"Like Sheep Without a Shepherd"
Jeremiah 23:1-6; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56; Ephesians 2:11-22; Psalm 23
Woe! This passage begins with the cry that marks an
oracle of destruction. “Woe to the
shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!”
The shepherd is
a common ancient metaphor for leaders, and for kings in particular. Jeremiah shares with the prophet Ezekiel the
conviction that leaders bear more responsibility than their people for social justice.[1]
There’s a persistent ethical
theme throughout the Hebrew Bible. God requires
the community to be ruled with justice and righteousness, which is to be made
manifest in how they treat the alien, the orphan, and the widow.[2] But, as Elaine James suggests, rulers who
seek their own fortune, who expand their houses and enrich their coffers at the
expense of the poor are in egregious violation of God’s covenant, and will be held accountable.[3]
Jeremiah continues proclaiming a word from the
LORD: “Therefore…concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you
who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended
them. So, I will attend to you for
your evil doings.”
The prophet speaks with tenderness and compassion on
behalf of the people. Judah’s political leaders
have been corrupt and have failed the people, but God is the shepherd who will
ultimately redeem the people.
In Psalm 23, which we heard earlier, we hear similar
images of a divine shepherd who is a source of comfort and life. In the scriptures, we hear assurances that, while corrupt leadership has “scattered” the
sheep, God will “gather the remnant of my flock.” God will act as the good
shepherd, as a model of just rule and care.
Jesus is described in these terms in the passage we heard
today from Mark’s gospel. Jesus sees that the crowd of people are “like sheep
without a shepherd,” and has compassion on them.
The imagery of shepherds and flocks of sheep would have
been well-known to people in ancient times.
The shepherd--and by analogy the king--
is responsible for the well-being of the sheep: to feed them, protect them, guide them.
But the opening verses of Jeremiah 23 accuse the
shepherds of destroying and scattering God’s sheep. The kings have not been good shepherds. The
sheep are in exile, scattered among the nations. God’s anger is aroused by the “evil doings”
of the descendants of King David who ruled Judah, who probably included
Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah.[4]
Jeremiah prophesied that each king had failed to “execute
justice
in the morning and deliver from the
hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed.”[5]
The chapters leading up to today’s passage from Jeremiah
provide context. The Bible tells us that
King Josiah, who reigned from 640--609 BCE, “judged the cause of the poor and
the needy.”[6] In
contrast, the “eyes and heart of Josiah’s heirs
were set on “dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression
and violence.”[7]
Jeremiah prophesied in the final years of the Kingdom of
Judah, through the reign of the last king, Zedekiah. These were turbulent times for the leaders of
ancient Judah. The seats of power in the ancient Near East had shifted. The Assyrian imperial dominance of the past
hundred years was waning, and the Babylonian empire was on the rise. This
international upheaval left the kings in the little nation of Judah with some
very difficult decisions. Would they pay taxes to the new empire in Babylon, or
should they side with their neighbor Egypt?
Could they be independent and refuse to pay tribute to either one? It
turns out that the decision to withhold tribute--against Jeremiah’s advice--
would not end well. The shepherds of Judah made policy decisions that placed
the people in jeopardy and ultimately led to their exile.[8]
As biblical scholar
Elna Solvang points out, while Zedekiah’s name means “my righteousness is the
LORD,” his reign was far from righteous.[9]
As I worked with the passage from Jeremiah for today, I
realized I needed a bit of a refresher course on the context, so I could
interpret the passage accurately. In my Introduction to the Old Testament class
at Princeton Seminary, we were required to memorize the names and order of the
kings of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel and the prophets who prophesied in
each of those times. But that was a long time ago.
As I did some reading, it occurred to me that all this
background might sound pretty political
to a lot of people. It sounds political-- because it is political. Jeremiah was prophesying
in response to what was going on, and he was bringing a word of judgment from God to
the political leaders of his time.
Jeremiah’s prophecy is rooted in a challenge to corrupt
and ineffectual government over the people, a critique of the “shepherds”
who have destroyed and scattered God’s sheep.
After pronouncing judgment on the evil shepherds, God
promises to shepherd God’s people Godself and then to raise up shepherds over
them. In this promise, we hear hope for
peace, security, and prosperity, all of which are rooted in the faithfulness of
God.
Jeremiah’s prophecy offers a vision of God’s breaking
into human history, but it is clear that we aren’t yet living in the state of shalom for which we
long, where justice and peace rule. The prophecy points us to the “already” and
the “not-yet” of God’s work among us.
The gospels tell us that the people in Jesus’ day had
been hoping for a Messiah who would come with armies and rule with might… a
Messiah who would provide for peace through war and by defeating their worldly
enemies.
But Jesus showed us that God shepherds and protects God’s
people not through violence, but by
offering God’s very self, and by teaching us to love even our enemies. Jesus revolutionizes our understanding of what
God’s promise of security and prosperity mean in the kin-dom of God. Governments are true to God’s purposes only
when they rule in congruence with Christ’s self-giving and understanding of love
that is at the heart of the gospel.
