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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the texts for this morning are from the Epistle reading, as well as the Gospel reading, both by the Apostle St. John. Please be seated. Though I’m sure you don’t need the clarification for the sake of clarification, as we’re going in a certain direction, it’s important to remember who’s who in this morning’s Gospel reading. Obviously, but not always, we are the sheep of the Good Shepherd. As believers in Jesus Christ who have been baptized into Christ, we are the sheep of the Good Shepherd. And our enemy is the wolf who seeks to scatter and devour the flock. And the wolf is really nothing more than Satan, the devil. Now here’s your problem and my problem in this sermon. Reality in which you live out your faith and I live out my faith, it’s the same. As the sheep of Jesus Christ, whether we wish to confess this or not, we are highly, highly susceptible to the wolf’s disguises. Now, unlike Little Red Riding Hood, who could see that, my, what big teeth you have, my, what big eyes you have, and so forth and so on, and could recognize the big bad wolf, Satan never wants to appear like the big bad wolf to you. Satan wants to appear to you like your brother, your compadre, your helpmate. Meaning, he wants to appeal to you and what you sense and feel as God’s child in this world. And then twist it backwards upon itself. So who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? I am. And I hope you are too. Because what he has done in your life is exactly the same thing he’s done in my life. He comes to snatch you away and scatter you from the flock in one way, and this is the way we’re talking about this morning. The one way that he does it is that he appeals to your sense of justice, fairness, and equity. Now, ever since you were a little boy or a little girl… When you witnessed one of your siblings getting away with something they ought not to have done, were you not the one to inform your parents of the injustice, the unfairness, and the inequity? Yes, you were. Because it was done to you by the same siblings. So all of us have had this sense of fairness, justice, and equity. This is what the wolf, Satan, loves to appeal to. Why? Why? If Christ is your Good Shepherd, and He is, He’s the one that leads you. You don’t lead Him. He’s the one that leads you down paths, and down paths you really don’t want to go most of the time. Because He leads you down paths that pushes you, stretches you, and challenges you to endure injustice to your person, to endure inequality to your person, To endure unfairness to your person. And he’s there to say, that’s not fair, is it? That is Satan. He’s saying this. Why would you want to follow a shepherd like that who leads you to have situations that you’re not appreciated or loved in return? But this implies something. This implies his will is over your will. And the moment you and I come to realize this, This is the moment you and I realize we have but one path down which to go. It is the path that leads to heaven, for there’s no other name given among men by which we must be saved. We know that’s the path that he’s leading us down. Your and my problem is that along that path as we’re heading to heaven, he leads you to love people and to serve people that do not appreciate it, And that cannot pay it back. Therein lies the flag that goes up from our heart, the flesh part of us, that says unfair, not just, I’m not going to do it. How dare you ask me to do something that’s outside of my realm of experience. You see, the wolf comes to scatter and to snatch you away from love of brother to love of self. Because you’ll never be hurt if you love yourself. No one can ever hurt you. No one can ever disappoint you. No one can ever take advantage of you if you’re loving yourself. But to love other people, that’s a risk. Well, we justify it by loving certain people in our lives, but other people… So John reminds us in his epistle, this is how we know love, that he laid down his life for me. Was it fair for him to lay down his life for you? Have you returned that love in fullness to Him? Then it’s unfair. Have you responded so willingly each and every time? Then it’s unjust love that He loved you. That’s how we know unjust, unfair, selfless love is by knowing what it means for Him to lay down His life for you, His sheep. Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus wrote this about love. He said, He said, In teaching his disciples, and you are his disciples, for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? For even Gentiles do the same. He’s making it very clear here in teaching what it means for him to have laid down his life for you and for every human being in this world. It will never be fair to love someone else. It will never be equal to love someone else. And it will never be just every time you love someone else. Because it wasn’t for Him in loving the humanity of which we are a part. So isn’t it interesting? In the midst of this good shepherd’s statement from the Gospel of John, Jesus says, I know my sheep and my sheep know me. You and I are all about wanting to be loved by Jesus and known by Jesus when we look at ourselves and feel like, I am shining brightly. But if we’re not shining so brightly, we would rather Jesus just not look at us and focus on someone else who’s doing a much better job than you or I am. And I’m here to tell you that he knows you when you are not looking so shiny and bright. In fact, He’s known you long before His brightness came to shine upon you and in you in your baptism. He knew you then. That’s what it means to know love of the One who laid down His life for you. This is my prayer, brothers and sisters, that these texts stop you in your path and makes you say to yourself, I’m a selfish person. Because if you can’t say it, I got nothing for you. Neither does Jesus. He only has forgiveness for selfish people. I’m selfish, Lord. Stop me in my tracks. Yes, I love people. Yes, I love my family. But I am selective and I am extremely concerned about what I will get out of it lots of times. And I don’t want to be led down the paths you choose for me lots of times. My prayer is that these texts stop us to repent of listening to the wolf and his logic or emotional thinking. And listen to the shepherd’s voice. And he says to you, you know my voice. You know my voice. Listen to it. He took from us our death and he gave to us his life. That is an unjust gift and an unfair gift. And you and I can never validate it. Period. All he is saying is that since I have laid down my life for you in such a manner, lay down your life for one another. Jesus said, the Father loves me because I lay down my life for you. The Father loves me because I take up my life for you. It centers in Christ’s love for you, shown in his death and resurrection. At the very end of the Gospel reading, did you hear the statement? It says, this charge I receive from my Father. A charge is the same thing as a mission. You’ve been given a mission. To believe upon the one whom He has sent, and, as John said, love one another. As sheep, that is our charge. Believe upon the one whom He has sent, and love and serve one another. Well, Pastor, what about all those times when I can look at… Like you said in your sermon, the times when my selfishness completely overwhelmed me and I could see my hypocrisy. What about then? What did John say in his epistle, But God is greater than your hearts? What does that mean to be greater than your hearts? If your heart condemns you, what is the only thing that brings freedom to condemnation? Forgiveness of sins. That is it. Once Satan, as the wolf, tempts you and I to choose how to love and how to serve, and then he turns around and accuses us of miss-serving or miss-loving, and then accuses us again, the only relief we can have is in the forgiveness of our sins. That is why John said in the epistle, God is greater than our hearts. Thanks be to God, because boy does Satan accuse after he tempts. John said, “…whoever keeps his commandments,” meaning believing in and relying upon his love and service to you, “…abides in him and he in you.” That abide isn’t like just being buddies. That abide means dwells within, as he has promised in your baptism. Amen. This is what we proclaim as Jesus taught to his disciples, if you notice the chapter and verse of this gospel reading, in the upper room, right before he died for them. Right after he began that whole scene with doing something for his apostles. Oh yeah, washing their feet. Christ is risen, and he alone has laid down his life and taken it up again for you, that you may inherit eternal life. And that you may love and serve others. In the name of Jesus, Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus. To life eternal. Amen.
