“The Heart of the Shepherd, the Wound of the World”

A Sermon for the Third Sunday After Trinity

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

INTRODUCTION

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, friends new and old, faithful seekers and long-journeying pilgrims: welcome home, to St. Alopen’s Church, a lamp of the Ancient Church of the West here in East Asia.

Here, in this house of prayer, we gather not as those who have arrived, but as those still being found. In the shadow of towering cities and the quiet temples of old traditions: in the midst of Confucian ethics, Buddhist contemplation, Taoist stillness, Shinto beauty, the mandates of Communism, the myths of Scientism, the wounds of Socialism, and the customs of Folk Religion. We have heard the voice of the Shepherd calling us by name. And we have come together to worship the One, True God.

In this parish, planted like mustard seed in foreign soil, we seek to live out the fullness of our Western Orthodox faith with clarity and courage. Not in compromise with the age, nor in the arrogance of supremacy, but in the ancient way of humility, charity, and truth. The words of our Nonjuring Fathers still guide us: No King but Christ, No Church but Apostolic! Here, we are not building an empire of man, but a household of God.

We do not preach a religion of personal success or cultural domination. We reject moral confusion, doctrinal novelty, schism, supremacy, and ethnocentric pride. Instead, we proclaim the one holy, catholic, and apostolic faith; the faith once delivered to the saints, handed down in word and sacrament, lived out in repentance and resurrection, without force or coercion, as the true fruit of personal transformation and corporate repentance.

We are a people in exile, but not without a home. We are wanderers, but not without a Shepherd.

So come, all who are weary, all who have wandered, all who have been wounded by the world’s philosophies and false promises. Come and be restored. For here, in the Shepherd’s fold, we cast our cares upon Him, and He carries us on His shoulders.

And now, dear brethren, as we turn to today’s Scriptures and the mystery of Christ’s undying pursuit, may our hearts be opened to the voice of the One who seeks the lost, so as not to condemn, but to heal.

SCRIPTURE

I Peter 5:5–11

Brethren: all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

St. Luke 15:1–10

At that time: Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. And he spake this parable unto them, saying, What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

SERMON

“What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine…and go after that which is lost, until he find it?” – Luke 15:4

In the quiet pastures of eternity, before the foundations of the world were laid, the Word stood radiant in the bosom of the Father; uncreated Light of uncreated Light, the Logos through whom all things were made and without whom was not anything made that was made (John 1:3). And from that eternal communion of love, there poured forth the act of Creation, not out of necessity, but out of superabundant mercy. The Triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) formed the world not to display power, but to bestow love. As the Cappadocian Fathers taught, hē agapē tou Theou (the love of God) is not a response to the creature, but the very principle of its being.

Yet we, the sheep of His pasture, have wandered. “All we like sheep have gone astray,” Isaiah mourns, “we have turned every one to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). It is this ontological estrangement, this tragic rending of communion, that the Gospel this Sunday addresses - not as a cold legal matter, but as a divine heartbreak. The Shepherd does not wait. He does not calculate the risk to Himself, nor resign to the loss. He goes. He descends into the wilderness. He shoulders the lamb.

Here, beloved, is the Gospel's heart: not mere forgiveness, but the pursuit of union. Not simply the cancellation of debt, but the mending of being.

THE GARMENTS OF GLORY AND THE PRIEST OF THE PEOPLE

In the lesson from Exodus, we are drawn into a scene of rich typology. Aaron the high priest is clothed in garments “for glory and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2). He bears the names of the twelve tribes upon his breast, bound over his heart, and wears upon his forehead the golden plate engraved: Holiness to the Lord. He is not simply adorned: he is configured to something beyond himself. The priest becomes icon, a living figure of the Messiah to come.

Saint Gregory the Theologian, that great voice of Cappadocian metaphysics, writes, “What has not been assumed has not been healed.” Christ, our true High Priest, takes on not only our nature, but our place. He becomes the Lost Sheep. He becomes the Sin Offering. The ram upon the altar in Exodus 29, wholly consumed, finds its fulfillment in the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The sacrificial fire of Sinai burns now in the heart of the Crucified.

