Good Shepherd | What Is Your Only Comfort in Life & Death?

"The Good Shepherd Is On the Way" by Kevin Carden

What is your only comfort 

in life and in death?

That I am not my own,

but belong — body and soul 

in life and in death — 

to my faithful Savior,

Jesus Christ.

For this Good Shepherd weekend (4th Sunday during Eastertide), in preparing to preach for First Congregational Church in Boylston for the first time, focusing on John 10:1-11, I returned to a few resources to help me reflect on what it means for Jesus to be our Good Shepherd:

 + God Is On Your Side by JRB

+ Lit by Mary Karr
+ NYT Interview Reflection

I Am the Good Shepherd

In the ancient Near East, the shepherd's staff was a symbol of royalty. It symbolized the purpose of leadership: to serve, guide, care for, and protect your people. If the title "king" speaks to the authority of a ruler, "shepherd" speaks to their ideal heart.

Jesus is the Shepherd-King.

The King of the universe comes not to take from you but that you "may have life, and have it to the full." He doesn't run from the battle but "lays down His life for the sheep." His leadership is marked by sacrifice, protection, and care.

I Am the Gate

You can go to Jesus. He knows firsthand what you've experienced. He was abused and abandoned. He was beaten and betrayed. He was stabbed in the back and pierced in the side. He was left hanging, then ditched all alone in the grave. There's an intimacy to be found with Him in your suffering. 

Jesus names what was done to you as evil. This is the first step toward healing. I've found you can bring Jesus your sorrow. He welcomes your sadness and your anger at the injustice you've endured. He can handle it.

I and the Father Are One

In Ezekiel 34, God confronted Israel's leaders as bad shepherds "who only take care of yourselves" and don't "take care of the flock."

You have not strengthened the weak 

or healed the sick 

or bound up the injured.

You have not brought back the strays

or searched for the lost.

You have ruled them harshly

and brutally.

So they were scattered

because there was no shepherd,

and when they were scattered

they became food for all

the wild animals.

If you've been hurt by bad leaders, Ezekiel 34 also offers hope. In a prophetic foreshadowing of Jesus, God promised He's on His way:

I Myself will search for My sheep

and look after them ...

I Myself will tend my sheep

and have them lie down,

declares the Sovereign LORD.
I will search for the lost

and bring back the strays.

I will bind up the injured

and strengthen the weak ...

I will shepherd the flock

with justice.

Jesus is Yahweh in the flesh

come to rescue His flock.

When Jesus calls Himself

the Good Shepherd,

Jesus is saying He is

the God of Israel

come to confront the

wicked leaders (bad shepherds)

of His people,

to search for and rescue

His scattered people

("My sheep")

to gather, guide, and care

for them as their mighty

Shepherd King.

Is Jesus really identifying

Himself with God?

Later in John 10
(after He says,
"I Am the Gate"

and 

"I Am the Good Shepherd"),

Jesus says, 
"I and the Father are one"

— and the bad shepherds

pick up boulders to

stone Him for blasphemy.

The Good Shepherd was cast out to gather you in, injured to bind you up, mistreated to meet you in your woundedness and tend to you with His care.

The Shepherd's Voice

Back in Word War I, Turkish soldiers stole a flock of sheep on a hillside outside Jerusalem. They used stealth like thieves, weapons like robbers, and the apparent indifference of a hired hand for the flock's welfare. The shepherd looked like no match for them. What was his staff against their guns? His solitary effort against their collective strength?

Yet the shepherd had a secret weapon. He put his hand to his mouth and gave the familiar call he used every day to gather the flock. At the sound of his voice, the sheep turned from the enemy and ran back to their shepherd.

Get to know the voice of your Savior. The villains may seem strong and scary, but you can find comfort and security in Jesus's voice.

+ God Is On Your Side

pgs. 144-152

God Speaks at the Toilet

I tiptoe to the bathroom and bend onto the cold tiles. 

Thanks, whoever the f&*k You are, I say, for keeping me sober.

I feel small, kneeling there. Small and needy and inadequate. Pathetic, even. Like somebody who can't handle things. Which is fairly accurate, after all, for the average inmate.

