FIRST READING Jeremiah 23:1-6
1“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the Lord. 2Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: “You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord. 3Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. 4I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord. 5“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 6In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”
PSALM Psalm 23
1The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. 2He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters. 3He revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for his name’s sake. 4Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 5You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me; you have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over. 6Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
SECOND READING Ephesians 2:11-22
11Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands — 12remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
GOSPEL Mark 6:30-44
30The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. 31And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. 33Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 34When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. 35And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. 36Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” 37But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” 38And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” 39Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. 41And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. 42And they all ate and were satisfied. 43And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.
A WORD OF CAUTION
I have a confession to make; prior to this week, every time I’ve read this passage, my reaction was, this is directed at pastors, theologians and church leadership. And this is indeed the case. Pastors, church leadership and theologians need to take God’s warning here very seriously. God will not sit idly by while those in positions of influence and leadership lead their people down the wrong path. At some point, God will remove the corrupt leaders and will replace them with faithful shepherds. And the untrustworthy leaders will be judged for the damage they have caused. God shows us this in our Old Testament reading for today.
Jeremiah preached his message to Judah from 626 until about 587 B.C. He spent his entire prophetic lifetime criticizing the rulers who were slowly selling out his country and his people to the powers of either Egypt or the Babylonian Empire. And as I’ve detailed before, Jeremiah suffered for his message. He endured many abuses by his own people, along with a period of forced exile at the hands of some of his own panicked neighbors.
It’s no wonder Jeremiah had little regard for the monarchs under whom Judah had suffered for the last 50 years. Immediately preceding this week’s first reading, in Jeremiah 22:11-23, the prophet itemizes his grievances against specific rulers and the particular wrongs each of them had committed. Jehoiakim’s sins merited Jeremiah’s special attention, leading the prophet to conclude in chapter 22 verses 24-30 that the despicable monarch had received his just reward from Yahweh in his degrading exile into a foreign land.
Our Old Testament reading serves as a kind of final commentary on this sad history of sinful, selfish and servile kings Jeremiah has listed. It records Jeremiah’s explanation for the cause of the exile. However, in today’s reading starting at verse 1, Jeremiah doesn’t bother to list any specific ruler or once again cite the particular crimes that may have resulted in the sentence of exile – instead, the wicked, lawless kings are summarily lumped together. It’s the grand total of their sinful actions that has resulted in the just nature of Yahweh’s sentence of exile.
And to ensure that nothing can be misinterpreted, Yahweh, through Jeremiah, so carefully and skillfully chose the words to verses 1-4 that there has been some scholarly debate over whether to categorize it as poetry or prose. While the majority now contends that this is a prose piece, it’s certainly highly structured. In these four verses, we can find elements of a “woe speech” (v.1), a judgment speech (v.2) and a deliverance speech (vv.3-4), all flowing together into one whole.
God begins His message by using the ancient symbol of a shepherd for a king or ruler. These shepherds, Jeremiah makes clear, are evil – for they have, either through sloth, negligence or intentional actions, destroyed and scattered the sheep entrusted to them. Inspired by God’s Spirit, Jeremiah chooses his vocabulary very carefully, for he makes the same verb identify for both the shepherds’ actions toward their sheep and Yahweh’s actions toward these worthless shepherds. Just as they have “scattered” or “not attended” (the Hebrew word used here is paqad) their sheep, so the divine shepherd Yahweh will “scatter” or “attend to” the untrustworthy shepherds. The punishment meted out by Yahweh precisely matches the crime which these shepherd-kings have committed. The ones responsible for the scattering of the flocks into unknown parts have themselves been scattered out into the wilderness. The exile that both the shepherds and their sheep now share is the result of the shepherds’ sins, but it is, nonetheless, an active judgment carried out by Yahweh.
Because Judah’s exile is now defined as a divinely executed judgment, it can be rescinded only by a divinely given order. But God, even in the midst of His divine sentence, transforms in verse 3 a text of judgment into a promise of redemption. God now pledges to gather all the remnants from “all the lands” together and bring them safely back to their “fold” – their homeland. Under God’s care, the remnants will flourish and multiply, regaining their previous strength and size. And God even takes this promise of restoration one step further: to care for these restored ones. God promises to establish new shepherds who will show the proper care for their tender charges.
Jeremiah then takes God’s words of comfort even further at the close of verse 4 when he writes that none shall be “missing.” What the ESV translates here as “missing” is none other than that same Hebrew verb (paqad) that had been used to designate the “inadequate supervision” of the original shepherds and the judgment that God had “visited” upon them.
Here Jeremiah isn’t simply stating that no one sheep will be missing, so much as he is testifying that Yahweh will never again judgmentally “attend to” or “visit” the flock and its new shepherds as he had done before. In a way, God is again pointing the people to another promise He made after He destroyed the earth’s inhabitants by the flood. God is pointing them figuratively to a physical sign, in the case of the flood, a rainbow, but also in the future sense, God is pointing them to the future Son of David, Jesus, the Good Shepherd that will properly attend to His sheep. This is made clear in the next two verses.
Starting in verse 5 we read, “Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: The Lord is our righteousness.”