Jeremiah has often been called “the weeping prophet.” We
hear the prophets crying, “Woe!” and weeping over that which grieves God, calling
us to lament corruption and destruction and injustice. They speak of the grief of God that the people
need to share, because--without it--there
can be no newness. They point us to a
vision of how God intends God’s people to live, and they make claims on us
regarding “the execution of justice and rightness in the land.”
So, how do we live in response
to the hope we have been promised? How do we live into the new life God desires
for us?
Some of us may feel “like sheep without a shepherd.” Will
there be shepherds for us who are different
from former shepherds?-- shepherds who will choose to be good shepherds, who
will attend to the justice, protection, mercy, and righteousness that mirror
God’s shepherding?
Just as the people of Judah could respond to bad
shepherding by being cynical about their leaders, we too might be struggling
with cynicism.
We look around and we remember that children in Flint
have had their lives and their potential forever changed due to lead in the water…
that thousands of poor families in Detroit are living without running water…
that many people in Puerto Rico live without electrical power. We see images of children separated from
their families at our southern border. We
worry about the stripping of the social safety net while the wealthiest get tax
breaks.
In Paul's
letter to the church at Corinth, he tells them that, from now on... we regard
no one from a human point of view....
if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation...from God, who
reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to
Godself and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.[10]
That
ministry of reconciliation is still our calling. For Christ is our peace. In his flesh, he has
made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility
between us.
Christ came proclaiming peace to those
who were far off and peace to those who were near.... No one is to be a stranger or alien, but
citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.... joined together and growing into a holy
temple in the Lord... built together
spiritually into a dwelling place for God.[11]
In the
passage from the letter to the Ephesians, we see a glimpse of the new community: So then you are no longer strangers and
aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household
of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus
himself as the cornerstone.
The good
news of Christian faith, according to the letter to the Ephesians, is that, in
this broken world, reconciliation is no longer merely a dream, a longing for
what once was, a hope for what someday might be-- but something that already
is. Into a world still torn by death,
sin, and hostility, Christ came proclaiming “peace
to you who were far off and peace to those who are near.”
In a time when we hear a lot of talk about building
barriers along our nation’s southern border to prevent illegal immigrants from
entering, a time when Israelis have
built a wall to separate themselves from the Palestinians, and other territories are protected by barriers
and demilitarized zones to keep enemies apart.
Now, eliminating boundaries doesn’t in itself create
peace. Peace comes by eliminating the hostility behind the dividing walls. God
doesn’t just tear down walls, but unites people in the One who is our peace,
creating one new humanity.
Some of us are old enough to remember the day the Berlin
Wall came down. Most of us never expected it to happen in our lifetimes, and
the feelings of surprise and possibility were palpable. If this wall could
fall, what else?
The end of apartheid in South Africa brought even more
hope and excitement. The divisions of black, white, and colored of the
Apartheid system were coming apart, and reconciliation became possible.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said he believes
that God’s hand was in that miracle.
“God saw our
brokenness and sought to extricate us from it-- but only with our cooperation.
God will not cajole or bully us, but wants to woo us for our own sakes. We
might say that the Bible is the story of God’s attempt to effect atonement, to
bring us back to our intended condition of relatedness. God was, in Christ,
reconciling the world to God. God sent Jesus who would fling out his arms on
the cross as if to embrace us. God wants to draw us back into an intimate
relationship and so bring to unity all that has become dis-united. This was
God’s intention from the beginning. And each of us is called to be an ally of
God in this work of justice and reconciliation.”
In the midst of all the brokenness and fearfulness
and busy-ness and weariness and cynicism and hopelessness in our world, our
Shepherd God keeps calling us into beloved, Sabbath community, where we can be
fed and find rest, a community where we
can encourage, console and celebrate with each other, renew our vision… and
remind one another that we were put in this world for Gods good purposes.
Thanks
be to God! Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian
Church
Dearborn, Michigan
July 22, 2018
[1]
Ezekiel uses this same metaphor to speak of the
exile of Judah in Babylon in Ezekiel 34.
[2]
Jeremiah 22:3-4
[3] Elaine James also cites Jeremiah 22:13-17 in
her “Commentary on Jeremiah 23:1-6,” in
Working Preacher blog, at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3701
[4]
Jeremiah 22:11-12, Jeremiah 22:18, Jeremiah 22:24-30, Jeremiah 21:3-7.
[5]
Jeremiah 21:12a
[6]
Jeremiah 22:16
[7]
Jeremiah 22:17
[8]
Jeremiah 27:4-8
[9] Elna K. Solvang, in Commentary on Jeremiah 23:1-6 at
Working Preacher blog, at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=349
[10]2 Corinthians 5:16-19
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