Our text for Sunday is John 21:1-19 and our title is, “What Makes A Good Shepherd?” This is from the sermon:

In a sense this image of shepherd is lost on us in 2010. I’ve yet to run across a shepherd in Raleigh or any other place I’ve lived. The profession and image is of another world not ours. So over time the Church has pressed other images into service to describe the job of feeding the flock. High, liturgical churches tend to use the image of priest. The Lutherans prefer pastor. The Reformed Congregations lean to minister and Evangelicals like preacher. Yet despite the fact that we no longer herd sheep, nothing captures beauty, simplicity, and humility like shepherd. And nothing captures the essence of the shepherd’s calling like those three words, “feed my sheep.”

In Sunday’s sermon we’ll consider the return of Jesus to heaven after the resurrection. The text is from Luke 24 and the title is, “The Hands and the Feet.”

As one has written just as the resurrection completes the crucifixion, the ascension completes the resurrection. Some maintain that Jesus returning to the Father is the most neglected doctrine of the Church and that we cannot understand Jesus apart from it. Perhaps we can best appreciate it by hearing how Peter sums it up in a sermon from the book of Acts, “This Jesus” proclaims Peter, “is exalted at the right hand of God.” We must remember that these early followers didn’t hang their heads low when Jesus left. They didn’t kick the can all the way back to Jerusalem. They didn’t say, “Well. That’s that.” No, Luke tells us: “And it came about that while he was blessing them, he parted from them, and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising God.”

We continue Sunday looking at how each gospel deals with the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. We deal with Mark this Sunday.

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Mark 16:8

Unlike Matthew’s Great Commission or Luke’s heavenly ascension, Mark ends with trembling and quaking women scared out of their wits and fearful to tell anything they saw. What do you make of this ending that leaves us hanging like some cliff hanger at the end of a television series’ final season episode. I put the gospel of Mark down and look around and say, “What? That’s it? Afraid? They were afraid? There’s must be something else. It can’t end like this.” But it does. So what gives? Can the last thing we leave the second gospel with be fear?

This Sunday we begin a series of sermons that examines how each of the gospel writers handle the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. This week our text is Matthew 28:16-20 typically referred to as “the Great Commission.” From the sermon:

Perhaps the most unique perspective on the resurrected Jesus provided by Matthew is the very last phrase in the text which are the last words of the gospel, “And remember, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” You see when the curtain drops in this first gospel Jesus is still here. There is no ascension in Matthew. There’s no flying away into the clouds like Luke reports. Matthew wants us to know Jesus didn’t die and go away like everyone else we know. The resurrection isn’t a poetic way of saying that the spirit of Jesus lives on as a constant inspiration to us all. That’s a pretty modern, and fairly vanilla, way to view Easter that makes the resurrection as bland as cottage cheese.