St. Mark's Anglican Church

05/26/2024

TRINITY SUNDAY
St. Mark’s May 26, 2024

In the tenth century, Bishop Stephen of Liege established a feast day specifically in honor of the Holy Trinity, unusual because it did not honor a specific historical event or person but was purely theological. Trinity Sunday became especially popular in England because it was also the date of the enthronement of St. Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, and it would ultimately become a feast day of the universal Church in 1334. Trinitytide - Trinity Season - is the longest season of the Church year, extending for about six months from Pentecost to the beginning of Advent, though it is interrupted by various other feasts and observances from time to time. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer followed the ancient Salisbury or Sarum use in the Book of Common Prayer, by dating Sundays from Trinity rather than from Pentecost, something which only Anglicans and several of the religious orders, such as the Dominicans, still do today.
The existence of three Persons, separate and distinct from one another yet within the unity of a single God, is a central doctrine of the Christian religion. It is a mystery that is known to us only by divine revelation, and something which the intellect of man could not by itself come to know. The unity of God is clearly proclaimed in the Old Testament, as in Deuteronomy: “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord”, and “there is no God beside Me”. In Exodus, God gives His Name to Moses as “I AM THAT I AM”. Some Old Testament scriptural passages do, however, seem to imply that there are in some way several Persons within the One God. The word Elohim, which is actually a plural noun, is used in several places in Genesis to refer to God. The prophet Isaiah uses the names Emmanuel and God the Mighty to refer to the earthly Messiah who is to come, clearly implying that He is divine.
God Himself cannot be perceived by human senses, and the Jews believed that to see Him was to die. Yet He appears on a variety of occasions in human form, and these appearances, called theophanies, are thought to have actually been the Incarnate Son in His humanity. A suggestion of the Third Person of the Trinity is seen in references such as those in Wisdom, “a breath of the Power of God”, or the Spirit of God moving over the waters in Genesis, There are a variety of such Old Testament references to the Spirit or Wisdom of the Lord, as One who is more or less a distinct person, yet still God.
The full mystery of the Trinity would be revealed to the Apostles slowly, preparing them for its immensity and challenge to human understanding. Our Lord first taught them to recognize Him not only as the anticipated human Messiah, but as the Son of God as well. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him, and that although He will be leaving the created world to return to the Father, another Divine Person, the Holy Spirit, will be sent to them. St. Matthew’s gospel concludes with the Great Commission, clearly articulating the Three Persons of the Trinity. He tells them to go forth and baptize in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - not in the Names, not plural, but singular - in the Name.
Among many other references in the gospels, the Son of Man judges all the nations, separating the sheep from the goats and summoning the blessed of His Father. Such judgment in Jewish theology was a divine, not merely a messianic, prerogative. The Archangel Gabriel tells Mary that her Child will be called holy, the Son of God, and therefore more than only the earthly Messiah. When Peter is asked whom he thinks Jesus is, he replies that “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. In Our Lord’s trial before the Sanhedrin, He not only declares Himself to be the Messiah, but in response to a specific and pointed question affirms that He is in fact the Son of God. At that moment, the Sanhedrin declared Him guilty of blasphemy, which would not have resulted just from His claim to be the Messiah.
John the Baptist exclaimed “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world”, and Our Lord explicitly stated “I and the Father are One”. In the temple, He proclaimed “Before Abraham was, I AM” indicating not only His pre-existence before the world was made, but identifying Himself with the name God gave to Moses, I AM THAT I AM. St. Paul told the Corinthians that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost was to be with them.
This divine mystery of the Trinity, of three Persons in the unity of One God, has been known from the earliest days of the Church, and is clearly expressed in the declarations of our faith which we call the Creeds, especially the Athanasian Creed. It is true that we cannot understand how this can be so, how there can be three distinct Persons, whom we name as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and yet there is but one God. We need not be able to explain that which is beyond human understanding, when all that is necessary is to accept the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can say with the patriarchs , “Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God is one”, and at the same time, recognize and worship the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the Unity of the Blessed Trinity.
Without the Trinity, without the co-eternal, co-existent Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we cannot understand the story of Jesus of Nazareth as the story of God. If it is anything other than that, if the account of His birth, death, and Resurrection is anything other than the account of God Himself, then there is no Gospel. If there is no Gospel, then there is no salvation. The Trinity reveals for us the coherence and plan of God’s actions in the world of men; that the Scriptures are not just a collection of miscellaneous documents from antiquity, but a single, unitary work through which God conveys to us that which we need to know to attain eternal life with Him. The season of Trinity will continue to remind us of the eternal mystery of One God, yet Three Persons and the timeless mystery and majesty of our Christian faith.

