Preparing for Worship - April 19, 2026

In the One Year Series of readings, the Scripture readings for this Sunday focus upon the Lord as our Good Shepherd, especially in the life and work of Jesus our Savior. (This is a week earlier than Good Shepherd Sunday in the Three Year Series and is called Misericordias Domini  Sunday, with Latin words focusing on “the mercies,” “the steadfast love of the Lord,” shown particularly in His work as our Good Shepherd. This is part of Psalm 33:5: “The earth is full of the mercies, the steadfast love of the Lord.”

The Old Testament lesson is from Ezekiel 34:11-16. Ezekiel writes these words from the Lord while he is in exile in Babylon, in captivity along with His fellow Jews, far from their homeland and knowing that their capital city and temple have been destroyed, because of their sin and rebellion against the Lord. It looks like a hopeless situation for them. The Lord has not forgotten His steadfast love and mercy for His people, though. Though they have been through “days of clouds and thick darkness,” brought on by their sins and the failures of their human leaders, their shepherds, the Lord is going to go into action for them. He will seek out His lost and straying sheep and rescue them from the places where they have been scattered. He will bring them back and give them good, rich pasture land and make them lie down in peace. He will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak and remove the “fat and sleek” who had harmed them, in His justice. (This first happened when the Lord worked and allowed His people to be freed from captivity in Babylon and return to their homeland, though many Jews chose not to return home. The Lord gave them blessings and, finally, sent His own Son, Jesus, to do the saving, redeeming work for them and for the world as the ultimate Good Shepherd. So sadly, many of His fellow Jews rejected Jesus and the Father’s saving plan, and still do, but “the steadfast love and mercy of the Lord” are still available for all, in Christ.)

The psalm for this week is, of course, Psalm 23. The author is King David, a great Old Testament leader, but even he knew that He needed the Lord as his own Good Shepherd to “restore” his weak and erring soul. Images of “green pasture and still waters” are used, as David needed those, but above all, he needed forgiveness and to be led in “paths of righteousness,” following his righteous Lord. David needed the Lord’s “presence” and “comfort” and His “steadfast love and mercy” in life and in death, when he could finally “dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” (The “anointing” and the “table” remind us of what Jesus, the Good Shepherd brought us when He came: the “anointing“ with water and the Holy Spirit in our baptism and “the table” of the Lord’s Supper, where our “cup overflows” with the presence and forgiveness of our Lord Jesus. These gifts, working together with the Word of God, bring us to and keep us in faith in our Savior.)

The Gospel lesson is John 10:11-16. Three times in this short passage, Jesus calls Himself “the Good Shepherd,” fulfilling in the greatest way what the Lord said would happen in the Old Testament Ezekiel passage. Jesus was not a “hired hand” who did not really care about the sheep and would run away in a time of danger. Jesus was willing to “lay down His life for the sheep” and repeats His willingness to do so a second time in this passage. He knew His sheep, and the sheep he had brought to faith knew Him. He also had other sheep “not of this fold” that He needed to bring in and bring them to listen to His voice and be brought to faith in Him also. (Most think that He was referring to the Gentiles, for whom He also died and wanted to be brought to faith. Then there would no longer be a distinction between Jews and Gentiles. There would then be one “flock” of all believers in Jesus as their Good Shepherd, no matter their former background, in what we now know as the Holy Christian Church.) This is an affirmation of what was said earlier in John’s Gospel. In His “steadfast love and mercy,” “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16) and that “Christ died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:15). John 10:17 also predicts the Easter victory of Jesus: “I lay down My life, that I may take it up again,” in His resurrection from the dead.

The vital importance of what Jesus did for us as our Good Shepherd is also made clear in the Epistle lesson, 1 Peter 2:21-25: Christ Jesus “committed no sin” and had no “deceit” in Him. Instead, “He bore our sins in His body on the tree” of the cross, suffering the just penalty for our sins. “Christ suffered for you,” Peter says to us all, and “by His wounds you” and I “have been healed” and forgiven, and though we were “straying like sheep,” we have been brought back to our Good Shepherd, who cares for us and now watches over our souls, in His “steadfast love and mercy.” How wonderful that we do not now have to watch over our souls in our own power, but have our Good Shepherd with us to help and enable us. As Peter said so beautifully in 1 Peter 1:18-19, “You were ransomed from futile ways, not with perishable things, but with the precious blood of Christ, like a Lamb without blemish or spot.” As we see what Christ has done for us and how He brought us to trust in Him, Peter says, as this passage begins, that Jesus also “set an example for us, so that we might follow in His steps.” Jesus has already done everything we need for our salvation. We can’t add anything to that. But we can seek to follow what John says in another Scripture, 1 John 4:11: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to seek to love one another.” Christ has shown steadfast love and mercy toward us as our Good Shepherd, though we do not deserve it. Can we not also try to show love and mercy for others around us, too, as a reflection of Christ’s love? This earns us nothing, but it is a way to say “thanks to God for His overwhelming love already shown to us” and can maybe give some help and encouragement to others, people whom Jesus called “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” pointing them also to the love and mercy and hope that are in Christ Jesus (Matthew 9:35-38).