A SERMON FOR GOOD SHEPHERD SUNDAY

A Contemporary Byzantine Icon of the Good Shepherd 

“I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His Life for the Sheep.” - St. John 10:11

INTRODUCTION

Good morning! Welcome to St. Valentine’s Cathedral Chapel in Loveland, Ohio. On this Second Sunday after Easter, known in the Western Church as Good Shepherd Sunday, we are drawn to one of the most tender and powerful images in all of Holy Scripture - Christ as the Good Shepherd. It is an image both pastoral and profound: one that gathers together the promises of the Old Testament, the passion of the New, and the hope of the Church through every age. But it is more than imagery. In calling Himself the Good Shepherd, our Lord unveils the very heart of the Gospel - the self-giving love of God, who seeks the lost, carries the wounded, and lays down His life that His sheep might live. Today, we will walk through the texts of John 10 and 1 Peter 2, alongside the ancient voices of the Church, the Consensus Patrum, to see not only who our Shepherd is, but what it means to be His sheep.

SCRIPTURE READINGS 

ROMANS 4:13–25 

For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all, (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara's womb: 

He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. 

And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.

1 ST. PETER II. 19–25 

THIS is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. 

For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

ST. JOHN 10:11–16 

JESUS said, I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

SERMON

Beloved in Christ, on this radiant Sunday in Paschaltide, our Holy Mother the Church places before our eyes the image of the Good Shepherd - an image both tender and terrifying, gentle and grand. He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8), and yet He is also the Shepherd who guards His flock from wolves, hirelings, and death itself. The whole economy of salvation is folded into this one image: a Shepherd who becomes a Lamb, and a Lamb who conquers by offering Himself in love.

The Prophet and Patriarch Moses, standing on the verge of Israel’s deliverance, heard from the Lord: “Ye shall take every man a lamb… your lamb shall be without blemish… and the blood shall be to you for a token” (Exodus 12:3–5,13). This Passover Lamb, sacrificed at twilight, was the pattern and pledge of Him who would come to be “the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world” (St. John 1:29). And as St. Peter writes in today’s Epistle, “Ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls” (1 Peter 2:25). What is this but the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s ancient prophecy: “Behold, I, even I, will search my sheep, and seek them out” (Ezekiel 34:11)?

St. Athanasius, whose feast we also commemorate this day, and one of the important editors and compilers of the New Testament in the Early Church, taught that “He became what we are, that He might make us what He is.” Christ is both Shepherd and Lamb, both Priest and Sacrifice. He lays down His life not in defeat, but in sovereign love. The Cross is not a tragedy but a triumph. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann so often insisted, “Christ’s death is not the end of life, but the beginning of true life.”

Indeed, in today’s Gospel, Christ declares not merely that He dies for the sheep - but that He does so willingly. “No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself” (John 10:18). Here is the sovereign liberty of divine charity. He is no hireling who flees at the scent of danger; He is the true Shepherd, who, like David before Goliath, faces the enemy unarmed save for a sling and a stone (1 Samuel 17), or rather, armed with love and obedience unto death. 

THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM AND THE FAITH OF THE CHURCH

St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, speaks not of shepherds but of fathers: of Abraham, our father in the faith. “The promise was not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4:13). Abraham believed God who “quickeneth the dead” (v.17), and so are we, children of the promise, justified not by effort or law, but by faith in the risen Lord, the Shepherd who leads us through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4).

It is here that the Fathers of our Holy Patrimony, the Scottish Nonjurors and Caroline Divines, stood firm, resisting a cold moralism that would make salvation a matter of contract rather than a life-giving blood covenant, of wages rather than grace. “Faith is the eye of the soul,” writes Jeremy Taylor, “and Christ is its object.” We are saved not by our striving, but by our Shepherd’s seeking. St. Augustine affirms this when he declares: “He sought us, that we might seek Him.”

THE KNOWING OF THE SHEPHERD

“I am the good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine” (John 10:14). This is no mere recognition, no external acquaintance. The Greek verb here is “ginōskō” — a deep, intimate knowing, the same word used in the Scriptures for marital union (Genesis 4:1). This knowing is personal, covenantal, and salvific. St. Maximos the Confessor calls this the “gnosis of love,” the union of the soul with God in deified communion.