05/19/2024

PENTECOST
St.Mark’s 5/19/2024

Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. The name comes from the Greek pentekostos, or fifty, and the events which are described for us in the Acts of the Apostles take place some 50 days after the Resurrection. It is also seven weeks since the Passover, and was the Jewish Feast of First Fruits, also called the Feast of Weeks. For the Jews, its origin was a celebration of the spring barley harvest, but at the time of Our Lord it had come to mark the end of the Passover. It was one of the three great festival occasions defined in Deuteronomy, along with the Passover itself and the Feast of Tabernacles or Succoth, when male Israelites were to appear before the Lord; that is to say, at the temple. Later, after the destruction of the temple, it would become a commemoration of the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai.
In the Gospel, Our Lord once again tells the Apostles that the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, will come. The message of the past four Sundays, the Comforter and what He will mean in the life of Christ’s disciples, is summed up in today’s Gospel. From the Acts of the Apostles, we learn that Matthias has been chosen to replace the betrayer Judas, restoring their number to twelve. They have seen the risen Christ, and He has left them after giving them His command to go forth and teach all nations. First, however, they are commanded to wait in Jerusalem. Suddenly there is the sound of a rushing wind, and tongues of fire appear upon the heads of each of the apostles. There is an overwhelming feeling of the Holy Ghost as power, a new gift and something quite different from their earlier experiences. Our Lord had said to them “Receive the Holy Spirit”, and had breathed upon them, but this sense of the majestic power of God - of the Holy Ghost - was something new.
We are told that they began to speak in tongues; that is, directly in the languages of all of those who heard them, and not as some Bible scholars would have it, in meaningless syllables pouring out of them in ecstasy. The clear impression is that the Apostles were able to speak in languages which they did not know, so that despite the fact that most people in Palestine did speak Greek or Aramaic, each man understood them to be speaking to him in his native language, no matter what it was. Speaking in apparently meaningless and unintelligible syllables., called glossolalia, was certainly known to the apostles, but St. Paul was against it, and wrote to the Corinthians that it was unedifying, tended to disorder, and could easily be counterfeited. It seems unlikely that this is what happened on Pentecost. Recall that Genesis tells us that originally everyone spoke the same language, but when an attempt was made to build a tower, which would reach up to God, their languages were confused so that they could no longer understand each other. It was as if this was a period of reversal of the events of the tower of Babel - no longer were different languages a barrier to communication, but every man could understand the Gospel that was being proclaimed. This gift, or charism, did not persist, but it must have been striking when it occurred - “they were all of one accord in one place”, and the hearers were amazed. It symbolized a mission that would cross all boundaries, the universality of the Gospel message, as the Apostles now began to preach boldly and openly.
Pentecost therefore marks the day in which the Christian church really began to separate itself from the traditional faith of Israel and is its “Birthday”. Up to then, the Apostles still thought of themselves as Jews, but that would soon change.