We are reminded of Saint Ambrose’s words: “The Lord Jesus sympathizes with us like a true priest, because He took our flesh; He intercedes for us like a true priest, because He bore our sorrows.”

MERCY GREATER THAN JUDGEMENT

Saint Paul in Romans 15 speaks of bearing the infirmities of the weak, of receiving one another “as Christ also received us to the glory of God.” There is no place here for the prideful Pharisee, no space for the superior exile from the Prodigal Feast. Rather, the Gospel is a net that draws in every creature - publicans, sinners, the lost coin, the forgotten name.

The Fathers of Iona and Lindisfarne knew this. Saint Cuthbert was seen walking through the marshes by lantern-light, searching for a dying man whose soul had not yet made confession. Saint Aidan gave away his horse to a beggar on the road, weeping that he had forgotten to see Christ in the face of the poor. These men lived not in abstraction but in the dangerous closeness of divine mercy. For them, as for the Apostle, “the God of hope” filled them “with all joy and peace in believing” (Rom. 15:13), because they knew the anguish of the Shepherd who goes after the one.

Lancelot Andrewes, preaching before King James, once said: “God hath his own arithmetic. He counts not the ninety-nine, but the one. He doth not reckon with greatness, but with grace.”

THE ROARING LION AND THE BRUISED SERPANT

But this search for the lost is not without conflict. “Be sober, be vigilant,” Saint Peter warns, “because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). There is no naïve universalism here. The Shepherd does not wander into a tranquil field; He enters the thicket of thorns, the jaws of beasts, the very valley of death.

Yet... O glorious paradox! It is in that valley where the Shepherd becomes the Lamb. The Cross is the Shepherd’s staff; the thorns His crown; the jaws of the lion the gate to His descent into Hell. And in that descent, He bruises the serpent under His feet (Romans 16:20), fulfilling the ancient promise of Eden.

Jeremy Taylor, the Great Caroline, wrote: “The Cross of Christ is the Tree of Life replanted; its fruits are for healing, its branches for shelter, its roots for resurrection.”

THE ONTOLOGY OF MERCY

If we are to speak of repentance, we must not think only of morality, but of metaphysics. Repentance is not merely sorrow, but also a return. The Greek word metanoia means a change of mind, yes, but also a reorientation of being. The sinner returns to his place in the order of creation, restored to right relation with the Creator.

Saint Augustine, that great master of the West, declared, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” Why? Because our hearts are made for God. To repent is to become truly oneself again, to remember the divine image from which we have wandered.

And when we return, the angels rejoice. Heaven, which knows no envy, delights in our healing. For it is not in punishment, but in restoration, that the divine glory is revealed. The return of the lost sheep is not a footnote: It is the climax of creation.

POETIC REFLECTION

Let us concluding with Christina Rossetti’s poem: “A Better Resurrection”. Rossetti, a deeply devout poet of the Victorian era, captures the inward desolation of sin and the personal cry for restoration with poetic economy and spiritual clarity. The poem’s progression from brokenness to union, through Christ's mystical incarnation, mirrors the message of the parables in Luke 15 and the whole arc of this Sunday’s readings.

A BETTER RESURRECTION

By Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)

I have no wit, no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone

Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears;

Look right, look left, I dwell alone;

I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief

No everlasting hills I see;

My life is in the falling leaf:

O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,

My harvest dwindled to a husk;

Truly my life is void and brief

And tedious in the barren dusk;

My life is like a frozen thing,

No bud nor greenness can I see:

Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;

O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,

A broken bowl that cannot hold

One drop of water for my soul

Or cordial in the searching cold;

Cast in the fire the perish’d thing;

Melt and remould it, till it be

A royal cup for Him, my King:

O Jesus, drink of me.

COLLECT

O most merciful Father, who through thy blessed Son seekest that which is lost and rejoicest over one sinner that repenteth: Grant us grace so to humble ourselves under thy mighty hand, that we may be lifted up in due time; and being restored by thy tender compassion, may walk in newness of life, bearing one another’s burdens, and glorifying thy Name; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.