“Lamb or Laughing Hyena?”
Saint John 10. 11-16
Misericordias Domini: 18 April Anno Domini 2010
Fr Watson S.S.P.
Your good shepherd isn't some country hick; some rugged mountain man or hillbilly. Your good shepherd isn't an employee, hired hand, or drifter who's working with livestock because he can't do much of anything else. He's not "a" shepherd He is THE Shepherd. And He is good. "Why do you call me good" He once asked a man, "there is only One Who is Good, i.e. God" He made it clear. Yes, of course; He was testing that unknown questioner, leading Him (like The Shepherd) to the conclusion that He, the Rabbi from Nazareth was GOD. You hear Him-this morning! Hear Him for He says: "I AM." It is I AM Who is your pastor, THE Good Shepherd.
Be the sheep that you are and do not chafe under the simplicity and directness of this designation. If God calls you sheep, accept it in the spirit of the Holy Spirit. When you rebel against His makings you fall into the trap laid by the dragon, that ancient enemy of old. Your fallen nature seeks to reject the humble and basic version one of the flock and instead seeks to update and re-image, with a vision of the heroic horse, the lone fierce tiger, or the business and group-think of the wolf pack. But if you refuse your Shepherd's will for you, His will that you accept your status, calling, and vocation to be His sincere and weak sheep, then you will be nothing but a laughing imbecilic hyena.
There is no greater joy than to belong, to be a part of a perfect whole, to be in a loving family. And to be sure, the Lord uses family language and feasting/eating words quite a bit too. But there is just something about the sheepfold reality.
Embrace it by the Spirit, and revel in its safety and security. Be the lamb and sheep you have been pre-destined to be.
The Christ of God is your Pastor and you lack nothing. He makes you to lie down in green pastures. Be a sheep and do so. Stop grilling Him about whether it's Kentucky bluegrass or rye; whether it's Kelly green or Hunter green. The Shepherd would not feed you on anything that you should not be eating. He gives you His body and His blood as your provender; you are fed at the manger, and upon THAT which has laid in the manger since the beginning. The Pastor leads you beside the still waters. The storm on Galilee has been silenced and calmed. His Word--- The word "IT IS FINISHED" makes the roaring breakers become the calm surface of the cool, deep, and refreshing font! Stop taking issue with Him about whether this baby in Mauritania or or that poor soul in Sri Lanka or Anchorage is saved or not saved, and give glory that YOU have been called and washed and sealed! You are safe from devlish drowning as long as you remain in His ark-His guarded flock of Grace. Stop badgering Him that "this" song or "that" song doesn't accompany the rite of washing, or that the rubrics were different in 1615 than in 1540 and that the Church Orders of Brandenburg (or for that matter of the famous confessional pastor you all know) use a different agenda for Baptisms! He gives you the crystal pure water from the ROCK, from His very side, the gash of GOD, to drink down great deep drafts from!
Sheep are supposed to be sheep, not monkeys with typewriters banging away in a cacophony of self-important confusion trying to write the works of William Shakespeare … or to find fault in the works of Francis Pieper.
It is not a quiz show or the Q&A after a lecture hall speech. It is THE Good Shepherd, the GOD PASTOR using His staff and + His rod to keep you safe and to rescue you.
Jesus gave His life for you. If you are His sheep, then that Life is now yours in all its fullness. Stop treating Him like a weekend hireling, a two-hour a Sunday obligation of "your" obedience, and let Him be your Pastor during the entire week of your pasturage. Hear and heed His hirelings when they feed you His doctrine and His hard sayings.
Stop trying to say good and nice things about the predators who have already infiltrated your "larger" flock and who are on the periphery of your local flocks' circle seeking to gain an even greater closeness to your fellow sheep. Cease deluding yourself that the enemies of THE SHEPHERD's blood bought lambs are not in your midst, and that they are not being duplicitous when they seek to have you practice patience, and have endless dialogues and campaigns, and to optimistically keep searching for the "right candidates," and never to be precipitous without the correct orderly measures, and, and, and…all the while they get closer to you to begin the kill and the wolfen feeding.
In south-eastern European folklore, the shape-shifters known as lycanthropes were truly were-wolves…they looked and acted like men, kindly men, spiritual men, religious men, until they revealed themselves to be monsters who only slew and slaughtered. The only defense against such a hellish beast in fable was silver. The only defense against the real and approaching beast today, the one cunningly attacking your communion, your sheepfold, is the Shepherd Himself. He is not silver, but He is brass. He is that brass serpent, the worm for such a worm as you, on the high lifted pole. The crucifix (Christ Crucified), and the Pastors who follow it, who preach it, and who lead you with it, is what defeats the wolf. Jesus stands today, in His Word and Sacraments, against the wolf, all the wolves, even as He stood on that Hill of Golgotha and faced the real Fenris Wolf, the serpent Satan two millennia ago.
How can you follow "THE" Good Shepherd as He seeks to enlarge His flock of faith with all of the other lost and frightened sheep, wherever they may be, if you are so frightened and hell-bent on staying with the comfort of your past, your tradition, your level of ease and doings, that you fail, or refuse, to follow His STAFF (+) and His voice, when He beckons you to move one. His sheepfold is NOT the once eaten-over and now thread-bare land to which you may have grown far too accustomed. His flock is wherever He is. And He is moving on now in Word purely preached and in Holy Sacraments rightly administered. Hear Him. Follow Him.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost