Guided by Christ Our Shepherd: Verse and Hymn of the Year

Each year at Faith Lutheran School, our staff chooses a theme verse and hymn for the year. For this school year, we have selected John 10:11: “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus as the Good Shepherd is one of the most beloved images of our Savior in our Church’s history. Sheep are stubborn. They are prone to wandering away and falling unknowingly into danger. I remember seeing a video where a sheep had run across a field and fell into a ditch. The shepherd worked frantically to get the sheep out, and once free, the sheep ran a half circle at full speed right back into the ditch. Our lives are often this way. It is easy to fall into a pattern of repeated behavior, especially bad behavior. Yet, we have a good and faithful shepherd. No matter how many times we run into the same ditch, He never fails to lovingly pull us back out.

But we need His guidance. We need His leadership. We need His care. Our hymn of the year reminds us of this each time we sing it. “Savior, like a Shepherd Lead Us” is a beautiful hymn that encapsulates what our Lord does for us as our Good Shepherd. The first verse focuses on our need for His guidance. Jesus does not lead us into danger, but into pleasant pastures, imagery reminiscent of Psalm 23. The transition between verses one and two is beautiful. Verse one ends with “You have bought us; we are Yours,” and verse two begins with “We are Yours.” We often need to be reminded that we belong to our Good Shepherd, and He has promised to lead us well.

Verse two continues with petitioning Jesus to guide and guard our way, keeping us, His wayward sheep, from sin. And when we wander, we ask that He seek us out to bring us back to the right path. The hymnist understands that, just like sheep, we cannot help but veer off the path God has placed us on. The old sinful flesh that clings to us must, as Luther wrote, be daily drowned and die. Saint Paul calls this battle between the new Adam and the old Adam “warring between my members.” Even the pagan writers of antiquity understood this battle. Ovid, in his Metamorphosis, says, “I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.” We need a Shepherd who will correct us when we follow the wrong path, and that is precisely what we are asking our Lord to do in verse two.

God is omniscient and thus knows all things. Yet Scripture is filled with examples of God’s people recalling His promises in prayers and songs to Him. Indeed, God doesn’t need to be reminded of what He has promised to do, but we often do. The third verse of our hymn recalls our Shepherd’s promises. He promises to receive us, even though we are poor, miserable sinners. He promises to have mercy on us and relieve us from our burden by His grace and power. We have a Shepherd who not only directs us, but also takes all of our mistakes and makes them His. Martin Luther summarized Christ’s taking on of our sins when he said, “Therefore, He is both the greatest and only sinner on earth, for He bears the sins of the whole world, and also the only righteous and holy One, since no one is made righteous and holy before God except through Him.” In the Church, we call this the blessed exchange. Jesus takes all our sin, all our guilt, all our burdens, and makes them His, while giving us His perfect obedience, His death, and His life. What sweet comfort this is for us! The verse ends by praying for us to turn to Jesus early in our wanderings. The moment we stray from the path, we need to ask our Shepherd to help us come back to the fold before we become lost.

The final verse picks up with this imagery, much like we saw in verses one and two. We ask Jesus to help us seek His favor and do His will early. This has a double meaning in that we want to learn to seek Him at the youngest age possible. Virtue is a habit. It must be repeated over and over until it is ingrained in us. But we also need His favor and will to guide us the moment we begin to stray. We cannot do this on our own, and so we also pray for Christ’s love to fill our spirits. Knowing His love for us, we are able to return that love. The hymn ends with a request that Jesus’ love, which has sustained us to this point, would remain.

We need our Good Shepherd’s guidance each and every moment of every day. We need a Good Shepherd who will seek after us when we are lost or wandering. Thanks be to God that He has given us His Son, the Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep, only to take it back up again in victory over sin and death. May our Good Shepherd guide our words and actions throughout this school year and throughout all our lives.