St. Peter – that same Apostle, who often misunderstood what was happening, who blundered his way along with the best of intentions, and who had denied Christ three times on the night of His arrest, now got it absolutely right in his sermon to the assembled Jewish pilgrims. He told them that Jesus was crucified, was risen from the dead, to which they were witnesses, and that He was both Lord and Christ. When they asked Peter what they should then do, Peter told them to repent and be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ, and the Acts of the Apostles tell us that three thousand did so – that’s a pretty remarkable result from any sermon!
The community of believers was next extended to the Jews residing outside of Palestine, the Diaspora. During the Council of Jerusalem, about 39 A.D., the question of whether Gentile converts to Christ must first become Jews was settled once and for all in the negative, now clearly distinguishing the Christian faith from its Jewish origins. Following Pentecost and the descent of the Holy Ghost, the Apostles would travel the world to spread the Gospel in accordance with the Great Commission. St. Paul, who as a devout Jew had vigorously persecuted Christians, was converted on the road to Damascus and would become a foremost proponent of the Gospel.
At first, many of His followers expected that Christ’s return and the end of the world would occur very soon, even in their own lifetime. . In contrast, St. Luke’s Gospel, in particular, seems to replace that idea with that of the imminent coming of the Holy Ghost. Until Christ’s Kingdom on earth comes to pass, the community of faithful believers is to establish itself throughout the world, and the Holy Ghost will empower them to do so. All three of the synoptic gospels emphasize that no one knows when the Second Coming is to be but the Father. It is not enough, however, for Christians to simply wait passively and expectantly. We have the obligation to make Christ known to all men. For St. Luke, the author of his Gospel and also of the Acts of the Apostles, this is now the age of God’s Church here on earth.
Pentecost was considered by the Church Fathers to be a great feast as early as the third century. It became known also as Whitsunday (or White Sunday) because it became a favorite day for baptism, at which time those to be baptized wore white robes. The liturgical color for the day, however, is red, symbolizing the Holy Ghost. Not surprisingly, red is also the color used for the feasts of martyrs, the color of blood. It is through the sustaining power of the Holy Ghost that martyrs were - and are - able to face their persecutions and death with courage and trust in God.
So, let us wish a happy birthday to our Church, which was established for us by Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is the path by which we come to Him and to the Father, sustained and nourished by the Holy Ghost as we make our way through this life.

05/12/2024

05/12/2024

ASCENSION (obsv)
St. Marks’May 12, 2024

Today, we celebrate Our Lord Jesus Christ’s Ascension into heaven, as it is related in the Acts of the Apostles and, by the same author, in St. Luke’s Gospel. The risen Christ spent some forty days after His Resurrection with His Apostles before leaving them, after confirming their faith and preparing them for their future work in the world St. Luke tells us that, “... it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and was carried up into Heaven. And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God”. The Ascension of Jesus Christ became a festival separate from Easter as early as the 4th century in Jerusalem, and it soon spread to the entire Church. Following the reading of the Gospel on the feast of the Ascension (which always falls on a Thursday), the Paschal candle is extinguished, signifying that the risen Lord has now returned to His Father, and it will not be lit again until the next Easter Eve.
Although the exact site of the Ascension is uncertain, it is believed that it took place on the Mount of Olives, and, as the prophet Zechariah foretells, it is to that same Mount of Olives that Christ will return at His Second Coming. While artists often represent the Ascension as Our Lord being carried up into the sky until He was out of sight, the Scriptural account states only that He was taken up and veiled from the sight of the Apostles by a cloud. Two men in white, which is the usual biblical way of describing angels, ask the Apostles why they stand looking up, as Jesus will return in the same manner as He has gone into Heaven.
We must not make the mistake of thinking that the Ascension was the end of Our Lord’s activity on earth until He comes again. It was not, and it is not, nor was the Ascension simply an afterthought, or a way in which Christ’s earthly ministry could be brought to a definitive end. It has been an essential part of Our Lord’s plan from the beginning of creation, and was anticipated in His Transfiguration. Preceded as it necessarily is by the great celebration of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord, and followed by Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Ghost, the significance of the Ascension can be easily be missed, but it has three very important consequences for us.
First, the Incarnation - the miracle and wonder of God become Man - no longer is confined to a particular place and time in human history, but now encompasses all time and all places of God’s creation. His saving act on the Cross is therefore unlimited, and extends for all eternity. Jesus Christ now enters fully into His divine glory, seated at the right hand of the Father.
Secondly, the Ascension marked the beginning of a new age in mankind’s history, in which the world is to prepare for His Second Coming, and the final triumph of good over evil. While it concluded the risen Christ's time on earth with His disciples, the Ascension was also the beginning of a new era in man’s history, which will not end until He returns. The Ascension reminds us to be ready for that event, and while the early Church expected it to happen very quickly, as Our Lord has told us, only the Father knows when it will actually occur.
Thirdly, as the disciples were told, it was necessary for Our Lord to leave them in order to send the Holy Ghost, the Comforter to the world. Why that was so, we do not know; we only know that Our Lord told us that it was necessary. The Ascension marked the end of the once-and-for-all revelation of God in Christ, and opens the way for His universal presence in the Church through the Holy Ghost, who will descend upon the Apostles at Pentecost.

