Over the past few weeks, we’ve had the Call Services at our two Seminaries, our southern and northern spring pastors’ conferences, and several installations, with half a dozen more installations on the docket over the next few months. Besides all that, over the past couple of Sundays, whether in the one-year or three-year lectionary, our Indiana District congregations have celebrated the Sunday of Easter popularly known as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” As it turned out, I visited a congregation that follows the three-year lectionary on the Third Sunday of Easter, and I visited a congregation following the one-year lectionary on the Fourth Sunday of Easter; so, if you do the math, you’ll realize that I managed by accident to miss “Good Shepherd Sunday” on both counts – but I did get to preach on it for the southern conference!
Anyway, this has been a month to think about the significance of the pastoral office, the word “pastor” being the Latin word for shepherd. There are plenty of other words that can appropriately be used for those who are called and ordained to the Office of the Holy Ministry, but in my estimation “pastor” is the favored and most common term within our fellowship. And it does hearken back to any number of references in the Holy Scriptures. Both the Prophet Moses and King David were shepherds before they were called and anointed to shepherd the people of God. And the Prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel both offer a critique of those who were unfaithful shepherds of Israel (Jeremiah 23:1, Ezekiel 34:2). The Lord Himself is the great Good Shepherd, who comes in the flesh to lay down His Life and take it up again in order to obtain and bestow abundant life upon the lambs and sheep of His flock (St. John 10).
The Lord has yet “other sheep that are not of this fold,” and He desires to “bring them also,” that there should be “one flock, one Shepherd” (St. John 10:16). For He has deep divine compassion for those who are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (St. Matthew 9:36). Thus, He calls and sends men to feed His lambs and tend His sheep with His Word and Sacraments (St. John 21:15-17). His holy Apostles likewise admonish the pastors of the Church to “shepherd the flock of God” (1 Peter 5:2), and to “pay careful attention to [themselves] and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made [them] overseers, to care for the church of God, which He obtained with His own Blood” (Acts 20:28). These are among the passages we hear at every ordination and at every installation of one of our LCMS pastors.
So, what does this mean for those who are entrusted with the sacred stewardship of “the Mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1)? In one of my favorite Luther quotes, the Reformer writes that, by the grace of God, even “a seven-year-old child knows what the Church is, namely, holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd” (Smalcald Articles III-XII.2). That is precisely to the point, and, indeed, to the very heart of the matter. But the sheep hear that blessed voice of their Shepherd through the preaching and teaching of His undershepherds, His pastors, His “earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4:7). How vitally essential it is that we who preach must do so as those who speak the oracles of God (1 Peter 4:11). For there is simply nothing else than the Word of Christ that gives life to His precious lambs and sheep.
By the same token, as I pointed out in my preaching to the pastors at the southern conference last week, it is all likewise essential that we also be hearing and heeding the Voice of the Good Shepherd: not only for the sake of those we are called, ordained, and sent to serve in His Name, but no less so for the sake of our own faith and life in Christ Jesus. For what do any of us have – and what do any of us have to give – that we have not received? (1 Corinthians 4:7). We have nothing to preach, teach, or confess, except what we have heard from the Lord who loves us. His sheep hear His voice, and they know Him, and they follow where He leads (St. John 10:27). But they will not hear His voice from us, unless we are first of all hearing His voice and echoing what He has spoken in all that we say and do.
To that end, I reiterate what I have said before in urging my brother pastors to avail themselves of the Gospel from their own father confessors and from the mutual conversation and consolation of others.