Lutheran Church of the Redeemer

Easter 3

Christ the Good Shepherd

John 10:11-16

There’s a common term used by conspiracy theorists and fringe political groups to describe the helpless masses.  They call them “sheeple.”  I don’t think I need to translate too much for you.  They’re saying if you’re not like them you’re just a dumb follower.

            We’re almost two thousand years removed since the last drop of ink was scraped into the final page of the Scriptures, but we still use sheep as a derogatory accusation of fools who are susceptible to any predator and at risk of following the herd off the precipice of dangerous summits.  “Wake up sheeple!” is the common refrain from those who claim to be in the know.  Their message is quite simple:  Quit being sheep!

Unfortunately just as you can’t tell an actual sheep to change its breeding, so you can’t order a man to change their nature.  In our lessons Jesus leaves us no room to escape this metaphor—we are all sheep.  Even those who think they have awakened and are now free thinking non-sheeple should realize they have listened to someone’s voice to arrive at their conclusions.  You see for Jesus the question is not a matter of the degree of our sheepyness, but instead a matter of who is our shepherd.

Everyone listen’s to a particular shepherd’s voice.  These voices shape your view of the world and of life.  In our relativistic culture people will listen to all kinds of shepherds.  They’ll do this even when they contradict one another.  They think they can pick and choose what is good for them.  Yet, like sheep we like things that are not good for us.  We blithely go with the crowd and chew on spiritually poisonous food.  The Good Shepherd has lead us to still waters and green pastures.  We have all that we need in his Word for our health, but like stubborn sheep we want to ignore what is good for us.  We reject how God has ordered the creation for us and for our good.  When we do not like that order we say we’ll redefine it—like we see with marriage.   Please don’t think that’s just condemning the issue of homosexual behavior—marriage was redefined a long time ago in America with cohabitation, no-fault divorce, and pornography claiming to be artistic expression.  Hirelings have mislead and abandoned the sheep when all kinds of spiritual dangers of the wolf—that is the devil—are spotted on the horizon.

We keep hearing that on our horizon is a more secular America.  Some think secularity means godlessness, but that’s not necessarily true.  Plenty of people live in a secular way and adorn it with a deity of their fancy.  Secular simply means “in the moment.”  To be secular is to be only concerned with the present.  The world’s secularity is a symptom of our own sheepyness.  How many of us catch ourselves worrying more about the bills and balancing our time then we spend time in prayer?  Sheep only live in the moment with no thought to the future and they don’t learn from their past.  Sheep only worry about the blade of grass before their nose and the stream yards away.  They follow the flock whether or not their shepherd is leading them in a trajectory that leads to death or life.  Sheep are the most secular of animals!  They can’t live anywhere, but in the moment.

That is us, says Jesus.  How many terrible things have we swallowed because it seemed tasty at the moment?  How many things have we accepted because without admitting it we just wanted to fit in and follow the larger flock—to be in with the in-crowd?  Adulteries of mind and body, covetousness that leads to discontent and theft, self-righteousness which chokes the Word of Christ from us, pride which smashed our neighbor and leaves scars in the back of the poor weak lambs we’ve climbed over to get what we want.  We are indeed sheeple!

Where do we go from here?  We need a good shepherd and all others have failed.  They abandon the flock when things become too dangerous or they’re devoured with the rest by the wolf.  That is why God has sent us the Good Shepherd of our souls Jesus.

Jesus is the “I am” Good Shepherd.  Did you notice the divine name there?  “I am, “Yahweh”, the Good Shepherd.”  Jesus is the God enfleshed shepherd who promised by the prophets to come himself to guide and to save his sheep.  Jesus certainly had Psalm 23 in mind when he called himself the Good Shepherd, but he also knew his promise in Ezekiel 34.  “For thus says the Lord God:  Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.”  Jesus is saying that this is he.  He is the Lord God seeking his sheep and they will respond to his voice.

Jesus emphasizes he is a shepherd in his own unique class.  He’s the divine shepherd—the greatest shepherd.  He does not say, “I am like a shepherd who is good” as if he belongs to the class of other shepherds who are good at their vocation.  He is the Good Shepherd.  All other shepherds claiming to lead man to God are evaluated by comparison to Jesus.  All the hirelings abandon you and lead you away from Jesus.  The Good Shepherd has given you pastors, under-shepherds, and they are only worthwhile if they deliver you to the Good Shepherd.

Christ calls himself the Good Shepherd.  We should ask then “What makes Jesus the Shepherd good?”

