we look at Jesus, the shepherd and we, the sheep, now we would be remiss, f course, if we didn't mention that sheep are very, very dumb. In fact, sheep have tiny, tiny brains. I think I've told you this before. Their brains are so small. How small are they? Their brains are so small that you could easily crush them in your hands. These sheep are dumb creatures. And yet it is that our shepherd takes care of us.
Now think about this for a moment. In what circumstance would you be willing to lay your life down for somebody? If you saw someone being beaten on the street, would you go and take their place? What if that person was your spouse? What if that person was a friend? What if that person was your child? What if that person was your worst enemy? Would you do it then? And you see, that's what we find when we consider our Jesus, that while we were yet enemies of God, he came and laid his life down for us.
If you think of the whole shepherding concept, you have shepherds who would take their sheep out into the wilderness, out into the countryside. It’s not really like today, where farms dot the landscape, and they’re all penned in and everything seems safe. Back then, you’d take them out onto the hills and mountains. These are sheep that would have to go out and they'd have to find grass to eat. And it would be that the shepherd would take them out overnight, sometimes even for a few days to make sure that the sheep had what they needed. And the shepherd's job was to make sure that those sheep were safe, because when you are out in open pasture, you never know what's going to come. Could be that a wolf comes into their midst and starts picking off the sheep. It could be a lion would come in and begin picking them off. A bear could come in and pick them off. Even a robber could come in and take the sheep. If the shepherd lets down his guard, even for a moment, it seems that the enemy would strike at that time. You ever noticed that in your own life, the minute you let down your guard, something bad happens to you and you look back and go, I should have been prepared for that? The shepherd must be prepared at every turn. And in fact, to be prepared, the shepherd, not only brings with him all the food that he needs, but carries in his hands a rod and a staff.
We find in Psalm 23, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me, right? What is a rod? And what is a staff? A rod is never to be used on the sheep. In fact, the sheep would see that rod and know that this is a good thing that the shepherd has. This rod is what protects the sheep from the intruder. This rod beats the wolf over the head. This rod kills the lion by striking its heart through its ribs. With this rod, God strikes down the thief and the robber. The staff, however, is a comfort for the sheep, for the staff. is used on the sheep that has wavered. The staff is used for the sheep that gets too close to the edge. The staff is used on the sheep that gets caught up in the water and begins to drown. The staff is the shepherd's crook. And it goes in and grabs the sheep around the neck, or it grabs him by the foot and brings him back. I don't think shepherds back in Jesus's day used border collies to herd sheep; it was all up to them. So, imagine rods and staffs being a great comfort to the sheep; they are there to protect them. They're there to keep them safe.
So, with all these ideas swimming around in our heads now, all these things are going on and Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd will lay his life down, down for the sheep. So as you're considering this, with all these things, we imagine Jesus as the shepherd, leading all of us out to pasture, to feed. And of course your first thought about the feed should be towards the Lord’s Supper But the shepherd brings us out to feed and there we are set upon by the enemy, whether it's a wolf or a lion or a robber or all these things.
What is our enemy but the devil himself? The good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep, and, in striking the thief, bruises his heel, and the shepherd dies. What happens to the sheep? They're left behind with no shepherd. The shepherd dies. Who's there to protect them? The shepherd dies. The sheep become wayward. Look what happened after Jesus died: his apostles scattered and only, finally, where they gathered into that upper room, where they waited in fear for what would be coming for them next, would they come tighter.
But our good shepherd does not stay dead for long. He has the authority to lay his life down and to pick it back up again. The shepherd’s struck down by the thieves. The shepherd’s struck in the heel by the serpent, but the serpent has his head crushed to bits. The shepherd comes to life and protects his sheep and speaks to them, Peace, peace be with you. Jesus says to the apostles gathered in that upper room, peace be with you. He says to you, peace be with you. And that peace is that Jesus has the authority to lay his life down and to pick it back up again. The shepherd who can do this has great power and he uses it to guard you and keep you in all your ways.
It would not be possible for God to die unless Jesus had the power to do it. Have you considered this? You can kill a man. You can go out and do it right now if you want to. It’s a heinous sin. Don't do it. But you could do it. But how do you kill God? How do you strike him dead? The only way to do this is if God lets himself be killed. Jesus has the power to let himself be murdered on the cross for your sake. Jesus has the power then to bring himself back to life, being justified, being vindicated by the father and his sacrifice, he comes back to life and scares the many away.
It happens that the enemy prowls around like a roaring lion seeking one whom he may devour. But the shepherd is always there to scare the enemy away because the shepherd will never die again. Having tasted death once was enough for him. And so it is, too, that we taste death once and that is enough for us. However, it is not in the death that we look at at the end of our lives. That's merely sleep.
My friends, you have been killed already. You have already been dead and have been raised to life. Our shepherd and his death and resurrection brings to you his death and resurrection in a way that you would never expect, a way that is there to bring you into his fold, a way that brings his entire fold, this other fold that Jesus talks about, it brings you into his one fold. And that is through baptism, where, in that water, you face death. And there you die. As the water washes over you that is the first death. And yet it is but a moment and you come roaring back to life as only a sheep can. It's an amazing thing when you think about this, that we are baptized into his death and we are baptized also into his life. You have faced death once and persevered because your Jesus has the authority to raise you from the dead.
And so he has, and still yet a greater day is coming when you will see your resurrection, even more glorious than what you found in the font, that resurrection where you will see your Jesus face to face as you come up out of your graves. This is the authority of the shepherd to lay his life down for you, his wayward sheep, that he may bring you back into his fold forever. What better news is this, that our Jesus, our good shepherd, is going to comfort you with his rod and his staff, with his baptism and his supper, with his word, with his absolution, with life, forgiveness, and salvation forever. There is no greater thing than this. Look to your good shepherd, my friends, for he is risen. He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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