Our Lord made frequent reference to His Ascension and the effects that would flow from it. He would tell Mary Magdalen in the garden after the Resurrection, not to touch Him, for He had not yet ascended to His Father, and to say to the Apostles that He would ascend unto His Father and their Father, to His God and their God. He told the disciples that only One who came from the Father can return to the Father, and that He will prepare a place there for us so that we may come to join Him. Our Lord told them that when He is lifted up, He will draw all men to Himself, and He will do so, first upon the Cross and then, by His Ascension into Heaven. St. Paul writes that He has entered, not into a sanctuary made by human hands, but into heaven itself, to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. He is our Mediator and Shepherd, and He shares our humanity with us, His creation, yet He is also eternal, beyond the limitations of space and time, His saving work here on earth is not, therefore, limited to the particular period in human history when He walked among us, but is extended to all those who ever have or ever will live, and who accept Him as Lord and Savior. .
That saving work of Jesus Christ continues. It is to Him that we owe our worship, our trust, and our obedience. He is verily the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and He has given us the greatest gift of all, the promise of life eternal with Him. Until we join Our Lord in the next life, we have His assurance that He is with us, we have the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and we have the Church which He established as the pathway to our salvation. That is all we need.

04/28/2024

EASTER IV
St.Mark’s April 27, 2024

In today’s Gospel, Our Lord tells His disciples that not only is He going to go away, it is necessary for Him to do so in order that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit will come to them None of the Apostles have the courage to ask where it is that He is going, nor do they, still confused, think to ask "Just who is this Holy Spirit that you're telling us will come as our guide?"
It might be a surprise for you to know that the word "Trinity" is nowhere to be found in the Bible. No single term is used to describe the Unity of Three Persons in One God. The existence of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three Persons, distinct from one another, co equal and co eternal, yet still One God, is a mystery which is only known to us through Divine revelation. To the early Fathers of the Church, the mystery of the Trinity was foreshadowed and indirectly proclaimed in the Old Testament. Since God the Father is invisible to human senses, they believed that many of the theophanies, or physical appearances of God, were actually the Son rather than the Father, especially since the ancient Hebrews believed that to see God was to die. One of the many examples is that in Genesis 22:12, where a voice speaks to Abraham as if it were God himself, saying "now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me", yet at other times the angel seems to be distinct and not God Himself.
There are other indications of the Holy Ghost in the Old Testament as well, often expressed as the "breath of God" or as the personification of the Spirit of Wisdom. In Genesis, at the creation of the world, we read that "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters". In the Gospels, Our Lord prepared the Apostles slowly for the immensity of the Trinity, a concept which we still cannot really understand or grasp with our human reason. He told them first of Himself, and then of the Father before reassuring them with the coming of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.
They will be sent the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who will abide with them forever, and One who is clearly distinct from both the Father and the Son. In the Great Commission, Our Lord explicitly directs the Apostles to go and teach all nations, baptizing them the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Note well the use of "in the Name of" not "in the names of", but in the Name of. One God, yet with the explicit identification of three distinct Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
It is through the titles given the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit, and those terms mean the same and are interchangeable) that we can best understand His role. Remember that, as the Israelites were told, "The Lord your God is one God", but as a way to help our inability to understand the Trinity, we often attribute certain functions to one or another of the Divine Persons, and this is called "appropriation". We speak of the Father as the Creator; the Son as the Redeemer; and the Holy Spirit as the Sanctifier, but that is only a convenient way to express a concept we cannot really understand. The Athanasian Creed, the third of the great creeds through which we express our Christian belief, says that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, yet there are not three gods but One God.
The Holy Ghost is known by many names. Among those most often used are Counselor, Paraclete, and Advocate, all of which mean just about the same thing. He is not a bringer of new truth, because revelation to human beings was complete in Jesus Christ, but rather He is the teacher of the Church who brings us an even deeper insight into the Truth already revealed in Our Lord. His mission is therefore exactly the same as the Son, to reveal God the Father and glorify His Son. He represents and interprets the Father and the Son, as Our Lord says in today's Gospel. "All things that the Father hath are mine; therefore said I, that he shall take of mine and shall shew it to you".

