God’s grace, peace and mercy be with
you. My sermon title is Celebrating Earth
Day, Celebrating Easter. My focus is our Gospel. Let us pray. Heavenly
Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced
when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now that our feet are within your gates, we
rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds
and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most
Holy Trinity. Amen.
2018 is the first time since 1945
that Ash Wednesday coincided with Valentine’s Day and Easter with April Fool’s
Day. Some people exchanged Valentine’s treats before receiving their ashes, and
others pranked their friends as they celebrated the Resurrection. Easter on
April Fool’s Day is fitting, because Jesus played one of the biggest jokes on
the world that killed him by rising from the dead. However, unlike 1945, Good
Shepherd Sunday also coincides with another secular celebration, Earth Day. No
joke, but a reason to celebrate; and so, let me lay out this sermon by looking
at Celebrating Earth Day and Celebrating Easter.
First, Celebrating Earth Day. We all
enjoy celebrations. Whether we are celebrating the birth of a child or
Christmas, a wedding or a graduation, Thanksgiving or Easter, we enjoy the
moment. To celebrate means to acknowledge a significant or happy day or event
with a social gathering or enjoyable activity.
Celebrate comes from the Latin word celebratus meaning much frequented, kept
solemn or famous. It also means to publish, sing praises of and practice often.
In the 1550s, it generally meant to commemorate or honor with demonstrations of
joy. Our demonstrations of joy include singing Happy Birthday. Last month, my
family gathered to sing that song to me, and last weekend, we sang Happy
Birthday to our older grandson.
Today, people are celebrating the
birthdays of footballer Marshawn Lynch, actor Jack Nicholson and Duck Dynasty’s
Willie Robertson. Apart from birthdays, later this week, some will celebrate
Administrative Professionals Day.
In 1970, a few people celebrated the
original Earth Day, and today, people in 193 countries celebrate it. The first
Earth Day celebrations took place in two thousand colleges and universities,
roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities
across the United States. It brought 20 million Americans out into the spring
sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform. Earth
Day is the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a
billion people annually. Environmental groups sought to make Earth Day into a
day of action to change human behavior and provoke policy changes. They even
have an anthem sung to the tune of Ode to Joy.
Today, Earth Day is a recognized
secular holiday. It does not enjoy the notoriety of Independence Day or Labor
Day but ranks with Cinco de Mayo and Ground Hog Day. Yet, my point is not to
extol the virtues of secular environmentalism, but to tie the celebration of
the environmental movement to our celebration of Easter. And so, I move to my
second point, Celebrating Easter.
Easter is more than a Sunday. It is
a Season. The Season gives us time to reflect upon Christ’s Resurrection. It
gives us time to ponder death swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15: 54-56), how
the power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to you today (Eph
1:15-23), and how the Resurrection of Jesus is a precursor to your own
resurrection. The Season affords us an opportunity to view Jesus’ words and
deeds through the prism of His Resurrection. Today, the Fourth Sunday of Easter
or Good Shepherd Sunday is our opportunity to understand Jesus’ compassion for
all people as well as all creation.
Our passage falls between the
narratives of Jesus restoring sight to the man born blind and raising Lazarus
from the dead. The structure of these passages is important because in chapter
9, John wrote of Jesus giving sight to the man born blind and the blindness of
the Pharisees. Chapter 10 opens with five verses of Jesus speaking of the door and
the sheepfold before He retells his parable to the Pharisees who failed to
understand it. In fact, Jesus’ original words are directed against the
Pharisees whom he accused of being blind (9:40-41). His parable kept outsiders
in the dark and disciples in the know. In his time, Jesus aimed his words at
the Pharisees, but by the time John wrote the gospel, he aimed Jesus’ words at
Christians who introduced human shepherds (pastors) who seemed to rival the
claims of Christ.”[1]
Today’s passage opens with Jesus
stating that he is the Good Shepherd. God, himself the shepherd of his people,
would choose a shepherd for them in the messianic age. We read in chapter 23 of
Jeremiah, “I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where
I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be
fruitful and multiply.”[2]
In Ezekiel 34, the prophet proclaims, “For thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, I
myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.”[3]
Ezekiel is attractive to John
because in chapter 34, people “know” God. “They shall know that I am the LORD
their God with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people,
declares the Lord GOD. And you are my sheep, human sheep of my pasture, and I
am your God, declares the Lord GOD.”[4]
To “know” is not merely the conclusion of an intellectual process but the fruit
of experience, a personal contact. In John 14, when Jesus promised the Holy
Spirit, he said, “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in
me, and I in you.”[5]
In our chapter today, Christ asserts
he is that good shepherd that people will know through his words and deeds.
Unlike politically-ambitioned messianic pretenders,[6]
Jesus will tend to his flock, gather the lambs in his arms, carry them in his
bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.[7]
In short, Jesus is the Good Shepherd fulfilling Scripture.
