“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” – John 10:28
In today’s Gospel reading Jesus refers to we, his children, as His sheep. No, contrary to popular belief, it’s not a “warm & fuzzy” nickname meant to make us feel all cuddly inside.
Spoken to a crowd of folks who actually knew what sheep are actually like, the term would have been properly understood as being one which conveyed an image of His followers as being very naive & vulnerable; even stupid. As such, it probably would have offended most of His listeners.
Fast forward to today. For we Christians it’s the season of Easter. And, like all seasons of the church year, Easter amplifies themes that accompany the Christian life year-round but the primary themes are resurrection & new life. What this means is that things are different now.
Why?
Because the new life of a Christian does not run off into a myriad of directions merely reflecting our plans, dreams and projects; it isn’t merely God swiping sin’s slate clean so we can give life another try on our own terms again. No, the new & authentic Christian life is centered in Jesus.
What I mean by that is to say that whatever dreams & aspirations we may entertain in our old, finite lives here in this old creation must give way & make room for the realization of a new life that is of an entirely different kind. So what does this radically different resurrected life look like?
Well picture it this way: The famous German Lutheran pastor Helmut Thielecke was said to once have commented that God has not entered the world in Christ Jesus only to shut the door of eternity behind him. This is to say, everything, especially the future, no longer depends on us.
Given this truth, we Christians thus confess that the gift of the new life in Christ means confessing a faith that is not & cannot be grounded in ourselves. The very fact of the resurrection of God in Jesus testifies to the fact that eternity is immersed in human history and our personal history never to depart from it or to ever forsake us His lambs for any reason.
The promise we just heard Jesus give to us – to you – in the sermon text you just heard read from John 10:28 is but one sign of this. Indeed, the unconditional promise of election, God’s promise that He will never give you up to the evil forces of sin & death, is what truly separates the Good Shepherds of the Church from the hired hands and wolves.
The Good Shepherds feed the sheep with God’s grace, which is His forgiveness of sins & promise of new life, and the wolves & hired hands allow the demands of the law to devour them by constantly magnifying their sin.
In short, a Good Shepherd grounds your faith in Christ & His promises and the wolves & hired hands try to get you trust in yourself (& in your choices, works, beliefs or emotions). The former ties your future to God in Christ Jesus, the latter to yourself. The difference is night & day.
It also means that there will be a radically new future for you & I because the fulfillment of the future is not simply the culmination of humanity’s or our personal preferred dreams of perfection.
The fulfillment of God’s kingdom will be simply this: God’s bringing about something utterly new and not the coming together of single strands which we collectively weave into a utopian dream.
No, in the cross & resurrection of Christ, the fulfillment of the future was taken out of our hands.
Additionally, God’s personal promise, given to you in your Baptism, that you are His chosen inheritor of the new heaven & earth, sets up both purposes & boundaries for your new life now.
So how exactly does that work in practical terms for you?
Well, since we know the broad parameters of Christ’s new kingdom in sketched in the terms of faith, hope & love, the current purpose for you the Christian & for the Church as a whole must be to fight against the evil powers in this life that would turn hope into despair, turn faith & trust inward on the self or on history, and seek pervert to love into an endless number of misplaced temporal loyalties which are, in the end, nothing more than modern-day idolatry & slavery to sin.
The boundaries of the new kingdom thus also keep you from wandering off into atheistic nihilism which would leave all previous generations in death with zero share in God’s new life & creation.
No, instead of these dead ends, the hallmark of your new life is faith – a faith which reflects your Holy Spirit-given belief & confession of the resurrection of the dead.
This confession is also your Christian witness of hope to all the world – the hope that they too may also one day be, like you are today, in proximity to the fulfillment of God’s promises, IAW His good & gracious will for all.
In other words, as the Spirit moves you, you’ll be the voice of the Good Shepherd to the sheep.
The sheep, like you, will then hear & follow the Good Shepherd’s voice & the weights of time & a sin will have lost their power to crush them into meaninglessness as it has here & now for you.
This is also precisely the faith that Jesus Himself held in His Father as He wept in the garden & hung on the bloody Cross for you. There, Christ, brought forth a new humanity & new you.
Yes, it is true that this is still coming into full fruition in sight. As such, it’s now for you as we heard last week in our reading from 1 John 3:2 – “What [you] will be has not yet appeared….”
Even so, as Christians we don’t believe we’ll be led by each other on paths of our own choosing into a self-made future.
Rather, we’re held in faith now by the One who struggled in this life, as we must – as you must – and who entered into death, as you will, but emerged victorious from it to give you life.
Therefore, the truth is that your future extends beyond the grave into God’s new pastures because you are one of His sheep.
And as Jesus said today the sheep knows the voice of the Shepherd thus you will see with your own eyes the One who has promised this to you: “I give you eternal life, & you will never perish, and no one will snatch you out of my hand.”
Amen.
Bethany Lutheran Church, Covington MI 