There are many symbols of the Holy Ghost that are used in the Church. The one most often seen is probably the dove, as in the stained glass beside the altar. It was in that form that the Holy Ghost descended upon Our Lord at the Jordan River. Some of the other symbols used for Him are water, as in the sacrament of baptism, and fire, as in His descent upon the apostles on Pentecost.
St. Paul writes to the Corinthians that "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all", words we use often, especially in
Morning and Evening Prayer, as what we call the "Grace". St. Paul also tells them that "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit". Not only is the Comforter God's help with us, but Our Lord tells us that he shall be within us as well "He dwelleth with you and shall be in you". John the Baptist said to the Israelites that "I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit" In administering the sacrament of baptism, we pray that the new Christian will be sanctified with the Holy Ghost, and that all things belonging to the Spirit may live and grow in him.
The Holy Ghost's role as Advocate and Counselor reflects God's intercession in redeeming and protecting us from the evils of this world. Like the Apostles, we too are not left bereft and abandoned. We have God’s reassurance that the evils of this world are transient, and that our present life is only a precursor to our future one with Him. Our Lord Jesus Christ promised us that He would be with us always, and we, as Anglicans, know that He is really and truly present with us, just as He said He would be. He has also given us the Church, which is His Mystical Body, through which we receive the sacraments, and the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, will guide and direct us toward our goal of eternal life with Him.

