Sermon for the Third Sunday After Easter, 2:00pm service for the Atlantic Ministry of the Deaf
“I am the Good Shepherd”
The image of Christ the Good Shepherd is one of the great and most familiar images of care. At once a commonplace, it is altogether radical in its meaning. The root of care is cure. The care, we might say, is in the cure.
Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd.” What distinguishes good shepherds from bad is care. The Good Shepherd cares for the sheep. The meaning of that care is that he lays down his life for the sheep. There is sacrifice – the total giving of oneself for the good of another. It is what we have been privileged to see in Holy Week, on the one hand, contemplating the utter failure in and of ourselves to seek the good of one another and, on the other hand, contemplating the sacrificial love of Christ who alone accomplishes what belongs to our eternal good.
The Good Shepherd, and this is the great and wonderful paradox, is also the Lamb of God. His sacrifice is the cure for our sins but it also imparts his care for our lives. The pastoral ministry of the Church is rooted in this sense of care which is often called “the cure of souls.” It goes beyond the superficial and external matters of comfort and ease and convenience to address the distempers of our souls, the disenchantments of our hearts and the despair of our lives. 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. Once again, it belongs to the pageant of Holy Week to point this out to us. But it also belongs to the parade of Eastertide to show that sacrificial love is a living love. It belongs to the divine life of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the divine love that has been made visible in the passion and crucifixion of Christ and in the wonder and triumph of Christ’s resurrection.
