“For ye were as sheep going astray”
The Collect for Easter 2 captures beautifully the deep truth of these Eastertide readings. Christ is both “a sacrifice for sin” and “an example of godly life”. They are two of the three tropes of the atonement, our being at one with God. Christ is the victor – the one who triumphs over sin and death – but Christ is the atoning sacrifice for us and Christ is the example for us in our lives. Today is also the Feast of St. Philip and St. James the Apostles, and those Apostles, the readings for which equally complement the idea of the interplay of the Passion and the Resurrection particularly in terms of the Farewell Discourse of Jesus. But the image of the Good Shepherd is especially rich and poignant.
The earliest images of the crucifixion depict Christ as King, robed in royal garments and wearing a crown of gold. It is known as the Christus Rex, Christ the King who “reigns and triumphs from the tree” as the great Passiontide hymn of Venantius Fortunatus says (Vexilla Regis prodeum, c. 569). But Christ is “a sacrifice for sin,” as the Collect puts it, the sacrificial victim, the one who bears our sins in his body on the Cross in his Passion. That then leads to the images of the crucifixion that emphasize Christ’s suffering on the Cross, Christ as sacrifice who identifies with human suffering, and as such he is “an example of godly life.” Christ the Victor, Christ the atoning Sacrifice, Christ the holy example. These three images of the doctrine of the atonement are inescapably united and intertwined, inseparable from each other, in all the various images of the crucifixion. But they also belong to the image of the Good Shepherd. The images of the crucifixion and Christ the Good Shepherd go together.
In their interrelation they provide a strong counter to the fragmentation of our world, which is the true meaning of the Babel of our times. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd offers a true and great corrective to our brokenness, our fragmentation and divisiveness because it is the great image of our being gathered to God. For it is at once an image of the Passion as well as the Resurrection. We forget this since the image of Christ the Good Shepherd is so familiar, so comforting, so common that we take it for granted. We forget its radical meaning which Peter’s Epistle, which is part of what was read at the Matins of Holy Saturday, already hints at and which the Gospel so completely shows.
What does it all mean? Simply this. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd is at once an image of the Passion and the Resurrection that gathers us into the life of God. We overlook the significance of this story being read on the Second Sunday after Easter in conjunction with SS. Philip & James with its Gospel reading which highlights the Eastertide theme “because I go to the Father” and which connects to the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. It is inescapably a Resurrection image and story; that is its truth and its comfort. But it is centered inescapably on the Passion. “The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep,” Jesus tells us. In other words, the Good Shepherd is the Lamb of God who lays down his life for the sheep.
Christ gathers us to himself on the Cross in his Passion; Christ gathers us to himself in his Resurrection. And so it is not by accident that this story is most often read immediately after the Easter Octave. It signals the gathering of all things to God in Christ: “because I go to the Father,” in the Gospel reading for SS. Philip and James anticipates what will be the recurring phrase of the last several Sundays of Eastertide. His arms on the Cross embrace the entirety of our sinful creation. His Resurrection gathers us into his arms as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands,” as the old gospel spiritual puts it, had we the willingness to see and learn, to rejoice and be glad.
This is not about comfort and safety in our modern terms. Paradoxically, for an image that seems to signal care and comfort, it is actually about the deeper sense of care as strength, as challenge and commitment. This is where the third trope of the doctrine of the atonement comes into play. This is our example of godly life. Christ’s sacrifice is meant to move and rule in us. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd as such is really a bit more like “Drop kick me Jesus through the goalposts of life” (Paul Craft/ Bobby Bare, 1976), if you will pardon the image, than it is about “gentle Jesus come and squeeze us”, the Good Shepherd morphed into a teddy bear. The Resurrection stories, as we have seen, set us in motion towards God and one another. Such is the true meaning of ourselves as persons, as individuals freed from the prisons of our minds and our hearts as buried in ourselves and our self-obsessions and narcissisms which endlessly divide us from one another.
The image of Christ the Good Shepherd as seen in the light of the Resurrection is not a static image but sets us in motion towards one another in love and compassion. What we behold is what is meant to move in us as “an example of godly life” even in the midst of a fragmented and divided world.
The radical meaning of the image of Christ the Good Shepherd is the idea of the one who gathers us to himself through his sacrifice and triumph over our sins and so bids us to act out of that same quality of intense love and care. We are the sheep who have gone astray but who “are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls”; in short, we gathered into the care of the one who has true oversight of our lives. We are once again recalled to the radical truth of God as essential life opened to view in both the Passion and the Resurrection.
The radical care of Christ the Good Shepherd is the care that challenges and strengthens us in our care and compassion for one another. It is the complete counter to the culture of victimhood and revenge which scatters and divides us, leaving us like “sheep going astray.” Here we are gathered to God in Christ, gathered to the love which never ends, the love which sustains and perfects, the love which embraces us in love, come what may in our fragmented and fractured world.
“For ye were as sheep going astray”
Fr. David Curry
Easter 2 & SS Philip & James, 2022