The King of Love My Shepherd Is
Good Shepherd – Jean Baptiste de Champaigne, c. 1660.
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille. Public domain.
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This Sunday is not just another Sunday in ordinary time. It is the last Sunday of Pentecost. Our liturgical color has been green for a very long time. Green is used to mark the growing season, not just of vegetation, but of the church under the power of the Holy Spirit. But on this Sunday we move to white. It will be a day of celebration. It is the climax and end of the church year. It is known as Christ the King Sunday. How wonderful in the life of our congregation that we will formally welcome into the body of Christ, over a dozen wonderful people through Confirmation.
The next week we will begin a new church year as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the king at Christmas.
The lessons for Christ the King Sunday are appropriately celebratory. They sing the praises of the King who is at once creator and Lord of the Universe, while also being the one who will return at the end of the ages to separate the sheep from the goats. It is interesting that most of the images for the day are drawn from the king being a shepherd. For those of us familiar with the life of David, this comes as no surprise. David, the Great King, was called from the fields while taking care of the sheep to be chosen by Samuel as God’s anointed, the future king.
The kings of Israel were always seen as shepherds by God as illustrated in Ezekiel 34. This theme is evident in the choice of Psalm 95 for Christ the King Sunday. The Psalm sings the praise of the shepherd King in verses six and seven, “O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.”
As Anglicans, Psalm 95 is close to our hearts. It comes at the beginning of Morning Prayer and is called the Venite. Venite is rooted in the Latin word “to come”. Anglicans can alternatively sing or say the Jubilate at the beginning of Morning Prayer. But the theme of the Shepherd King is also in the Jubilate (Psalm 100), “Be assured that the Lord, he is God; it is he that has made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” If this were not enough the theme is built right into the confession, also at the beginning of Morning Prayer, “Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep.”
In all of this, as we prepare to worship and praise the King of Love who is our Good Shepherd, there are several things to keep in mind.
□We are only the sheep of his right hand. He is the shepherd and he is also the creator. “It is he that hath made us and not we ourselves.” The theme of the King as our creator is a big part of why we need to praise him.
□As the all-powerful creator, we can look to him for provision. The one who made the heavens can also provide bread for his sheep in the wilderness.
□All too often we “err and stray from his ways like lost sheep.” We do this when we forget his power, his goodness, and his love. Rather than praise him for his provision in the past in order that we might have faith for the future, we all too often complain and test him as Israel did in the wilderness.
□It is clear that to follow the Good Shepherd we need to understand his ways and seek to emulate them. This is made clear in Ezekiel 34:16, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy.” The fact that the Shepherd will judge between “sheep and sheep, between rams and goats,” is also made clear in the Gospel from Matthew 25 for this Sunday. If the Good Shepherd comes for the lost, the strays, the injured, and the weak, he expects us to do the same.
□That which the Shepherd longs for from his sheep is nothing more than the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. The Venite is nothing more than a call to praise the Shepherd King. The Jubilate is also a call to praise him. For that matter all of Morning Prayer is a call to praise that culminates in the General Thanksgiving, “We bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for your immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ.” Jesus is the Shepherd King who loved the sheep so much that he laid down his life for them. As we end another Church year, as we celebrate the creator, Shepherd King, as we prepare for his birth let us sing:
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, But yet in love he sought me,
And on his shoulder gently laid, and home, rejoicing, brought me.
And so through all the length of days thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise within thy house forever!
†Bishop Mark