Jesus states the reasons clearly.  The Good Shepherd unlike the hireling owns the sheep.  He’s in fact their creator.  Therefore when danger comes he does not abandon his flock, but stays and protects them.  Even more, he stays, and is willing to lay down his life for the sheep.

What good is a dead shepherd?  If the wolf kills him then his flock is left there with the predator.  This is perhaps where the metaphor breaks down a bit, but there’s a great paradox that happens here.  Instead of the sheep being the blood sacrifice for the shepherd, the shepherd becomes the sacrifice for the sheep.  Of course the disciples and all who heard this would not have a clue what Jesus meant by laying down his life until his crucifixion.  Afterwards they knew as you know now that Christ paid the penalty for all our sheepy ways.  He has stood in the gap and suffered the penalty for all the things that tempt us to go astray and flirt with eternal death.  The wolf—that ancient evil one—bit the shepherds heel and did his worst and for a fleeting moment it looked as though the sheep were all alone with their salivating enemy looking for his next snack.

Just a verse after our lesson Jesus says, “…I lay down my life that I may take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again.”  This makes this shepherd the greatest of them all.  Christ saved you by allowing the wolf to take his life instead.  It would do you no good to be left alone with a dead shepherd.  So the Good Shepherd lays down his life to defeat the wolf, sin, and death.  The he takes his life up again to nurture, protect, defend and lead you forever.

You know the Good Shepherd by his actions for you.  He is the shepherd who when you stand condemned forgives you.  This is the shepherd who time and again follows you when you’ve gone astray and picks you up, bears the burden of you, and restores you to the flock of God.  When you’ve followed other voices, when you’ve lived for the moment and forgotten where the shepherd is guiding, he’s there with his rod and staff to protect and lead you home.  This is the shepherd who has baptized your filthy sin ridden wool and made it white as snow.  This is the shepherd who feeds and nurtures you from his own body and blood week in and week out.  This is the shepherd whose voice speaks to you the peace and blessing of God the heavenly Father.  This is the shepherd you have grown to trust and are still growing to trust.  This is Jesus, the Good Shepherd leading his sheep to rise from death and to live eternally by still water and rich pastures.  It’s never been so good to be sheeple!  In Jesus’ name, amen.

SDG—Rev. Eric M. Estes

 Easter 2

John 20:19-31

“That you may believe…”

Sermon Audio:  

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“These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

John 20:31

In the name God the Father, the + Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Christianity is the only religion that can be disproven by a single piece of evidence.  If it is historically proven that Jesus of Nazareth who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, is not risen from the dead then the Christian religion is null and void.  If Christ is not risen it means Christianity has no power to forgive you, no power to strengthen you, no message of hope for you, and it can’t lay claim to having the truth.  For if Christ is not risen then the entire Christian religion is based on a lie.

The gospel spread with this simple and utterly profound message for the nations to hear that Christ died for sin once and for all, and God has vindicated Christ by raising him from death.  The Apostles unbendingly taught that Christ died for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.  On the cross he paid the wages of sin—death.  There on the cross Christ won the forgiveness of your sins.  In his resurrection he gives you not only a vindication of who he is as God in the flesh, but assurance that you are truly declared righteous by God.  Christ’s resurrection means that all he said of himself and all that was said about him by the prophets is true.  Uncover his bones, disprove his resurrection and then Christ is a liar and the Scriptures are unreliable.

You dear Christians probably don’t like hearing the title Christ and the noun liar in the same sentence.  You confess weekly that the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting are truth.  It might be hard for you to think that just a single piece of evidence to the contrary could undo your entire faith.  Is the Christian faith then a tenuous house of cards?

Sadly, a lot of what is proposed as proof of Christianity is exactly that—tenuous.  You will hear Christian leaders invite people to try Christianity on for size and see if it “works.”  What they mean is for you to see if it makes you happier, more hopeful, more moral, or more content.  In their mind if it does any of those things then it must be true.  American Christianity has been tempted to trump up some therapeutic value to the Christian message in order to make it more appealing to others.  Christian leaders preach the comfort of the gospel, but they forget that it’s comforting because first it’s true.  A lot of things whether they are true or not can make someone happier, hopeful, better behaved, and content.  Whether I receive some emotional or psychological benefit really does not prove something is true.  I can get that from a good ballgame or a good meal or even a false belief.  What matters in Christianity is whether or not its truth claims hold water.  If they do then consequently there is great comfort!

