The Shepherd Who Leads Us
As we move toward the fourth Sunday of this season of resurrection, the Scriptures that come from the lectionary talk an awful lot about Jesus as a shepherd. With that in mind I recommend all of them for your reading this week, but would like to focus specifically on the passage from Revelation chapter seven.
A careful and responsible reading of the book of Revelation does a lot to help form and stretch our imaginations regarding how we should live in a world where God, in Jesus, has overcome the enemies, sin and death, even when (especially when) it doesn’t look like those enemies have really been defeated.
In the season of Lent we spend time reflecting on the ways in which sin and death still clamor to take hold of us. We come face-to-face with our mortality, our weakness, and all those things of which our conscience is most afraid. We spend forty days in this wilderness, and as it draws to a close and we think it couldn’t get any darker, we walk into Holy Week. And there we watch carefully as Jesus marches resolutely to the cross where sin and death do their worst to him. Like a sheep to the slaughter he is crucified, killed, dead.
But thanks be to God that this season of Lent gives way to the Easter season. And the picture painted for us here in the book of Revelation is one that is informed by the Easter season. It’s a picture of a reality that can only exist because early on that first day of the week Jesus, the crucified One, rose from the dead… VICTORIOUS over sin and death!
And what we see here in chapter seven is a glimpse of what it’s like to REALLY go to church, to REALLY worship the Risen Jesus. Here we see the fulfillment of God’s ancient promise to Abraham. Remember that promise?
God promised to make a people for God’s self that would be from every tribe and nation – that it would be too great a number to count. And that is precisely what we see here as those dressed in white worship saying, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
And this enormous group of people are formed and gathered around that Lamb, the Lamb who was slain. And this Lamb, still bloodied and bearing the marks of his suffering, stands alive, victorious with God, waving the banner of God’s triumphant kingdom.
And we, most especially during these Great 50 Days, are invited into this scene, as the Lamb who was slain stands risen and full of life and now like a shepherd leads us in a grand parade of great celebration and victory as we worship the God who has come to us and saved us!
During these Great 50 Days let us worship God with renewed passion and serve God day and night, “for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be our shepherd; he will lead us to springs of living water.”
Let us Pray:
Savior, like a Shepherd lead us through these days of celebrating your resurrection – your victory over sin and death. Give us your Holy Spirit that we might follow you without fear or reservation, that we might live the resurrection, here and now. Amen.
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