Misericordias Domini – May 4, 2025Psalm 33; Ezekiel 34:11-16; 1 Peter 2:21b-25St. John 10:7-18
In the Name of the Father, and of the +
Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In St. Peter’s first letter to the
Church, the Holy Spirit admonishes us this morning to follow Christ. He then
explains in what respects we should follow Him and concludes with why it is
that we should follow Christ.
The admonition to follow Christ is
quite simple and direct: “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example,
that you should follow His steps.”[1]
We might be accustomed to thinking of Christ’s perfect life as an example for
the Christian life, but the Holy Spirit would have us here consider His perfect
suffering and death as an example, too. Christ declared, “If anyone desires to
come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”[2]
The cross of which He speaks is often taken to be the daily burden of sin or
any of the various types of suffering endured each day by man. While that may
or may not be the intention of Christ’s own words, the Holy Spirit calls these
words to mind in the context of greater suffering: suffering the sins of
others, persecution, and death.
Our Lord’s suffering could be said to
begin with the knowledge that one of His beloved disciples would betray Him. A
man who had been with Christ from the beginning would betray Him with a kiss,
and for what? Thirty pieces of silver and the approval of man. Then, the events
of that night really begin when Christ speaks of His betrayal. He knows what
Judas plans to do and is pleading for Judas’s soul. But the son of perdition
had already given his soul to satan that the Christ would be betrayed into the
hands of the priests and Romans. Imagine the sorrow of Christ as His heart
breaks that one of His beloved would betray Him, sorrow that is redoubled as
the betrayal is completed with a kiss, a sign of affection poisoned by sin.
Christ says to Judas, “Friend, why have
you come?”[3]
Then, to the murderous crowd, He says, “I have told you that I am [the One whom
you seek]. Therefore, if you seek Me, let these go their way.”[4]
He said this to spare those whom He loved from the fate He was about to endure.
Yes, they would one day meet similar deaths, but their time had not yet come. He
must first show them the way into the grave, that they would also see His
victory over it. They needed to see both the way into the grave and the way out
of it, that they would follow Him.
So then, in what respects are we called
to follow Christ? Our text outlines five ways in which we are to follow Christ.
First, He committed no sin. If only we could follow Christ completely and
perfectly in this way! Yet the frailty of our flesh does not excuse us from
following in His footsteps. A child might try to follow his father’s footsteps
in the snow, but his short legs won’t allow him to perfectly conform to his
father’s gait. His little feet will make a mess of his father’s tracks.
Yet in the same way, we too should
follow Christ in being disgusted by sin and fleeing from it with all we have. We
should look to His steps and set our wills to following in them. When we
stumble and fall, for the footsteps are too great for us, we cry to our
heavenly Father to forgive our sin, lift us back onto our feet, and continue in
His train.
Second, no deceit was found in His
mouth. If our actions should conform to the steps of Christ, then so too should
our thoughts and words. The Holy Spirit has much to say about the evil that is
produced by the tongue. “The tongue is a fire, a world of
iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the
whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by
hell.”[5]
How easy it is to let a sinful word pass our lips or a wicked thought capture
our minds!
Perhaps worse still is keeping silence
when speaking is required. When called to confess, repent, or forgive, if you
should keep your tongue in your mouth then the flame of the tongue begins to
burn within you, setting your body and soul aflame. Yet look to Christ who
spoke the Law to hardened hearts, the Gospel to the repentant, and even kept
His silence when words no longer touched the hearts of His persecutors. No
deceit was found in His mouth because from it issued the pure Word of God.
Third, when Christ was reviled, He did
not revile in return. Christ did not curse His persecutors and executioners
from the cross but rather prayed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what
they do.”[6]
This prayer was certainly answered in the case of the repentant thief on the
cross and perhaps also in the centurion who confessed that “certainly this Man
is the Son of God.”[7]
We are to follow Christ in restraining
our hearts against those who persecute us and those who sin against us. Cry out
to God that justice be done? Absolutely. Pray that the wicked be destroyed, as
Psalm 55 says, “Destroy, O Lord, and divide the tongues [of the
enemy], For I have seen violence and strife in the city;” or Psalm 58,
“Break the teeth [of the wicked] in their mouth, O God! Let them flow away as
water which run continually…The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the
vengeance; He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.”[8]
Yet even in these harsh psalms, we pray
for the purpose that God’s will would be done and that we would be spared the
sins of wicked men. The cry for God’s justice to be meted out on the wicked is
so that God’s will would be kept pure and holy and that the righteous would be
saved. It is not a prayer for personal vengeance. These are not prayers for
personal retribution. They are prayers for justice and righteousness.
No Christian is called to be a punching
bag, absorbing the kicks and punches of the wicked. Turning the other cheek is
not a commandment to enable abuse. Rather, when the persecution, wickedness,
and sins of others come against you, look to the God of all mercy, grace, and
justice for relief. He will judge the unrighteous. He will protect the
righteous. He is our strength and shield, not we ourselves.
The fourth and fifth respects in which
we are to follow Christ are related to the third. He did not return reviling
with reviling, nor did He return threats with threats. Rather, He committed
Himself to the one who judges righteously. “‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’
says the Lord.”[9]
When persecution and sin comes against you, the first thought is to protect
your own heart, lest you too be swallow by the wrath of others and join them in
their iniquity. God has said, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”[10]
The Lord hears the cries of the faithful and will preserve the righteous. He
will judge the wicked to the glory of His own name. We are to walk in the
footsteps of Christ by having faith, trusting in the Lord’s righteousness to
deal with us (and the wicked) according to His Word.
The admonition to follow Christ’s
example in His perfect life but especially in His perfect suffering and death
begs the question, why? As good evangelical Christians, we know that Christ
proclaimed, “It is finished!” from the cross. Your salvation is finished,
complete, made whole, by Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Why, then,
does the Holy Spirit speak to us through St. Peter and speak so boldly about
our duty to follow Christ’s steps?
It is precisely because He is the Good
Shepherd. He leads His flock from the front. He guards and protects the sheep.
He knows you by name. He also leads you to still waters and away from dangers.
The footsteps of Christ show the way of salvation. Where Christ, our Shepherd
is, that is where we want to go. If our desire is to be with Christ, to be in
His flock and to go where He is leading us, then naturally, we ought to follow
His steps.
We were once like sheep going astray,
that is, we were once sheep without a shepherd, lost in the confusion of our
sin; turned inward, staring at our navels, thinking we knew the path within
ourselves. Yet even while we were in our sins, the Father sent His Son to
gather the wayward sheep to Himself. He came to die that we would have life. If
Christ has said, “I know My own, and My own know Me,” then it is we, who know
Christ, who have been called to follow Him.
In + Jesus’
name. Amen.
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