The Good Shepherd calls

 Acts 2:14a, 36-41‘God has made him both Lord and Christ.’

1 Peter 2:20b-25 ‘You have returned to the Shepherd of your souls.’

John 10:1-10 ‘I am the door of the sheep.’

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Today is traditionally known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’ because our scripture texts give different aspects and implications of the fact that Jesus is the Good Shepherd, a title he gives himself in St John’s Gospel.

Woven into calling today ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’ it is also known as ‘Vocations Sunday’ when we are invited to hear afresh, or for the first time the vocation, the call from the Lord that is placed upon our lives.

The voice of the shepherd of the sheep, the true shepherd, the Good Shepherd will be heard and responded to when we are led to good pasture.

That is contrasted with a voice we may well hear, a seductive, enticing voice, that leads us away from all that is of Christ, that is good and beautiful and true.

And Jesus deploys a metaphor to contrast two sorts of shepherd, with two very different ends.

The true shepherd calls and leads the flocks to good pasture; the false shepherd will call and lead to arid and deathly places, which will not nourish the body or the soul.

That sort of shepherd is rightly called a ‘stranger’ because that sort of shepherd is utterly estranged from the needs of the sheep.

The contrast appeared in our first reading too as St Peter addresses the crowds in Jerusalem, alongside the Eleven who are the foundation of the pastoral office of the Church.

The one who is no stranger to your needs of body and soul, for your forgiveness and healing is Jesus Christ.

The Lord is calling people to himself – that is our first and fundamental vocation – calling people to himself with the promise he holds in store, the promise of ‘good pasture’ in this world and the next.

That is contrasted with the ‘crooked generation’, estranged from human flourishing, that calls us, and keeps us, in the valley of the shadow of death, as Psalm 23 puts it.

This replicates the first call to life with God or death without him that we see in the garden of Eden, and the human response.

Resist the serpent’s gentle whisperings for they estrange us from the voice of the Beloved, of Christ. And as the first letter of Peter puts it, and well known from Handel’s Messiah, ‘all we, like sheep, have gone astray’ but also reminds us that we hear the call to return.

Our second reading was from a letter of St Peter.

He was writing to persecuted Christians, scattered across Asia Minor, Turkey today.

He was being a pastor to those people, modelling himself on the example of Christ to lead these suffering people through the valley of the shadow of death.

The sad irony is that today in those same lands Christians are persecuted, not by the Roman authorities, but by the Islamist regimes currently in control.

So Peter, echoing Jesus, calls us through the valley of the shadow of death and the suffering that accompanies it, into the green pastures promised by the Psalm, ‘for to this you have been called’ he says (1 Peter 2.21).

Peter speaks of our return to ‘the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls’.

Overseer in Greek is episcope from which we get the word, ‘episcopal’ meaning things to do with a Bishop.

The Bishop oversees the Church.

The task of the shepherd can be seen in the staff a shepherd carries, carried also by a Bishop in the Church.

This staff, or crook (because of its hooked end), signifies protection, guidance and salvation.

It protects by being used by the shepherd to ward off wild animals who prey on the sheep.

In the Church that is the staff of good doctrine and teaching that protects us from the seductive voices that don’t want to hear Christ’s call to life, but offer a pale imitation of it which is pale and deathly.

Jesus said, ‘I came that they [the ones who hear his call] may have life and have it abundantly’. (John 10.10)

The staff is used by the shepherd to guide the sheep to green pastures and abundance of life and stop them straying from the good path.

In the Church that is the staff of the Scriptures that guides us to an ever deepening and intimate union with Christ: pray for bishops and priests to hold the scriptures before Christ’s flock and preach faithfully and well.

The staff is used by the shepherd to save stranded and lost sheep and those who are stuck.

In the Church this is the staff of the sacraments that are channels of God’s grace: the saving waters of Baptism; the presence and life of Christ in Holy Communion; the spiritual strengthening of Confirmation; the restorative forgiveness of sins when the believer opens his or her heart to the Lord in Penance; the soothing balm of Unction, the anointing of the sick and dying; and for those so called, the sacrament of Matrimony, marriage, echoing the marriage of Christ to his Bride the Church; and some the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

Protection. Guidance. Salvation.

Each for the body, mind and spirit.

This is the great gift of Christ through his Church, and something all priests and pastors should seek to offer Christ’s people too. After the example of the Good Shepherd, as we are told at Ordination.

So, Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the true shepherd who leads to spiritual nourishment and calls us to reject false shepherds or the voices that lead astray.

Jesus cares for your soul and seeks to nourish you with abundant life.

As the Good Shepherd he protects, guides and saves your soul

As the Good Shepherd calls and those who are his know his voice: he continues to call you and me to service in His Name.

And what is the Good Shepherd calling to you, asking of you?

Ponder God’s call in your life, whether afresh or for the first time.

Be sure that you have given a general call to follow the voice of Christ amidst competing and misleading influences of the world as a disciple of his.

And be sure that he has a particular call to you to serve Him through his Church for the salvation of the world: what will that look like for you?

The measure of any authentic call is that it brings the one called, and those they serve, to the abundant life of the Good Shepherd revealed in beauty, goodness and truth, and to whom we ascribe all mighty, majesty, dominion and power, now and ever. Amen.