“For ye were as sheep going astray”
Sometimes known as Good Shepherd Sunday, the image of Christ the Good Shepherd is set before us today as part of the Easter season. It is, most tellingly, an image that connects the Passion and the Resurrection. As Isaiah says in a passage that belongs to our Good Friday liturgies, “all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Peter picks up on this image in this morning’s epistle. “For ye were as sheep going astray,” he says, “but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls,” on the one hand, echoing Isaiah, and, on the other hand, seeing the image of sheep and Shepherd through the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.
God as the Shepherd of his people is a powerful Old Testament image. It is further intensified and made visible in the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. He goes “through the valley of the shadow of death” for us and with us, an image which in the Passion and Resurrection takes on a greater depth of meaning and suggests the greater gathering of our lives to God.
Christ identifies himself with the Old Testament images of God as the Shepherd of his people. “I am,” he says, “the Good Shepherd.” He makes explicit what that means. In other words, he teaches us who he is for us in this image. “The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep,” he says. We are the sheep; he is the shepherd. What that means is signaled in the events of the Passion recalled for us in 1 Peter. “Christ also suffered for us” and in his suffering we find ways to face the sufferings of our own lives, sufferings that arise from our own sins and follies or sufferings that happen to us as a consequence of the actions of others, sufferings that in some sense or another belong to the general disorder and disarray of our humanity, like sheep going astray, indeed.
This awareness of human suffering and its overcoming in Christ is at the heart of the image of the Good Shepherd who gives his life for the sheep. He “who did no sin,” as Peter puts it, nonetheless in “his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” The connection between the image of the crucified and the image of the Good Shepherd is just so clear in its application to our lives; “that we, being dead unto sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” Healing and salvation, peace and joy flow out of the Crucified Christ and into our lives. How? By his Resurrection, by virtue of the triumph of life over death.
“The winter of our sins, long and dark is flying”, the great Greek theologian John of Damascus puts it in one of the wonderful hymns of Easter. Flying from what? Flying “from his light,” the light of the Resurrection which signals new birth and new life. Through the Good Shepherd we live in the light of the Resurrection, living that new life. Where? In his body, the Church.
The Good Shepherd is the great and outstanding image of care. But what it means is far more radical than we typically imagine. The care of the Good Shepherd is sacrificial. – He “gives his life for the sheep,” he says. “His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree,” Paul proclaims. Without that there is no joy, no peace, no forgiveness, no life. We participate in the care of the Good Shepherd in his body the Church. How? Through the quality of our lives of prayer and praise, of service and sacrifice, in which we allow the grace of Christ to define us.
The Collect for this Sunday makes this clear. Christ is “both a sacrifice for sin and also an example of godly life”, the victory of life over death and the pattern of our living for God. This is only possible through the forms of our incorporation into his life. Such is the meaning of the sacramental life of the Church which in turn is intended to shape the forms of our living in the world around us.
Christ the Good Shepherd is the image of care, especially for the pastoral ministry of the Church. What is that care? How do we care for one another? It is neither easy nor obvious. It involves a challenge and a commitment, the challenge and the commitment to care itself. Caring enough to care, as it were. It means learning how to appreciate the truth and the dignity of our humanity, especially in the light of the redemption of our humanity signaled so profoundly in the risen Christ. The care of the Good Shepherd is sacrificial care.
At the very least, it means to care for the truth which enfolds and embraces us. Christ the Good Shepherd is both a sacrifice and an example. That sacrifice means the total orientation and giving over of his life to the Father into whose hands he commends his spirit, his spirit that has gathered up the wandering sheep into that love. To learn to live in and through that love is the constant challenge of our lives in his body. Quite simply, there can be no pastoral care without our being rooted in the truth and love of Christ. The struggle is to take hold of that in our lives and to hold ourselves and one another accountable to that truth and love. It can only happen when we want to care, when we want to learn what his care for us really means and when we want to care for one another out of his care for us.
We are the straying sheep. Our challenge is to hear the voice of the Shepherd who calls us into his love and gathers us back to himself.
“For ye were as sheep going astray”
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church
Easter II, 2015