Sung Eucharist and Solemn High Mass - Sunday 22nd April, 2018

Transcription

1 Page 1 of 6 A sermon preached by the Reverend Antony Weiss Christ Church St Laurence The Fourth Sunday of Easter Sung Eucharist and Solemn High Mass - Sunday 22nd April, 2018 Acts 4: 5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. AMEN. From the Holy Gospel according to St John we read, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (John 10:11 NRSV) About a month ago, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, had these words to say to his nation... Lieutenant-colonel Arnaud Beltrame died serving the country to which he had already given so much. In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero. And in the words of Beltrame s brother Cédric, Beyond his job, he gave his life for someone else, for a stranger... He was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing... if we don t describe him as a hero, I don t know what you need to do to be a hero. At 44, a committed Christian in the Roman Catholic tradition, Beltrame swapped places with a female hostage when an Islamic State-inspired gunman attacked a supermarket in southern France where he was shot in the throat by the gunman, only to die from his injuries early the following morning.

2 Page 2 of 6 With this example of self-sacrifice and with Easter being only three weeks ago and as we now turn ourselves to ANZAC Day there is a resonating theme (reflected in today s readings) of the sacrifice of the innocent in order that another may live. In our Gospel reading from John Chapter 10, Jesus is God s shepherd par excellence, the model or ideal shepherd (ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός 1 ) the Good Shepherd being mentioned twice (verses 11 and 14). Jesus is the shepherd who knows, calls, and leads His sheep and, above all, He lays down His life for them. The theme of sacrifice and the commandment to show love for another in doing so is echoed in the reading from 1 John 3, We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. (1Jn 3: 16) And of course we have also read/heard sung what is easily the most recognised portion of Scripture, Psalm 23. I think we d all agree that this Psalm may well be considered the most-beloved, most-sung, most-prayed, and most-studied poem of the Psalter! Well back to the Gospel reading, the preceding verses of John 10 (verses 7-10) depict Jesus as the gate for the sheep i.e. the only gate by which His chosen flock can enter His sheepfold to enjoy eternal life in all its fullness,...i came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (Jn 10: 10b) 1 In the original language of the New Testament, καλός or good has more force suggesting a nobility or worth so Jesus is the noble shepherd, the worthy shepherd. We are given the reason why in the first verse of our Gospel reading,...the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (Jn 10: 11b)

3 Page 3 of 6 Now the text turns to portray Jesus as the the Good Shepherd, a highly familiar depiction of Our Lord, one, perhaps due to its familiarity, that may be cursorily glanced over. For us the image of shepherds is rather removed from our modern western lives. I remember going to Libya early in 2011 just as the Arab Spring was hotting up and travelling by road from Cyrenaica (whence came Simon the Cyrene) to Tobruk (where 77 years ago more than 1500 Australians, the Rats of Tobruk, held out against Erwin Rommel and the Nazi Afrika Korps for eight long months during World War II in the scorching Libyan Desert). Driving though those arid lands we passed a plethora of young shepherd boys out alone in the desert heat tending their fathers precious herds of scraggy sheep, just as their forebears have done for a few thousand years, but would they be expected to lay down their lives for their flocks? So these images, recent world events such as the incident in Carcassonne and ANZAC Day have me thinking more about Jesus as the Shepherd and what laying down one s life for another looks like for us today. I then have been thinking more specifically, how do we separate Jesus from the others who have made the ultimate sacrifice throughout the course of history? Just like the example of the policeman Arnaud Beltrame who gave himself up for a hostage secretly leaving his mobile phone on so that his fellow officers outside could hear what was happening inside so that they knew to storm the supermarket straight away when they heard gunshots? Or the Rats of Tobruk along with the 2,282 Commonwealth servicemen of the Second World War buried or commemorated in Tobruk War Cemetery and the 3,651 Commonwealth servicemen War buried or commemorated another 25 kilometres away in Knightsbridge War Cemetery whose graves I meandered through on my visit to Libya?

4 Page 4 of 6 To help with this we could consider Jesus as the God s shepherd par excellence in a three tiered way. Firstly, Jesus as the Good Shepherd. The Gospel tells us He is the owner of the sheep who surrenders His life to save them (verses 11, 15, 17 and 18). It goes on to reveal how Jesus as the Good shepherd protects His sheep from danger, unlike the hired hand who sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away (Jn 10 :12-13). And why? Because unlike the hired hand, Jesus as the good shepherd owns His sheep and deeply cares for them. Jesus identifies His sheep intimately, verse 14,...I know my own and my own know me. But furthermore, He welcomes all, embraces all whom He gathers as a single flock, verse 16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. Here Jesus is referring to Gentiles being welcomed into the one eternal covenant with Jews as the fulfilment of His Messianic prophecy with God s redemptive plan having been revealed first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. So then, reflecting on these examples, again I ask us all to consider what is it about Christ s sacrificial act that sets Him apart from all the other good shepherds who have paid the supreme sacrifice and who may fill a number of these attributes at least? Well here we turn to the final two verses for the passage, verses 17 and 18 where Jesus sets out the relationship between the Father and the Son. This relationship is a more fundamental one than that of the shepherd to the sheep i.e. Jesus to His flock meaning His relationship in love towards us. How? The love of the Father for the Son, and the love of the Son for the Father, is ongoing prior to the love God shows for the world. It is only by this union that

5 Page 5 of 6 our salvation could ever be made possible by God s Son, Jesus, by the act that He rose bodily from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. We can only be made complete in everything good by the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus by the blood of the eternal covenant, the great shepherd of the sheep (Hebrews 13: 20). Furthermore the weight of the grace of Jesus as the Great Shepherd is made all the more incredible by the fact that Jesus acts both voluntarily and at His father s direction. Take a look at the final verse where we read that He willingly surrenders His life of His own accord. No other act of laying down one s life for another has this force. Jesus the Good Shepherd becomes the Great Shepherd for the redemption of His lost sheep through the relationship He has with the Father... the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God, Begotten, not made, Being of one substance with the Father... So finally the top tier of Jesus as the shepherd will be fulfilled at the παρουσία, the Second Coming, when Jesus returns as, the Chief Shepherd, the judge and redeemer when there will be one flock, one shepherd with the faithful believers of every age, as His under-shepherds. We are to wait in expectant joy...because the Son of Man will come at an hour when [we] do not expect him. (Luke 12:40) and as Peter writes, And when the chief Shepherd appears, [repentant believers] will receive the unfading crown of glory... (1 Pet 5:4) for there is salvation in no-one else, for there is no other name under heaven...by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

6 Page 6 of 6 Friends, the incomprehensible sacrificial deaths and the laying down of a life for another is part of the treachery, accidents or so called fate of this transient world, something we will continue to muse and reflect upon, perhaps more so this week in which we observe ANZAC Day. But in doing so, let s remember that Jesus, the Chief Shepherd is Lord over all. Out of His love divine, His love excelling and by His obedience to the Father s plan for redemption as revealed to us by His Spirit through His Word and sacramentally through the waters of Baptism and the Lord s Supper we can be certain that...god is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything (1 Jn 3:20) Let us believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us (1 Jn 3:23) until that day when all of us who put their trust in Him are called home or when the Great Shepherd returns, with the full assurance that the Lord is our Shepherd and therefore we can lack nothing for He will feed and lead us beside the waters of comfort having prepared table for us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death following us all the days of our lives until that time we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Ps 23). Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἁλληλούϊα Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Ἁλληλούϊα AMEN