Easter II

Easter II
May 4, 2025
 
For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned
unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
(1 St. Peter ii. 25)
 
In Eastertide, we are called to become members of Jesus Christ’s Resurrected Body by remembering that we were lost sheep or sheep going astray who have been found. Of course, Christians believe that they have been found by Jesus Christ, the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls. In Baptism, we believe that Christ has found us and begun the process of our redemption and salvation. But Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd, always longs to find us in our sins and to forgive us. Redemption that leads to salvation is a process. Original sin is wiped out in Baptism, but still we contract actual sins. The forgiveness of sins is what we need from the Good Shepherd as a habit of human life. As the Good Shepherd comes to us, we remember that we have erred and strayed from God’s ways like lost sheep. (General Confession, BCP 1662) When he applies the forgiveness of sins to our souls, we learn what life with and in Him will entail.
         
Today we learn what it means to be lost and found by Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. What the sheep of Christ look like and what the Good Shepherd expects are illustrated in this morning’s First Epistle of St. Peter. St. Peter addresses the newly formed Church in Asia Minor, full of the lost and found. Most of its members are servants or slaves. Christian slaves have welcomed Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd who has found them. But they are having a hard time with the spiritual liberation that He brings. Not surprisingly, they are trying to allow Christ to be a more powerful master than their earthly owners. St. Peter is keen to identify with their pain and suffering and encourage them to remember how Christ the Good Shepherd not only finds them but intends to heal their souls for heaven.
         
St. Peter’s advice seems irrational and unjust. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. (1 St. Peter ii. 18) If he were writing to fallen men whose only hope is finding earthly justice, we should judge him to be hard-hearted and cruel. But St. Peter is not writing to unbelievers and pagans but to those who have been found by God’s Good Shepherd for greater justice that affords true freedom that redeems and saves. He writes, for even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps. (1 St. Peter ii. 21) St. Peter insists that the Good Shepherd, God’s own Son, calls the Christians slaves to follow Him remembering that He suffered as a slave to man’s sin. Monsignor Knox reminds us St. Peter remembers, too, how he followed in his Master’s footsteps, when Christ was led away to be crucified. (R.K.: The Epistles and Gospels, p. 125) Peter, like the Christian slaves, tried to follow the Good Shepherd. When Christ was being sentenced to crucifixion, Peter remembers sitting by the fire in the cellar of the High Priest’s palace, surrounded by slaves, whose suffering was unjust. The slaves lived in fear of sinful slave masters. Peter too was shackled and enslaved to his own fear, cowardice, and impotence. But Peter was a slave to sin who responded to evil by retreating into his own sin. Because he was guilty of denying Jesus before the cock had crowed, he feared judgment and punishment. Both the earthly slaves and Peter were lost sheep without any hope in this world.
         
But now in today’s Epistle, St. Peter speaks as a lost sheep who was now found by Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd had forgiven him, who once was a lost sheep and slave to sin and was now called into the new liberty of the Resurrection by God’s justice. Peter identifies with the slaves and exhorts them to welcome the Good Shepherd, who died to make all men right and just with God once again. Christ suffered for our sakes…who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who when 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. (Ibid, 22- 25) St. Peter became a sinful slave to evil voluntarily. The slaves he addresses are the hapless victims of other men’s wickedness, like Christ. But now, they too, like Peter, are tempted to allow their earthly slavery to kill Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, the forgiveness of sins, in their hearts. Peter reminds the slaves that they are now invited into true spiritual liberation through Christ, who is the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection, and the life. The slaves too must confess that they once were lost but now are found. Peter must forgive the Jews and Romans for killing Christ. The slaves must forgive their masters. Both Peter and the slaves must remember that they were once like sheep like without a shepherd. (St. Matthew ix. 36) With Peter, they can become evangelists of the forgiveness of sins and Christ’s Resurrection. Peter’s sin against Christ might be mirrored in the slaves’ sin in failing to forgive their masters. Now, both are the free sons and daughters of the living God – whose forgiveness in them can conquer all evil because while their sins were many, His mercy is more. Christ, the Good Shepherd, frees all men from the author of evil in this world and his malicious friends.
           
All of Christ’s lost sheep who are now found must endure grief, suffering wrongfully…take it patiently…[because] this is acceptable with God. (Ibid, 19, 20) St. Peter is inviting the slaves to see that the Saviour has suffered unjustly and has borne the burden of all men’s slavery to sin on the Cross of His Love. With St. Peter, they must remember Christ’s words, I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. (St. John x. 11) Like Christ, they must give their lives to God and forgive those who are the cause of their suffering. For Christ is interested in all sinners – both slaves and free! The Good Shepherd saves and frees all men from all evil. If He – the perfect model and example of the unjustly tortured, punished, and crucified Slave, can forgive, then so too must all they who would be carried on His shoulders home to God. In fact, Jesus said, If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you…if they have persecuted me, they will persecute you…. (St. John xv. 18, 20) For Christ bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness. (Ibid, 24) Again, with Monsignor Knox, Christ’s wounds are healing stripes, and His death produces, of its own efficacy, a new death and the beginning of new life in us. (Idem) So the slaves and the slaveholders are invited into the new life of the Resurrection, as sheep who have been found, rescued, and saved by Jesus Christ. For ye were as sheep, going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. (Ibid, 25 Christ the Good Shepherd’s transformative forgiveness is greater than all sin.
          
St. Peter shows us that all men are sinners who were lost and need to be found by Jesus Christ, God’s Good Shepherd. He shows the slaves and us that Christ is the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls (idem) was also a slave. He giveth His life for the sheep. (St. John x. 11) So the Good Shepherd was the volunatary Slave who worked freely and completely for the good of two Masters – His Father and His sheep! He even lays down His life for His sheep because He knows that only then can His Father’s Love become a true Slave to their condition, bear its burden fully, and then break its chains through the power of the forgiveness of their sins. 

But even beyond this, Christ the Good Shepherd, risen from the dead, and ascended back to the Father, longs to become our servant even now. If we do not allow Him to be our servant, we have no part in Him. (St. John xiii. 8) He who is freely subservient, obedient, and docile to the Father’s will longs to be our servant who shepherds us into the Father’s embrace. The Good Shepherd cares only for our welfare and good. The Good Shepherd is God’s servant who can help us to overcome our sin. He alone is the servant who must become our Master. He will master our sin and bring it to death if we embrace the Spirit of His love.
        
Christ, the Good Shepherd comes to find His lost sheep. Will we allow Him to be our servant and Master? Like all lost sheep enslaved to sin, we cannot pay this servant for mastering our sin and bringing it to death. But we can allow Him to continue His good work in us and minister His mercy to our sin-sick souls. We can allow Him to help us to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. (Collect, Easter II) And the first step must be that we must love our enemies, forgive those who hurt us, do well…and suffer for it, taking it patiently, not reviling with guile or threatening others, and living to righteousness. Christ’s stripes will begin to heal us when He shepherds us into that character of soul that conquers all sin with the forgiveness and love that liberates us from all slavery.   

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
           

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