If You're God I say, You know I feel small and needy and inadequate. And tonight I want a drink.

The silence fails to say anything back. I glare at it. It feels like judgment, the silence. And at that silence I give off rage; I start ranting prayer in my head that goes something like this: F&*k You for making me an alcoholic. For making my baby sick all the time when he was so tiny. You're a f&*cking amateur, torturing a baby like that, You f&*k. And my daddy withering in that form. What pleasure do You get from ... smiting people?

I feel something stir in me, a small wisp of something in my chest, frail as smoke. It is — strangely — the sweetness of my love for my daddy and my son. It blesses me an instant like incense.

My eyes sting, and I blurt out, Thanks for them. I feel the stillness around me widen a notch. Thanks that my son is sleeping safe at home without fever or coughing; and my husband, who may yet take me back.

The boundaries of my skin grow thin as I kneel there squinting my eyes shut. For a nanosecond, I am lucent. Inside it: an idea, the thread of a different perspective than any I've ever had. It's a thought so counterintuitive, so unlike how I think, it feels as if it originates outside me. The voice — the idea — comes in solid quiet in the midst of psychic chaos, and it says, If Dev hadn't been sick so much, you'd have kept drinking ...

Which is wholly true. If Dev had been one of those blank-eyed, anesthetized little blobs who slept infancy away, I could've sotted up his early years. Staying up with him — what with the trips to the hospital, which I'd thought were my punishment or ruin — I'd found a strange kind of rescue. 

Vis-à-vis God speaking to me,
I mean ... the reversals of attitude

so contrary to my typical thoughts

— so solidly true —

as to seem divinely external.

And quiet these thoughts are,

strong and quiet.

Then it hits me. I'm actually kneeling before a toilet. The throne, as other drunks call it. How many drunken nights and slungover mornings did I worship at this altar, emptying myself of poison. And yet to pray to something above me, something invisible, had — before now — seemed degrading.

"Leave all that stuff here with me. 

God wants you to put this stuff down now.

Go wear the world like a loose garment.

And be of good cheer.
If you let God in,

He'll take this shame from you."

"God's after you.

Struggle all you want ...

You are here.
What's keeping you from 

(belonging to Him)?"

+ Lit,

pgs. 275-277, 303

Open the Gate

The early Church put the image of the Good Shepherd on their tombs. Why? Because it was a sign of their trust in Christ, their Good Shepherd, to guide them through "the valley of the shadow of death" to "green pastures" and "still waters" on the other side.

Even in this darkest journey, they didn't have to fear any evil, because Christ was with them.

Even in this darkest hour,

God is on your side.

+ God Is On Your Side

pgs. 153-154

Living Now That You're Dying

Last week Ross Douthat interviewed Ben Sasse for the New York Times. They discussed what Ben has been talking about a lot these days, which is that Ben is dying.

Watching Ben, you would almost not know what you were watching. You would think you were watching a free man who, despite appearances, is going to live forever and he knows it.

Watching him in that interview brought one particular passage to mind, and I’ll bet it has worked its way deep into him at some point, because what he is saying sounds so much like it.

The passage is the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism, published in 1563 and taught to children and grieving adults ever since. 

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

The comfort Heidelberg promises you is not that God will keep you healthy. Not that life will make sense, or that the righteous will outlive the wicked, or that your prayers for healing will be answered the way you hope they’ll be. Not even the forgiveness of your sins, though of course that is a huge part of a Christian’s comfort.

What Heidelberg says about the source of your comfort, the only comfort you get in life and in death, is that you belong, body and soul. That you are not your own. That Christ, who bought you with his blood, is watching over you so carefully that not even a hair can fall from your head unless the Father in heaven intends it.

If you belong to Him,

then nothing that happens to you

can un-belong you.

That is the whole point of Heidelberg #1. And that is a comfort most of us find hard to actually take hold of until something comes along and strips away all the other comforts we were leaning on instead.

+ Scott Sauls on

"How Ben Sasse is Living Now

That He Is Dying"

 

With wild wonder and hope,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan