by Vicar Luke Otten
The Shepherding Lamb
1 Peter 2:21-25
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. The text for our sermon today comes from the Epistle reading from 1 Peter chapter 2… Good Shepherd Sunday. It’s the Sunday where every reading speaks about the Lord being our shepherd. It’s also the Sunday we say perhaps the most beloved psalm, Psalm 23. We love that psalm; we love the shepherding imagery. You go to a Roman Catholic church and in their stained-glass windows what do you see? Lovely windows, depicting the life of St. Mary or some random saint you’ve never heard of. But when you go to Lutheran churches with stained glass, and 9 times out of 10 you see at least one window, perhaps the biggest window, of Jesus being the Good Shepherd, with a shepherd’s staff in hand and sheep around his feet and maybe even one that he is carrying around his neck. It’s a beautiful image that we Lutherans adore. “I am the Good Shepherd” (John 10:11) Christ says, and we love it! Christ also says, “I am the door” (John 10:9), but we don’t see any stain glass windows of just a door. Yeah, it’s not quite the same comforting and reassuring image as the Good Shepherd is, is it?
But it’s fitting that we love the shepherd image, we relate to it so well and it’s simple enough to picture. You read Psalm 23 and it’s that ideal idyllic scene. You are the sheep; the Lord is your shepherd. He makes you lie down in green pastures. He leads you to the still waters. You may wander from him with your sin, desiring to forsake him for a time so you can do your own sinful thing. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way” (Is 53:6). Yet, the Lord doesn’t leave you scattered in the wilderness to be devoured by the wolves. For as the Lord says, “Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered… I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured (Ezekiel 34:11-12, 16). The Lord goes out to you, to bring you back into the fold. He knows you by name and so He calls you by name. Calls you to repentance, to return to the still waters of your baptismal graces and have your soul restored by forgiveness. You hear his voice, and you know his voice so you stay where you can hear his voice. You stay a place where you are close enough to him for his protection and to hear his warning cries of danger, which are his caring cries for you to come back and repent if you begin to stray.
And that’s how you ought to live as one who is called by the voice of Good Shepherd, to dwell with him and his flock and to abide by his word. That’s what Peter urges you to do. To live as Christ did. For even in Christ’s life he suffered, yet still did what he was supposed to do and didn’t do what he wasn’t supposed to do. His life was a perfect example “so that you might follow in his steps” (21). Now that may sound like an impossible charge, especially when Peter says next, “He committed no sin (vs 22). Jesus committed no sin, yet we are to follow in his steps? No, way! Impossible! Jesus is true God. He is without sin, we are not.
As much as you would like to be God, you know you aren’t God and you know you will never be God. You aren’t perfect, as your heavenly Father is. You aren’t all powerful and you can’t control everything and sustain everything in the way you would like everything to be sustained. You aren’t all knowing, but you know, that in the fallen flesh of man, you do not do the good you want to do, but the evil you do not want is what you keep on doing. You cannot be God so it’s not worth even trying.
Yet, Peter still says to be like Christ, live as Christ did. But Jesus wasn’t only God. He is, as we confess, both true God and true man. It’s a mystery, beyond our comprehension, but not our confession. Using the imagery of this Sunday, we could also confess that mystery in this way: It’s like a shepherd becoming a sheep for the sheep and their salvation. It’s in Him being a sheep that he shows how a sheep ought to live. Likewise, Jesus became us in the flesh that he may suffer like us, be tempted like us, be under the same law as us, to show us how to truly live a Christian life in this world.
That’s why Peter here so fittingly quotes from Isaiah 53, where Isaiah likens the Messiah to a lamb: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Is 53:7). Jesus came as a lamb to live as a perfect sacrificial lamb so likewise he came as a man to live as a perfect man. In the flesh of man, he lived perfectly. In the flesh of man, he served out his vocation perfectly. In the flesh of man, he accomplished perfectly all for which he was sent, as “‘He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed’” (vs 24). Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, lived a perfectly righteous life on earth that you too may live a righteous life. This is why we can be imitators of Christ. For Christ, in our flesh, takes on our sins and gives us his righteousness. We follow him in his righteousness because he leads us in paths of righteousness, paths that he cleared for us on his journey to the cross as a man.
As St. Peter writes, “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (vs 22-23). Throughout his life and even during his passion, Christ remained sinless. As he was beaten, flogged and mocked, he never once tried to stop his crucifixion from happening or fight back against the ones attacking him. He didn’t speak back or fight back; he just lived his life doing that for which he was sent.
This is the Christ that you should be like, especially him in his sufferings, that’s the example Peter writes to us about. Throughout his life, he opened not his mouth in sinful anger, bitterness, and cursing when he endured slander, ridicule and abandonment, not even in his painful passion did he sin in such ways. He fulfilled his job, his vocation, without sin. So even in the midst of your life and suffering, you shouldn’t cave into sin, that’s what Peter is telling us.
And through the grace of the Lord, you may prevail against sin. Christ lived and suffered in your flesh to give you his righteousness, so you too may suffer in your flesh but with his righteousness. What seemed impossible in your fallen nature, the Lord makes possible for you through his grace and restoration of your humanity. For through faith and aid of the Lord can the flesh resist temptations to sin just as flesh of Jesus did.
Be like him in this way, follow in his steps without reviling, threatening, and deceiving. You may hurt in the flesh, with disease or illness, and your friends may tell you to curse God and die, like Job’s friends told him. But don’t threaten the Lord with your curses but rather follow in the steps of Christ and bear your cross with patience. You may enjoy relaxation so much that it turns to laziness and sloth, and then you begin to forsake the tasks of your vocation. Don’t revile your wife when she asks you to stop watching football and instead fix the leaking sink or play with your children. Man was made to work; work in your station of life as Jesus did. Do what you are supposed to without slacking. You may want to keep drinking but don’t deceive yourself that drunkenness isn’t a sin. Conquer your desires for such sins; lest they led you to sins of intoxication. In the same flesh as you, Jesus did all he was supposed to without succumbing to sin. By the grace of God, may he work that in you too so that you too may live without committing sins against God in your life and your vocation. For just as Christ did so, so you too follow in his steps.
Following Christ in his life as a man is one way that he shepherds you. For he lived his life following the will of the Lord as one in our own flesh to save us but also to lead us as an example of proper humanity. So we follow Jesus Christ, the one who is fully God yet also fully man, as he leads us in all righteousness in our human lives, or if continue with the language of this Sunday: He is the Shepherd, but he also became a sheep to teach us true sheepishness.
Good Shepherd Sunday, it’s the day we are comforted by the Lord reminding us that he’s our shepherd, but how much more comforting it is, when our Lord, our shepherd, became one of us? To live and suffer with us, to show us a holy life and to guide us in his righteousness that we may live as he did. As he keeps watch over our souls, may we forever remain near our shepherd to hear his voice and to follow him. In Jesus’ precious and holy name.
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