Here, good does not simply mean
professional or skilled at a craft, like dentistry or medicine, writing code or
baking cupcakes. Rather, good means ideal, model or noble. Unlike the bad
shepherd who lets the wolves eat the sheep, Jesus dies for them, the ultimate
act of love demonstrated by the Good Shepherd.
Now, other passages throughout the gospels
speak of Jesus as a shepherd. In Mark, chapter 6, when Jesus took his disciples
away to rest and people sought to see him, we read, “When he went ashore he saw
a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep
without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.”[8]
There, Jesus fed the 5,000.
In Luke 15, Jesus told this parable:
“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not
leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost,
until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders,
rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his
neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was
lost.’”[9]
In Matthew’s Final Judgment scene,
we hear, “Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate
people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And
he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.”[10]
Yet, it is John’s image of Jesus the
Good Shepherd that has endured centuries and cultures. This is because of the
relationship we read between Jesus and his Father and his friendship with his
disciples. John recorded this relationship in chapter 15, where Jesus said, “This
is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love
has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are
my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for
the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you
friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”[11]
So, vv 14-15 of today’s Gospel are analogous
to Jesus’ relationship to His Father and his friends: “I am the good shepherd.
I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the
Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” And the conclusion of today’s
passage reminds us of the relationship between God the Father and His Son, “For
this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it
up again.”
Early Christianity emphasized the
fact that Jesus offered his life in willing obedience to God. Paul wrote, “He
humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a
cross.”[12]
Hebrews reminds us that “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through
what he suffered.”[13]
John emphasized this theme of love between Father and Son and the sovereign
freedom of Christ’s death. That freedom is evident in the fact that unlike
humans condemned to mortality unless they receive life from Christ, Christ can
“take up his life again.” The stress on the fact that Christ offers his life
for the sheep should make it clear that John did not interpret Christ taking up
his life again as never suffering death. At the same time, John also guarded
against the misrepresentation that Jesus’ death is the victory of his enemies.
It is likely that Johannine Christians found their opponents arguing that Jesus
could never have had the unity with the Father that he claimed or been the
source of life for humans if he himself was executed among the lowest
criminals.[14] But
he was executed among the lowest criminals, and yet, he rose, which is why we
celebrate Easter. Christ is risen, alleluia!
We celebrate Easter because Christ
is risen, and his Resurrection means many things for us, primarily the
forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Pastor Travis Berg of Latimer, Iowa,
wrote recently, “Indeed, the Lutheran Confessions
are peppered with references to our Lord’s resurrection. But, surprisingly, not
much is written defending or explaining Christ’s resurrection. It is assumed.
The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross receives the spotlight, since the
article of justification was at stake.
However, there is one beautiful passage concerning Christ’s
resurrection for us. The Formula of Concord, reads: “We also believe, teach,
and confess that it was not a mere man who suffered, died, was buried,
descended to hell, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and was raised to
God’s majesty and almighty power for us. But it was a man whose human nature
has such a profound, indescribable union and communion with God’s Son that it
is one person with Him.”[15]
He goes on to relate the Resurrection and the Incarnation,
concluding, “Why do we speak of the incarnation in conjunction with Christ’s
resurrection? During the Easter season, it is incredibly comforting for us
Christians to hear that God not only died for us, but also rose for our
justification.[16]
Justification allows us to live free
from the bondage and mental anguish of guilt, sin and condemnation. It means
that we live the Resurrection. And that means that we do not lie buried in the
tomb of our sins, evil habits and dangerous addictions. Living the Resurrection
gives us the Good News that no tomb can hold us down – not the tomb of despair,
discouragement, doubt or even death. Instead, we live joyful and peaceful lives,
constantly experiencing the real presence of the Risen Lord in all the events
of our lives. It means my life is captured in this psalm verse: “This is the
day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.”[17]
Friends, this is the day the Lord
has made, rejoice and be glad. Celebrate this day. Celebrate this day and every
day because of Him who rose for you. Celebrate Easter daily by following the
Risen Lord, the Good Shepherd. Live your life as He lived His. Love the Father
as the Son loved Him. Be willing to lay down your life for others for He laid
down His life for you.
Friends, as we wait for the Good
Shepherd to gather us one last time into eternal life, remain faithful to Him in
words and deeds of prayer, and as you do, may the peace of God that surpasses
all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1]
John 10:16. Brown, 348.
[2]
Jeremiah 23:3.
[3]
Ezekiel 34:11.
[4]
Ezekiel 34:30-31.
[5]
John 14:20.
[6]
See John 10:8.
[7]
See Jeremiah 40.
[8]
Mark 6:34.
[9]
Luke 15:4-7.
[10]
Matthew 25:32-33.
[11]
John 15:12-15.
[12] Philippians
2:8.
[13]
Hebrews 5:8.
[14] The
New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 968.
[15]
Kolb, 511.
[16] https://lutheranreformation.org/theology/resurrection-lutheran-confessions/
[17]
Psalm 118:24.
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