Sermon for the Second Sunday after Easter
Ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd
and Bishop of your souls
“All we like sheep have gone astray,” the sentence from Isaiah (53.6) for Morning Prayer on Good Friday reminds us (BCP, p. 1). “We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,” the General Confession bids us pray (BCP, p. 4 & 19). Such are the ways of our being “returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.” God “governs us as masters of ourselves,” Aquinas notes, but that presupposes a deep awareness on our part about human sinfulness. We can only be masters of ourselves through divine governance, the one who rules us as the Shepherd of our souls, the one who returns us to the radical truth of ourselves and of our humanity precisely because we have erred and strayed and are lost to ourselves.
Such is the significance of the Gospel of Christ as the Good Shepherd. We have a far too sentimental and emotional attachment to this concept, I fear, and often fail to recognise its radical meaning. Yet it is there before our eyes and speaks to the darkness and the dangers of our current world whether it is Covid-19 or the rampage of mindless madness in the mass shooting in Nova Scotia which we are suffering through with broken hearts. It speaks to the darkness of our hearts and minds.
We can’t possibly grasp its significance without realising how deeply embedded it is in the Christian understanding of the Resurrection, on the one hand, and in the transformation of images in the Hebrew Scriptures, on the other hand. The Second Sunday in Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd belongs inescapably to the doctrine of the Resurrection, to the fruit of the Passion of Christ, to the radical meaning of God’s love for our wounded and broken humanity, and so to our province of the broken-hearted.
Jesus identifies himself as the Good Shepherd. He tells us that the Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Such is sacrifice, such is love, God’s love for us. “Herein is love,” for God’s love for us is the ground of our love towards one another. But the background images from the Hebrew Scriptures are needed for a fuller understanding. Principal among those is the 23rd Psalm, the Shepherd’s Psalm. “The Lord shepherds me” or “the Lord is my Shepherd” or “the Lord rules me,” Dominus regit me, as the name of one of the familiar hymn tunes puts it. As Aquinas notes, “he who shepherds, rules.” The real rule and governance in our lives is Christ the Good Shepherd. It is one of the dominant images of Resurrection love.
