Sermon for the Second Sunday after Easter
Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd.”
What distinguishes a good shepherd from a bad shepherd? The answer is care. The good shepherd cares for the sheep. Unlike the parable of the Good Samaritan, which does not explicitly identify the Samaritan as the Good Samaritan, let alone naming Jesus as the Good Samaritan of our wounded humanity, par excellence, this Eastertide Gospel is clear and unambiguous. Jesus identifies himself as the Good Shepherd. But what, then, is the care that defines the Good Shepherd?
The care is that Jesus lays down his life for the sheep. The Good Shepherd is the sacrificial Lamb of God. His sacrifice is the cure for our sins and it also imparts his care for our lives.
The pastoral ministry of the church is rooted in this sense of care as “the cure of souls.” It goes beyond the superficial and external matters of comfort and ease to address the radical distempers of our souls. There is no pastoral care without the naming of the cure and there is no cure without the acknowledgement of our need to be cured in the very root of our being.
Today’s Collect speaks of Jesus as being “unto us both a sacrifice for sin and also an example of godly life.” He is the sacrifice for sin. He is the cure, the Good Shepherd who gives his life for the sheep. He stands in the face of the destroyer of the sheep; ultimately our sins are his destroyer. Our lives are scattered lives. Sin scatters us from ourselves and from one another. Grace gathers and redeems our scattered lives. The grace is the grace of the Good Shepherd who wills to be struck so that he may gather us to himself. He gathers us through his care for us. He cares for us through his cure for us.