04/21/2024

ST. MARK
St. Mark’s, April 25, 2021

Today, we honor Saint Mark the Evangelist, on what is known as the feast of title of our church. Despite the fact that he was one of the four Evangelists who recorded the life of Our Lord and His Gospel, his feast day was not included in the church calendar until relatively late, in the twelfth century. We know quite a bit about him, although he was not one of the original twelve apostles. Mark is mentioned by St. John, St. Paul, and St. Peter, as well as several times in the Acts of the Apostles, where he is usually identified as John Mark. Most scholars believe that all of these references are to the same person. It was not at all uncommon at the time to bear both a Jewish name, John, and a Roman one, Marcus, just as Saul, a Roman citizen, was also known as Paul. Mark was a nephew of Barnabas, his sister's son, while his mother was Mary of Jerusalem. It was her house, probably a frequent meeting place for the followers of Our Lord, that Peter sought out when he was released from prison.
When Barnabas and Paul returned to Antioch after their mission to Jerusalem they took Mark along, probably as a sort of general helper, but he may have participated in preaching the Gospel as well. When Paul and Barnabas went on westward into Asia Minor from Cyprus, Mark left them and returned home to Jerusalem, annoying St. Paul, who refused to take him along on the next missionary journey. As the result, Paul and Barnabas separated, and Barnabas, taking his nephew Mark with him, sailed to Cyprus. At this point, about the year 50, we lose sight of St. Mark until he reappears some ten years later with St. Paul and St. Peter in Rome.
By that time, the breach between Mark and Paul had been resolved. When St. Paul wrote the Colossians during his first imprisonment in Rome, he included a salutation from Mark, who was apparently in Rome at the time. He also sent greetings to Philemon from Mark, whom he names as among his fellow workers. Mark seems to have subsequently had been to Asia Minor, as Paul wrote to Timothy at Ephesus, to meet Mark and bring him back with him to Rome.
Mark was very likely in Rome when Paul was martyred. St. Peter calls Mark his son, probably indicating simply affection for the younger man whose mother Peter had known in Jerusalem, although it could also have meant that Peter had baptized him. The clear implication in Peter's letters is that Mark was by then well known in the Church. A widespread but unsubstantiated tradition gives Mark as the founder of the Church at Alexandria and where he died at an unknown time. There is no definitive evidence that he was martyred, but some ancient writers do say that he died while being dragged through the streets of Alexandria. In the year 829, what were said to be his remains were stolen from a tomb in Alexandria and taken to Venice to be enshrined there in the original church of San Marco. His symbol is that of a winged lion.
St. Mark's gospel was rather neglected by early Christian tradition, and rarely used in teaching, the great Gospel of Matthew being preferred by the church for the first thousand years. Since then however, a better understanding of how the gospels came to be has restored Mark's account to its rightful position. Most scholars agree that Mark's account of the life of Our Lord was the earliest to appear in written form and was the basis for a significant portion of the accounts of Matthew and Luke. The first definite attribution of a Gospel to Mark dates to about 130, by Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, and Mark was later said by Eusebius, historian of the early church, you have been St. Peter's secretary and interpreter. The gospel was probably written in Rome, in rather inelegant Greek and with a number of borrowed Latin words. Whether Mark himself actually ever saw Our Lord is not known. Though lt doesn’t seem likely, there are those who believe that he is the young man described as having his linen garment pulled off him and fleeing naked from Gethsemane at the arrest of Our Lord. Others number him among the seventy two disciples sent out by Christ, or consider him to have been a Levite and priest, all of which also seem very improbable.
A few further inferences can be drawn about the author from the Gospel itself, Mark was certainly familiar with the Roman world, its language, and its government, and he was particularly concerned about Gentile Christians. His knowledge of northern Palestinian geography was very sketchy, and the community for which he wrote was in some risk of suffering and persecution. Because of the references in Chapter 13 to the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not, scholars believe that the Gospel attained its final form not long after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD, Mark’s style is direct and forthright, and blends history and theology smoothly into a coherent narrative. He began his account of Our Lord's genealogy with Adam, stressing His identification with all people, not just with the Jews. His Gospel plunges immediately into an active account of John the Baptist and Our Lord appearing at the Jordan River. The Gospel for the feast of St. Mark is not taken from his own account but comes from that of St. John, the parable of the vine and its branches. It is one that has long been appointed for the feats of martyrs in Eastertide, and completes the readings from Our Lord's farewell discourse in the Gospel of John.
St. Mark's account of Our Lord's life and work on earth is straightforward and to the point. It is the simple Christian message of salvation, as clearly expressed and as relevant today as it was two thousand years ago when it was first put into written form.

