Second Sunday in Easter

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In the second and third centuries A.D., when Christians were suffering fierce persecutions at the hands of the Romans, it was the image of JESUS as a shepherd that was widely and popularly displayed in frescoes in and around the Roman Empire. Yes, the image of a shepherd carrying a lost lamb was a benign, pastoral portrayal of a hero or a god in those days, and it would cause the Roman authorities no suspicion – no more than one of Hermes or Orpheus might. Yet, to the Christian community, the symbol held out great hope and a clear reminder of the divine spiritual guidance and protection the LORD JESUS promised to His innocent and vulnerable Christian lambs amongst their ravenous, overlording Roman wolves.  

The image is not only meant to be a passive reflection of the relationship of GOD’s people to their Savior. It is true that JESUS is our Shepherd, and therefore, we can lack nothing. Yet, in commissioning His apostles to bind and loose, and to remit and retain, He has empowered His Church, with His Holy Spirit to seek and to save that which is lost, especially the ‘other flock’ which JESUS mentions in today’s Gospel Lesson.  

If you recall from last Sunday, in John 20, JESUS commissioned His apostles in the Upper Room on the Day of the Resurrection. — In that very same room, days before, on the night before He was betrayed, the LORD JESUS told His friends that He was going away, and that He would be returning to His Father. And in His absence, JESUS promised to send the Helper – the Holy Spirit to them. (cf. Jhn. 16.5-7) Returning to the present situation, on the night of His Resurrection, JESUS fulfills part of that promise by commissioning and equipping the Apostles, breathing on them the regenerating life of His Holy Spirit with these words: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain of any, they are retained. And as the Father has sent Me, so I also send you” (John 20.21-23). — We would do well to look at this exchange between JESUS, His apostles, and His Holy Spirit, for by it, we will understand the nature of Christ’s symbol as the Good Shepherd, and the role the LORD’s Church has in bringing in ‘the other’ flock into His one fold and family.   

Since He was leaving JESUS needed those who would go in His Name with His Message to find His lost sheep in all nations. Thus, He commissioned the Twelve Apostles, which in Greek, means this very thing: ‘sent ones’. Yet, importantly, as any representative of a monarch or head of state, JESUS’ representatives must be completely aligned in thought, word, and deed with their sovereign. JESUS said that He too was a ‘sent one’, and that He came not to do His own will, but the will of the One that sent Him. (cf. Jhn. 5.30) As He said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son does in like manner” (St. John 5.22). JESUS was sent to act, speak, and judge the way His Father wanted Him to. And how did JESUS act? Well, exactly as the Father commanded Him to do. As we read in our Old Testament lesson: The Father sent JESUS “to feed His flock like a shepherd – to gather the lambs with His arm, to carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.” (40.11) JESUS even said that His nature as the Shepherd – the Good Shepherd of GOD’s sheep, which are His people, was to give His life for the sheep. (cf. Jhn. 10.11) — And a shepherd does not run out to the wolf or the thief coming to kill or steal the sheep and ask that the sheep might be spared and the shepherd taken or killed instead. Rather, the shepherd fights and struggles for the life of the sheep, laying down His life in a struggle to protect the lives of His flock. No better image do we have of Christ JESUS’ ‘sent-ness’ as the Good Shepherd laying down His life for His sheep than what is recorded in Saint Luke’s Gospel 23:24. There, after JESUS was made to suffer and then be nailed to the Cross by His enemies for the sins of the whole world, with all the people looking on in mockery, He said, struggling for the lives of His sheep: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” — This is the Spirit of Christ’s Apostleship – His sent-ness, and this is the way the apostles are commissioned. — “Ought not one sinner to forgive another, seeing that Christ JESUS, which was no sinner, did pray His Father for them, that without mercy and despitefully, put Him to death?”¹ — As I have been sent, so I am sending you.   

