The Lord be with you!
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

It’s our congregation’s namesake church holiday! Good Shepherd Sunday has this beautiful Collect of the Day, to help us meditate on our Lord and Savior’s most memorable self-title.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, merciful Father, since You have wakened from death the Shepherd of Your sheep, grant us Your Holy Spirit that when we hear the voice of our Shepherd we may know Him who calls us each by name and follow where He leads; through the same Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.

Acts 2:42-47
Verse 42 summarizes the pulsing heartbeat of the Christian Church. These four activities make us as the Body of Christ tick:
1 continuing in the doctrine, or teaching, that was handed on to us by the Apostles of Jesus,
2 receiving God’s grace in common with all baptized believers,
3 breaking bread in Holy Communion, and
4 praying prayers on our own as well as together with all the saints in the liturgy.
This reading describes precisely how the sheep of God’s flock listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd as He calls each of us by name.

1 Peter 2:19-25
Saint Peter had the prophet Isaiah’s words on his mind as he wrote in this extended sermon to newly baptized believers throughout the scattered exile Diaspora, where persecuted Christians fled to escape the former Holy Land. Christ our Good Shepherd, the Overseer (or bishop) of our souls was the innocent Suffering Servant who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth. He bore our own sins in His body on the tree of the Cross so that we would die to our own sins and live for righteousness—His righteousness that was washed over us to cleanse us in Baptism.

John 10:1-10
In this early section of John chapter 10, we have not yet come to the point where Jesus says plainly, “I am the Good Shepherd.” But already the illustration is setting up so that we are very clear that’s where our Lord is leading. It would also be helpful to read the previous chapter 9, in which Christ heals the young man who had been born blind. Here was a lamb of our Lord’s flock who heard the voice of the Shepherd and not only was granted his physical sight, but was led into the fold of the Church, in which he received eternal salvation. We are the beneficiaries of our Shepherd’s own stated reason for coming: “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

What is the Goodness of our Good Shepherd? Does He use His goodness to teach us how to be more nice to one another? Does His voice give us helpful tips to get through all the ups and downs of life? Jesus here highlights that He is the only true Shepherd, the One who stands in stark contrast to all other so-called paths to God—those other options are not valid means to salvation but can only be called thieves who rob, kill and destroy life. Jesus, on the other hand, gave us life in abundance, for He is the true Door to the sheepfold of Divine paradise. Not only do we have the hope of being in heaven someday, but then after that, after we have been wakened from death following the pattern of Christ’s own resurrection, we also have the certain promise of resurrection of our bodies and the life of the world to come, as we confess in the Nicene Creed.

Hymn 709:
The King of love my Shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am His,
and He is mine forever!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Please feel free to leave a message, a question, a thought, a prayer request. I’d love to hear what you think.
Happy Good Shepherd Sunday!
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia.
God bless you!

Pr. Stirdivant