04/14/2024

EASTER II
St. Mark’s April 14, 2024
A shepherd tending his flock, to which Our Lord has compared Himself, is one of the most endearing images in scripture, and it is one which His hearers would have immediately understood. Today, the Second Sunday after Easter, is often called Good Shepherd Sunday
Sheep were among the earliest domesticated animals, and in Genesis Abel is described as a keeper of sheep, while his brother Cain tilled the ground. Sheep were ritually clean animals, they were suitable for food and as a source of clothing, and they could be used for sacrificial offerings as well. The typical Middle Eastern sheepfold had only one gate or door, which was guarded by the shepherd. He cared for the sheep, protected and fed them, and brought back those who strayed. A shepherd could even call his sheep from the fold, where several flocks might be located, and his own sheep would know his voice and come to him.
Sheep are also known for their affection, submissiveness, and helplessness when left to themselves. They have a tendency to wander off aimlessly, getting scattered and lost. If you have been around them, you know that they can be incredibly stupid and stubborn animal. They often getting themselves into predicaments they should have easily avoided and need to be helped out of whatever trouble they have gotten into, just as we ourselves often do.
Sheep were also a measure of wealth, When Abram and Sarai journeyed to Egypt, Pharoah is described as having sheep and oxen among his great possessions. Many of the major figures of the Old Testament were shepherds, including Isaac, Jacob, Amos the prophet, and even David, who would become the greatest of the Hebrew Kings. Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, when God appeared to him in the form of a burning bush. A shepherd and his flock would become the way in which the relationship between God and His people could be described.
The prophets warned of God's coming judgment against their kings and priests, those shepherds who led the Hebrews into error by the worship of false gods, but they continued to hold out hope that the Lord would one day send a Good Shepherd to lead them. The great prophet Ezekiel condemned the rulers and false shepherds of Israel, who allowed God’s flock to be scattered as prey to beasts of the field, feeding themselves and not His sheep. The prophets proclaimed that God Himself would come to search for His sheep and seek out that which was lost, to bring again that which was driven away, and setting up one shepherd over them,
We all learned the 23rd Psalm in childhood; "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want", which we said ast Morning Prayer today. The Venite, which we say or sing at Morning Prayer almost every day, also reminds us that we are the people of God’s pasture and the sheep of His hand. When Moses asked God to identify his successor, he asked that the congregation of the Lord not be left as sheep without a shepherd.

As in the Gospel for today, Our Lord Jesus Christ often used the metaphor of a shepherd and his sheep. After His Resurrection, He asked St. Peter, who had denied Him three times, if he loved Him. Each time, as St. Peter replied that he does, Jesus tells Peter first to feed His lambs, and then twice to feed His sheep. He then warns His listeners to beware of false prophets in sheep's clothing, who are in reality ravening wolves, and tells them "I am the door of the sheep; by me, if any man enter in he shall be saved". The 18th chapter of St. Matthew's gospel contains the wonderful parable of the lost sheep, and the rejoicing which results when it is found.
When Our Lord was attracting great crowds in Galilee as He preached His Gospel and healed people, He was moved with compassion, because, He said, they were as sheep having no shepherd. Their shepherds had gone astray, and there was no one to guide them, until He came to point them once again toward God.
In today's Gospel, Our Lord tells the world that He is the one for whom they have been waiting, that He Himself is the very Good Shepherd of the prophets. The hired man, who is interested mainly in his salary, will not care for the sheep when danger threatens, but will run away. The Good Shepherd, however, will give his own life to protect and care for his sheep, just as Our Lord did for us, the sheep of His pasture. We know Him, and He knows us, and now, as the result of God’s New Covenant, Our Lord’s sheep consist not only of the Jews, but of the Gentiles as well - of all God’s creation.
In today’s Epistle, St. Peter says that “Ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls” Our Lord established His Church her on earth to continue guiding His flock, through the apostles and their lineal successors, our bishops, as Christ's shepherds on earth. It’s not by accident that a Bishop's crozier or staff is actually a representation of the traditional shepherd's staff
Just like sheep, we human beings can be stubborn and headstrong. We frequently go astray. and are often helpless against those many afflictions that which beset us. Our Lord Jesus Christ knows all of that and all our weaknesses and shortcomings, and yet, as our Good Shepherd, He still loves and cares for us, the sheep of His pasture and His flock.