Thomas got this.  As much as it might have been nice to hear that Jesus was risen until he knew for certain Thomas would not be comforted.  He needed to know it was true.  Firstly, don’t get me wrong about Thomas’ experience.  He is not a positive example.  Before seeing Jesus he was not a doubter like we usually call him.  Jesus says he was flat-out disbelieving.  Jesus’ words to Thomas are reproachful, “Have you believed because you have seen?”  Thomas had rejected the gospel preached to him by the other disciples.  In his obstinate refusal to believe their word he was making them out to as liars and the gospel message as fraudulent.  Did he think the nine of them were just pulling his leg with a mean joke?  Did he think them mad or hallucinating?

Modern skeptics think some of those things.  There are alternative explanations they’ve come up with to explain away the empty tomb.  Did you notice that?  They agree there’s an empty tomb, but how it became empty is what they argue over.  None of these skeptical arguments stand up to biblical and historical scrutiny.  For example one theory is that Jesus didn’t die on the cross—he swooned instead.  The skeptics act as though Roman soldiers could have failed at their job of executing a prisoner.  History is against them.  There are no accounts of a completed scourging and crucifixion where the victim survived.  Even the scourging was so traumatic it often killed the recipient.  Such theories have been proven time and again to be conjectures that ignore the evidence of history.  Some have even gone as far as to claim that Jesus must have had a twin brother.

If there is one positive thing we can learn from Thomas is that he understood well if the resurrection is historically true then there is great comfort and one ought to repent of their faithlessness and believe.  Yet, if it is not true and the other apostles’ were just pulling his leg one should drop the gospel message like a bad habit.  Thomas did the former.  The message of the disciples’ is true.  He had all the evidence standing there in front of him in the flesh of Jesus.  Christ is risen!  Thomas’ only response is one of confession and worship, “My Lord and my God.”  Up until that moment Thomas had not doubted that Jesus was a man.  Risen from the dead now Thomas knew Jesus is God in the flesh.

“These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.”  Those exhortations of St. John and of our Lord Jesus are for you my dear brothers and sisters in Christ.  Relatively speaking from the perspective of time only a few people could be eyewitnesses of Jesus’ resurrection.  He appeared to the women, the eleven remaining disciples, and to upwards of five hundred people before his ascension.  Only a few could be witnesses in the strictest sense of the word, but the message would belong to everyone.  Their eyewitness message was from God himself concerning the essential thing he did for the world.  The apostle’s realized they had a great calling and it resounded always in their preaching, even Thomas when he went to India as a missionary as tradition holds.  They preached:  “But God raised Him on the third day and made Him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead. And He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that He is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To Him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name” (Acts 10:40–43).

Dear saints in Christ do not let apathy or disinterest to the historical evidence of Christ’s resurrection weaken your faith.  Equip yourself with this message.  I again invite you to Bible Study where you can learn more.  Listen with discernment, study the word, and hear the good news preached by the apostles that Jesus is risen from the dead.  It is true and therefore you have the greatest comfort.  Your sins are forgiven.  You have life in his name.  You need to look no where else to be validated—you are approved by God in Christ Jesus.  He has given his preachers authority to give that comfort to you—your sins are forgiven!  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

SDG—Rev. Eric M. Estes

Easter Day

Mark 16:1-8

“Death’s A Gardener At Best”

Jesus speaking of his resurrection before his crucifixion said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  The disciples at first thought he must have been speaking figuratively.  No one expected him to rise from the dead.

The women in our gospel lesson this morning were coming to anoint a dead body.  It did not occur to a single one of them to remark, “Say, remember how Jesus said multiple times that he would be tried and crucified and on the third day rise from the dead?  Say, it’s the third day right now, let’s go check it out.  It can’t hurt.”

Not a single one of them, not the women nor the disciples, thought he would rise.  There goes the argument of the moderns who say ancient cultures were easily duped or would believe any foolish thing.  They knew death was the end.  Even the Jews who believed in a resurrection didn’t believe that just one man would rise by himself.  They were waiting for a last day when all would rise, not just a risen Messiah.

Skeptics will look past the resurrection as some superstition of archaic people.  The women and the disciples and many of the ancients did what many modern skeptics will not do.  They looked at the evidence that was beyond their reason or understanding and were intellectually honest enough to be challenged by it.  They let the evidence bring them to the conclusion that Jesus rose even when the evidence was scrutinized.  The skeptics of our day and days past come up with all kinds of theories, but not one of them stands up to biblical and historical scrutiny.  Some claim that Mark and the other gospel writers knew they were writing a myth, but all the evidence says otherwise.  Mark in our gospel lesson for example made sure to name the eyewitnesses—three women.  It’s even more interesting that Mark would not have chosen women if he had really wanted to convince people since in ancient cultures the testimony of women was not accepted as reliable.  Yet, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ignore the biases of their world and report that three women were the first eyewitnesses and why?  Because, that was the truth.