Yet, please note that Christ was not licensing His apostles to preach universalism. No, for His promise – “Today you will be with me in Paradise!” – was only given to one of the two thieves crucified with Him atop Golgotha, though both knew not what they did. — JESUS gave His apostles (and through them the Church that would grow out of their witness), the authority to bind and to loose, and to remit and retain sin in His Name, just as JESUS was sent to do. — Let us first recognize that to bind and to loose is a legislative power, and it is exercised each time the Gospel is preached. With His same merciful, missional purpose, Christ sent His apostles to carry on His legacy, charging them to preach repentance and spiritual regeneration to all who would listen. They were commissioned and empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue to declare to all people, Christ’s Gospel: “Come unto me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11.28-30). — And wherever they went to preach this Gospel, if they were welcome, they were to let loose their peace and remain there and preach the saving grace of the Gospel. Yet, if the people of the place where they went would not listen, then they were to bind up their peace and depart, shaking off the dust of the place from their feet as a sign against those people for their recalcitrance. (cf. Matt. 10.13-14) Binding and loosing is a legislative power, in which GOD, by a New Covenant and Law, has declared His power unto salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Gentile. (cf. Rom. 1.16) 

Secondly, according to JESUS’ commission of the apostles, to remit or retain sins, this is a judicial act, and it must be exercised upon those who respond to the legislative power of the Gospel, with either an honest and lively faith, or a shallow and apathetic faith. — You see, dear brothers and sisters, it is one thing to hear an edict that possesses the legislative power to release citizens of a country from a tyrannous rule, but it is another to respond to that edict in faith, living out the rights enumerated in that edict as a free citizen, trusting that the tyrant’s power is disannulled. — To hear the Gospel and to actually take up Christ’s yoke and bear His burden, as our Collect for today says, ‘to endeavor to follow the blessed steps of JESUS’ most holy life’, is a courageous and faith-filled act. Many are chosen to hear this message, but few are called to obey it. For even on that very dark but Good Friday, when the world being bound up with depravity and sin heard and saw the blessed goodness of GOD’s loving forgiveness burst forth from the Good Shepherd’s lips, I only recall one soul, who said: “JESUS, remember me when You come into Your kingdom” (Luke 23.42). — In His commissioning to sent-ness through His Spirit, JESUS was calling His apostles to find His lost sheep, and to loose them from their bondage with the promise of His easy yoke. And if any felt chosen to respond to His free offer and follow the Good Shepherd into the paths of righteousness for GOD’s sake, then the apostles were to remit sins by teaching those sheep to walk in the green pastures of Christ’s loving-kindness and mercy all the days of their lives.   

Dear Church of GOD in Christ, starting with the apostles, JESUS has committed us to His sent-ness. To be His representatives and do all such things that align with Him and His message. That message includes the binding and loosing that His Gospel provides when preached to all that will hear it. To those who will hear it, our peace and presence should remain, describing the ease of Christ’s yoke. To those who will not, our peace and presence are to be removed and only the dust of our sandals is to remain behind. Yet for those who respond to the call and choose to follow the Good Shepherd Whose life has been spent for their salvation, we the Church are to welcome, encourage, instruct, and train, so that the Holy Ghost might give them as He has given us, the inestimable benefit of His grace, so that we might all follow in the blessed steps of the Good Shepherd, following His most Holy Life unto green pastures and calm waters, even if we must first travel through valleys and threats of dark shadows and possibly even death for Christ’s Gospel, we, like the early Church, must trust in JESUS the Good Shepherd to bring us to green pastures and still waters. “For, beneath the burning skies and the clear starry nights of Judea, there grows up between the Good Shepherd and His flock a union of attachment and tenderness, directed by His rod and staff. Though in the country, but not of the country, at any moment, JESUS’ sheep are liable to be swept away by some mountain-torrent, or carried off by a hillside robber, or torn to pieces by wolves. At any moment their Protector may have to save us from spiritual hazard … And though by legislative decree and judicial authority we, His sheep, are free and without accountability for past sins, we are not free from our Shepherd’s call and responsibility, as His representatives, to help see His vision of one flock under one Shepherd come to pass.”² — I pray that you will remain with me to see that it is so. — In the Name of the Father, the Good Shepherd, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.  

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1 Various Anglican Divines, The Anglican Book of Homilies, (London: The Prayer Book and Homily Society, 1852), 134.   

2 Massey, Sheppard H., American Prayer Book Commentary, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), 246.