Easter 4

Easter 4 (John 10:11-18) “I am the Good Shepherd.”

Sheep need a shepherd.

Without a shepherd sheep wander, get lost and fall into danger.

When our Heavenly Father looks on the human race He sees a people who are wandering, who are lost, who are in great danger. Our Heavenly Father sends the Holy Spirit to inspire Moses and the Prophets to observe how sheep need a shepherd to guide, guard and protect them.

Moses and the prophets understood the comparison. Human beings are not sheep. Human beings are like sheep in many ways. We need someone to guide us, guard us and to protect us from our own demand and fear. We need someone who can fulfill the role a shepherd fulfills for sheep. We need Jesus.

Our Heavenly Father sent his son, His only Begotten and co-eternal Beloved into the world as the Good Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd cares for the sheep. The Good Shepherd lives with the sheep. The Good Shepherd calls his sheep by name. And, the Good Shepherd lays down his life to protect his sheep even when the sheep willfully abandon the shepherd and fall into danger.

Jesus came into the world of matter, energy, time and space to seek the lost. He left the eternal realm of ineffable love and holiness to enter into a world formed by fear, pride and the will to power. He came in holiness with compassion in the fullness of love.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, came to our planet to seek the lost who willfully and spitefully refuse to be found. He came anyway.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, came to a people who argued incessantly over who was righteous and who was unrighteous, over who was the true Israelite , over who deserved God’s reward and who deserved God’s punishment. He came anyway.
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, came to enter into a personal relationship with individuals who wanted to use him to get what they valued most: wealth and power. He came anyway.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, came to embrace a species which was so lost in separation that they would react to his presence with fear, anger, hate and death. He came anyway.

Jesus came to earth to meet us where we are in all of our pain and pride so that he could find us, rescue us, and transform us in the perfection of love and compassion.
Only the one who unifies divinity with humanity in his own person can truly understand the problem and the solution. Only the one who willingly surrenders his own life to embrace the ultimate separation of death can transform death back into life.

As Jesus is the love of God personified so Jesus is the Life of God made flesh. By his own choice Jesus came to earth to seek the lost who refuse to be found. By his own choice Jesus surrendered all of his divine prerogatives so that he could be fully human in weakness and fully divine in love.

By his own choice Jesus entered into a world that rejected him, abandoned him and killed him. By this one real choice Jesus accomplished what no prophet, priest or king could ever accomplish. Jesus reunified a lost and separated humanity with God in his own person. Jesus transformed death back into life by embracing death.
When Jesus dies on the cross he embraces the very power of death. His embrace is the embrace of infinite and eternal love. In the vast expense of that ocean of love life swallows up death and transforms death back into life.

In Jesus, sin transforms into virtue, death transforms into life, separation transforms into love.

The Good Shepherd our Heavenly Father sent into the world is the Lord of life. He is the Lord of Love. He is Jesus Christ for all people of all nations for all time.