That’s enough about skepticism.  Look at the women at the tomb today.  They go mourning to anoint Jesus’ body.  They expect a heavy stone, a smelly tomb and a frozen corpse.  Instead they find an open grave, empty tomb, and an angel with a divine message: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified.  He has risen; he is not here…But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee.”  Then Mark’s gospel ends in an unexpected way.  He says they were trembling, astonished, and afraid.  This experience was so strange it scared the wits out of them.

Fear is the last emotion we think of on Easter, but maybe we should from time to time.  If Jesus is risen from the dead think of what this means.  It means someone has done the impossible, they’ve defeated the one great equalizer—death.  It means that everything that he said about himself is true.  He is God in the flesh.  He is the Lord of heaven and earth.  He is the sacrificial victim who received your sin and death and put an end to them both in his body.  He will come again just as he said he will!  If this is true, and it is true, we should tremble at the thought.  The man who died on Good Friday is God.  God came down and identified with us and bore what we could not!  He has overcome everything that afflicts us day in and day out.  Pain, sorrow, death, loss, sin, loneliness, all have been taken into himself as the God-man and overcome by the power of his resurrection.

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  Do you realize what Jesus means here?  He’s saying that at one point in time death was an executioner, but now that he is risen from the dead death can only be a gardener.  Jesus, the grain of wheat, has fallen into the earth and died and sprouted forth with much fruit.  His resurrection bears with it the fruit of all resurrections that will happen on the last day.  Your resurrection!

Though this gospel ends with women in fear there is a wonderful word of grace in it.  The angel reminds the women that Jesus told them this would happen and that they should go and tell the disciples to go to Galilee.  So where’s the grace?  Did you notice, that the angel especially makes sure they tell Peter.  Peter—the denier of his Lord.  Of the eleven disciples left he had screwed up royally.  He had sinned terribly.  If the women had come back and said the disciples are to go to Galilee Peter would have not gone. He would not think himself a disciple, but Jesus applies his grace to Peter from the message of the angel.  “Peter, yes you sinned, yes you failed big, now come to me and be mine again.”  Jesus would pour on his grace forgiving Peter three times for his three denials.

That grace is yours too brothers and sisters.  The inner skeptic in every human heart that would deny the wonder of this day is invited by Christ’s forgiveness to come and proclaim that He is risen!  His forgiveness is there for you and here is the wonder that we have in all this.  The greatest sinners, the big screw ups like Peter, become the deepest in repentance and the ones who understand all the more the sweetness of God’s grace and the awesome message of the resurrection.  The resurrection means Christ’s paid the penalty for our sin on the cross in full.  When a prisoner serves his sentence he leaves the prison a free man.  Jesus paid our penalty and we know it was paid in full because he walked from the grave a free man.  He gives you the freedom he won for you!  He gives you life and forgiveness in his name.

This means anything that life can throw at you cannot be the end of you.  Loneliness cannot end you for at the resurrection you have the friendship of all the saints in heaven to look forward to.  Sickness cannot end you for you have the promise of a fully restored and resurrected body that will live forever.  Death is not your executioner; he’s a gardener at best.  You have been planted into the ground with Christ in baptism and you have been raised in Christ’s resurrection—all that you have ahead of you is fruitfulness.  For you are the spoils of Christ’s great victory and planting.  You are his harvest in the forgiveness of your sins.  A blessed and happy Easter to all of you.  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

SDG—Rev. Eric M. Estes

Easter Sunrise

Isaiah 25:6-9

“The Party’s Not Over”

            The first Easter began much more subtly and somberly then it does now that we have the entire picture.  It began graveside and with the tears of Mary Magdalene.  Easter began with heavy hearts and heavy steps.  We know about death and burial.  We have been there.

This morning we’ve come with happy hearts and light steps because we know that Christ is risen!  You’ve likely made some preparations for this day.  Easter is day of feasting.  The 40 days of Lent are over and now we celebrate Christ’s resurrection with food and drink.  What’s on your banquet table today when you arrive home:  ham and turkey, sweet potatoes and pies?

I hope I haven’t distracted you by considering the tasty morsels that await you, because really the greatest table is spread for you at this moment and the best is yet to come.  In our Old Testament lesson Isaiah invites us to the feast of Zion.  This is the feast of Yahweh’s Easter victory!

The women went to the tomb thinking they would meet mortality.  They thought they’d be faced with death.  We would think the same.  Death in this world is so final.  We submit ourselves to the fact that we all will die sometime.

