Bible Text: St John 10:11–16 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen. This Good Shepherd Gospel you just heard is an Easter Gospel. Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” And then He says these precious words, “I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again.” That’s what we celebrate this Easter season – that Jesus had the power to take up His life again.
But what does it mean that He has the power to lay it down? Power to die? What kind of a power is that? If there is anything that human beings are one hundred percent successful at, it’s dying. Why say, “I have power to lay down my life?”
Because it’s not so easy for God to die. God can’t die. When we talk about God as almighty, when the Lord appears to Abraham and says, “I am God almighty,” when we say with the Psalmist, “Great is our Lord, and mighty in power,” we aren’t saying God can do anything. There are things He can’t do. He can’t sin. Because He’s holy. He can’t not be, because He is Being, is existence, and the source of it. That should mean that for God to die is impossible for Him, that He can’t die. But He does.
We are confessing the greatest and most beautiful mystery imaginable when we say, “Who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man. And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.” We are confessing that the eternal God who cannot die became a man to die for us. Notice in the creed who the who is, who suffers under Pontius Pilate, it’s the God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made,” He is the who, who for us men and for our salvation dies a man on the cross. The Son of God didn’t use and then discard a human body. He became a man, so that whatever happens to Him as a man happens to Him truly and really as God. And He died. God did the impossible.
This is why Jesus says those beautiful words, “I have power to lay it down.” The resurrection is not a surprise. He is life. How can life not live? His death is the surprise, the great mystery. It’s the mystery of the Love of God for us sinners. That for us He does the impossible.
You know what the Jews do when Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd? This is easily the most popular image of Jesus there is – when I was growing up, we sat on the left side of the church, front row, and then the first two rows as the family got bigger, and right in front of us, was this huge painting, beautiful, of Jesus carrying a lamb on His shoulders. And that image is forever imprinted on my mind. Besides the crucifixion, besides Jesus on the cross, no image of Jesus captivates the minds of Christians more. But do you know what the Jewish leaders did when Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd”? They picked up stones. To stone Him. Why?
Because they knew their Bibles. And we should too. Look at your Old Testament lesson. Who is the Good Shepherd? “Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I, I myself, will search for my sheep and will seek them out.’” That’s as emphatic as you get. God will do it. He will personally do it. I, I myself. Add to that the most famous Psalm, Psalm 23, which all those Jews knew, “The LORD is my shepherd.” And here is Jesus saying, “I am the Good Shepherd.” So Jesus says to them, as they pick up stones, to throw at Him. “Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me?” And the Jews answered and said to Him, “For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.” The Jews knew what the Arians and JWs won’t admit. The obvious. If Jesus is the Good Shepherd, He is the Lord Almighty.
That’s Jesus. What makes Him the Good Shepherd? This is it. God has come, has taken on our humanity, has taken on Himself the sin that kills, and lets it kill Him.
This is why He calls us His own. There are two words for “my own” in Greek, possessive personal adjectives we call them, and both are used, repeatedly, here by Jesus. Nothing is more emphatic. My sheep, my own sheep: we belong to Him.
And this is what distinguishes Him from every other shepherd, everyone and anything else, that would try and claim ownership over us. He actually owns us. We belong to Him.
We belong to Him because He became a man for us. We belong to Him because He bore our sins. We belong to Him because He died our death. We belong to Him because He put His name on us in our Baptism. We belong to Him because He speaks the word of everlasting life to us. We belong to Him because He feeds us with His body and His blood.
This is an Easter Gospel. Easter is about life. And He says to us, “I have come that [you] may have life, and have it to the full.”
I’m sure some charlatan preachers, the kind Jesus describes as wolves and thieves and hirelings, have used these words to say that Jesus is promising you earthly riches and success and happiness if only you give yourself to Him and give lots of money to them. And as distasteful and demonic as that teaching is (the “health/wealth Gospel”), every false teaching is the corruption of a truth. And the truth is that Jesus does promise you the abundant life now. Not only in heaven. And He does promise it for your body and not only for your soul. When He says that He has come to give you life, and life to the full, He means it. He speaks as the One who was raised bodily from the grave, the God who now has a human body and will to all eternity. The promise of Life refers to your body as much as your soul. And when you enjoy this life in its absolute fullness, it will be in a resurrected body: as He is, so will we who trust in Him be.
But the promise is also to people worrying about money and health, who are praying to Him because of sickness and pain and anxiety that debilitates them, or who don’t know how they’re going to pay for food or home or clothes or school. He has come to give you life to the full. If you hold Jesus in your heart, you hold more than the heathen who has billions in the bank. You hold the One who created the world, the One whose blood testifies that He will take care of your every need. If I had this or that, if I had a million dollars in the bank, then I could relax, then I could know my needs will be taken care of. No, if I have Christ, even if I have nothing else, then I know all my needs will be taken care of. The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. I shall not lack. Faith has shouted that for thousands of years and it has never been disappointed. Bring it to Him in prayer. Listen to His voice. Work hard in whatever calling He has placed you, and He will take care of your body and fill all your needs until the day He takes your soul to Himself in heaven and you wait for the resurrection of the dead.
The promise of life to the full is for the Now, for the present, too because you have Him now. Why does He insist so much, so often, that you are HIS. Because you weren’t. You never belonged to yourself. That’s the grossest lie of the devil. That you belong to yourself. It’s obviously not true. If you belonged to yourself then you’d keep yourself alive, but you can’t. If you belonged to yourself, you’d be able to do whatever you wanted, but you can’t. Only God belongs to Himself. You belonged to sin, and you know the bondage of that, you know what it feels like when you don’t and can’t do what you want, because sin lives in you. You want to be free from anxiety, but you can’t, you want to pray more, but your thoughts wander to selfish concerns, you want, but you can’t. That is because sin owned you, and the devil, and death. But Jesus says you belong to HIM now, and that means nothing else can claim you. If your conscience accuses you, like ten thousand witnesses, judging and pointing out your unworthiness, Jesus says, My sheep are mine. I give My life for them. I rose Conqueror of their sin and death. If your conscience accuses you, God is greater than your conscience, greater than sin, greater than death and the devil, and He has accepted the sacrifice of His Son for your sins, they are blotted out forever. And in their place He gives life as children of God.
You are not simply sheep. You are His sheep. That’s the stress. His. His Sheep listen to His voice. It’s how we live. He knows us, and we know Him, because we listen to Him. And if our sinful flesh doesn’t want to hear Him, we drown it again, and rise again to the life our Baptism gives us, a life of listening to the voice of Jesus, following Him everywhere, until His voice calls us to heaven and calls our bodies from the grave to stand with Him in righteousness and purity forever, even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. Alleluia. Christ is risen!