The Cappadocian Fathers remind us that the Trinity is not an abstract dogma, but a communion of persons into which we are drawn. “The Spirit unites us to the Son, and in the Son we are brought to the Father,” wrote St. Basil. The Shepherd is no distant deity; He enters the thicket, bears the wound, and lifts the lost lamb on His shoulders (Luke 15:5). The cross is not merely a payment - it is a marriage bed, a battlefield, and a throne.

THE DANGER OF HIRELINGS

But what of the hireling? Christ is clear: “The hireling fleeth, because he careth not for the sheep” (John 10:13). The Church has always faced this danger - those who bear the crook but not the cross, who desire the power of the Apostles in the mentality of Simon Magus, trying to make money off of the faithful, or seeing ministry as a “career.” The Desert Fathers speak of such as “wolves in shepherd’s clothing,” who love position but not sacrifice. Abba Poemen said, “The shepherd who does not suffer with his sheep is no shepherd at all.” Princely bishops, dressed in finery, draped in credentials, despising all others as lowly and graceless, demanding slavery for “validity” are themselves not true shepherds. 

Mar Mari Emmanuel, a prophetic voice in our time, warns that the Church must again distinguish between shepherds who bleed for the flock, and hirelings who feed off them. The sheep must learn to hear the Shepherd’s voice - not the smooth voices of false comfort, but the voice that calls them to repentance, to holiness, to sacrificial love. The contemporary biblical scholar, Tim Mackie rightly notes, echoing Abp. Lazar Puhalo, “The story of the Bible is not about escaping suffering, but about God entering it to transform it.” 

ONE SHEPHERD, ONE FOLD

Christ concludes: “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring” (John 10:16). This is not a vague universalism, but a bold missionary promise. The Church is not tribal, nor ethnically bounded. The great Oxford Fathers - Keble, Pusey, and Newman - saw in this the promise of catholicity in the Church, not bounded by human authority or schismatic conciliar definitions: Christ’s flock includes East and West, Jew and Gentile, slave and free. The Church is a Menorah, candlesticks burning before the throne of Christ in Heaven, as Revelation reveals (Revelation 1:12-13, 20). 

St. John Damascene echoes this eschatological hope when he writes: “God the Word came into the world not to judge it, but to gather it into one fold under one Shepherd.” Let us not be content with comfort, but labour to draw others into the flock - by prayer, witness, and the laying down of our own lives in small acts of love.

THE PASCHAL SHEPHERD

Beloved, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, the voice of Christ still echoes through the ages: "I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep." This is no mere metaphor. It is the very marrow of the Gospel, proclaimed in the Exodus lamb, fulfilled upon the Cross, and sealed in the Eucharistic feast. He who once led Israel out of bondage by blood upon the doorposts now leads us out of death by the Blood of His own Body.

As St. Athanasius taught, "He became what we are, that He might make us what He is.” And St. Augustine, reflecting on the Shepherd’s mercy, wrote, “He sought us when we sought Him not; He died for us that we might live in Him.” Our Shepherd is not like the hireling who flees; He stays. He knows His sheep by name and calls them - yes, even the wandering, even the bruised, even those not yet of this fold.

St. Maximos Confessor said, “Christ’s love has no boundary, no condition - it is the fire of the divine will to save.” And as Fr. Alexander Schmemann reminded the modern Church, “The Eucharist is not a ‘thing’ given to the faithful, it is Christ Himself - the Shepherd slain, the Lamb triumphant, the Bread of life.”

Let us therefore follow Him, even into suffering, even when we are buffeted unjustly, as St. Peter exhorts - “For even hereunto were ye called.” Let us return to the Bishop and Shepherd of our souls, who bore our sins in His own body on the Tree, and by whose stripes we are healed. Let us abide in the one fold, under the One Shepherd, where faith and obedience find their rest in the shadow of His staff and the table He spreads in the wilderness.

Let us pray…

COLLECT

O Lord Jesus Christ, who art the Good Shepherd of the sheep, and didst lay down thy life for the flock, grant unto us grace to hear thy voice with faithful hearts, to follow thee with steadfast steps, and to be gathered with all thy saints into the one fold of everlasting life; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.