What did the women meet at the grave instead?  An empty sepulcher and the Divine message sent from angels, “He who you seek who was once dead is not here.”  The grand discovery is Christ is not dead.  He is risen!  That fearful truth is only trumped by one greater truth spoken from the lips of our Lord, “Because I live, you will live also!”  Has it occurred to yet as you are still waking up this Easter morning that the same thing that happened to Jesus will happen to you?  Your body will leave behind an empty grave too!

Break out the champagne!  Bring out the finest wine and food!  Isaiah provides this feasting for us today.  Yahweh God, the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit will gather all his one Holy Christian Church to the Mt. Zion of the new heavens and new earth.  He has a rich feast waiting, greater than any Easter before.  Though I’m sure there will be real food and real drink in heaven of the kind never matched here on earth what Isaiah is really getting at are the spiritual blessings.  Christ is risen, his death on the cross where he bore your sins is now vindicated.  He has victory over death and that victory becomes yours too!

You see in that day the Lord is going to remove the veil that covers all people.  The veil Isaiah speaks of is the kind of veil people would use to cover their face in shame.  Think of newscasts where cameras will show an accused convict trying to cover his face with his jacket as he runs to a car.  The T.V. audience spread across the country rarely feels sorry for the poor bugger.  They want to see his face!  What we forget is that we may not have anything on our conscience that is so publicly shaming that we should hide from our fellowman, but before God we ought to be like Adam in the garden; hiding the moment he hears God’s footsteps.  We have all sinned and have been seen.  In our most honest moments we are well aware of that veil of self-justifications and happy faces that we put up so that we can’t really be known in our weaknesses by others.  We are known by God though.  He knows how our sin has covered us in a veil of death; a death we deserve for our sins.

We either repent and confess our sins or we hide behind the veil.  We will even try to make God a part of this veil, thinking that that we’re really not that bad off and God will reward good intentions even if there is no follow through.  Likewise we’ve replaced the Creator with Darwin so we can excuse any animalistic tendency in ourselves.  If we see it in nature we think it must be approved for man and give no more thought to our moral worth and what it means to have been created in the image of the Divinity.  Without God we enter a spiritual and cultural vacuum where honesty and fairness are seen very little.  We become convinced that any means can justify an end of our choosing.  Greed and our desire to fulfill our most base pleasures win the day.

Can anything or anyone change this or is the party over?  Isaiah in our chapter prior writes of the judgment of God against the nations.  It can be summed up this way, “The party’s over!”  “The mirth of tambourines is stilled, the noise of the jubilant has ceased, the mirth of the lyre is stilled.  No more do they drink wine with singing; strong drink is bitter to those that drink it.”  If we were left to our sin and God’s condemnation we would have no reason to feast, no reason to celebrate.  There would be no reason to sing.

Yahweh could rightly chastise and judge us severely.  Instead, he does Easter—God’s gracious doing through Christ.  Once crucified and dead—bearing all our sins upon the cross—Jesus carries away the shameful veil of death from our faces.  He forgives your sins, my sins, and the sin of the whole world and makes you whole and clean.  He is risen!  He is your victor and guarantor that you can look God and your fellow man in the eye knowing you are clean in the sight of God.

Isaiah’s announcement today is that the party’s not over!  We are welcomed to the feast where death is swallowed up forever.  In that day when we rise from our graves death will be no more.  God has swallowed up what swallowed us—the graves will be empty—food, wine, and song will abound.  We think of death as the end, but Easter tells us that death has an end—the Resurrection of Jesus!  Death’s power is futile—it is conquered!

So God through Isaiah gives us a song to sing.  A future song, “Behold, this our God, we have waited for him, that he might save us!  This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation!”  It’s a future song, but Isaiah gives it to us that we might start practicing now.  That’s what Church is all about—receiving the salvation of the Savior.  He gives your rich food and rich wine to drink.  His body and blood, in, with, and under the bread and wine or true food and true drink for the forgiveness of all your sins.

The world thinks it knows about “feasting.”  Our commercials invite us to dine at the ritziest restaurants and taste the most succulent food of our own creation.  But such feasting ends.  Easter morning is an eternal feast, an eternal victory and never ending celebration.  The feast is spread for you today.  Jesus has defeated sin, death, and Satan himself, making salvation and life with God ours.  What better picture of this life than the enduring feast of victory with God, who blesses us with his finest as a gift!  With the veil removed and the covering swallowed, let the feasting begin and never end in him!

SDG—Rev. Eric M. Estes