What God wants Jeremiah to make clear, is that God is moving beyond Judah’s recent dismal past and is looking ahead to the day when the first of the promised good shepherds (v.4) will emerge to rule over the people. The prophet, who repeatedly criticizes the weak and watered- down kingship of Judah that ruled during his lifetime, nevertheless has a future hope for the monarchy – a divine hope.
After Jehoiakim’s disastrous rule and his ultimate exile, the Babylonians installed the deposed king’s nephew on the throne. The Babylonians gave him the coronation name of Zedekiah and allowed him to rule, only as long as he played the role of puppet-king. Instead of such an ineffectual weakling, Jeremiah spoke of a messianic ruler who would unquestionably embody the righteousness of the true Davidic line. Under this wise and just rule, Israel and Judah would be returned and reunited in strength and safety. Jeremiah concludes this passage with a final play on words marking the end of these verses.
Whereas Zedekiah had been named by his Babylonian bosses, the future king Jeremiah envisions will be named by none other than Yahweh. “The Lord is our righteousness” translates into Yahweh sidqenu, a name which is practically the inverse of the name Zedekiah (sidqi-yahu). In all He is, in all He does, even in His very name given by God, Jeremiah proclaims that the future messianic monarch will be the exact opposite of the weak and sinful rulers the people have endured for so long. We, of course, have the ability to look back and know that Jesus certainly fits this prophecy.
Jesus is indeed the example of sacrifice, righteousness and just rule. God’s warning, judgment and subsequent restoration of Israel were fulfilled. What we need to remember is that God’s warning can’t be dismissed just because the Hebrew people were punished, restored and Jesus came to fulfill this prophecy. These words of warning still apply to all who sit in positions of leadership and influence. Pastors, church leadership and today’s theologians still need to heed God’s warning here seriously. God will not tolerate misleading His people for long, and the untrustworthy shepherds will be judged. But I don’t think this passage is limited only to pastor’s, church leaders and today’s theologians. I think we need to take this passage one step further and ask, to whom else might this passage apply?
At the beginning of this sermon, I mentioned that in the past, every time I’ve read this passage, my first reaction was, this is directed at pastors, theologians and church leadership. And again, this is true. However, this passage can, and also should be, read in the broader sense. As followers of Jesus, we also need to read this passage as, woe to anyone who would, through intentional acts, laziness or indifference, confuse, wrongly teach or refuse to teach or who do not properly attend to those whom they have influence over. Behold I will attend to your evil deeds, declares the Lord. The whoever in this rephrased passage, now applies to almost everyone in this sanctuary today.
Each of us by virtue of us being members of a peer group, disciples, supervisors, parents, grandparents or the leader in our family units are shepherds. In reading the passage this way, anytime we have influence over someone else, be it temporary or permanent, we have a responsibility given by God to properly attend to those people. This means we need to be purposeful in how we live, talk and teach. This is, of course, best accomplished by living out our faith every day.
Tell someone you’re a Christian and they will begin to watch how you act and will listen carefully to what you say. Here the old adage applies, actions do, at times, speak louder than words. And we need to bear in mind that even when we don’t think someone is watching, what we say and do is heard and seen. As faithful shepherds, our words and actions must always be consistent, if not, we’re not being attentive to those around us. As supervisors, or people with whom we influence at work, the same applies. We need to ensure that everything we say and do is above reproach.
As managers, not only are we responsible for the areas and people with whom we supervise, but we also represent the boss and the company to those both inside and outside the company. It’s our responsibility to show those outside the company that our work and the product or service we provide is the best. It doesn’t matter if you work as a janitor, a fast food worker, in manufacturing, sales, education or what have you. If you have a position of leadership or influence, you have the responsibility to properly attend to those with whom you come into contact. We must not, either through laziness, apathy or intentionality, say or do anything that would confuse or lead others astray from God’s commands or instructions. And in today’s “anything goes” culture, this can and is difficult.
It’s difficult because there are those who want to mislead others. They want to teach others that whatever feels good, whatever satisfies our own desires, whatever keeps us focused on ourselves rather than God, no matter how sinful it might be, than it’s okay. These deceptive shepherds want to gather as many people around them as they can, so they can justify their ideas and sinful behavior. These are the people that claim to be tolerant but use socially disparaging labels and call anyone who disagrees with them names: names like bigot, hater and multiple titles that end in phobe. You know the type of people I’m taking about. And this passage also applies to those of us who are parents and grandparents.
As parents and grandparents, we have the biggest responsibility to shepherd and attend to our families properly. You could say that the responsibility starts here, and the buck stops here. Being a parent and grandparent never ends. From the first moment our first child was born until our last breath, we have the responsibility to nurture, guide and teach our children and grandchildren. We are the ones who have the biggest influence over our children and it’s us who will give them the tools they need when they go out into the world. As parents, that is our calling.
We’re not called to be our children’s best friend or their buddies. Our children look to us to be the example. We’re the ones who set and enforce the boundaries. They need to know that yes means yes and no means no. Far too many parents today are living their own lives, so they want to compensate for their lack of good parenting by buying things, allowing kids to do whatever they want, go where ever they want and be friends with whoever they want. But what are we really teaching and caring for them?
Are we really attending correctly to our children when we fail to properly parent them? If you really want an answer to this question, don’t listen to me. Take a few moments and ask any of our outstanding educators. Ask them and they will tell you what happens when parents refuse to take their duties seriously.
Our Old Testament passage still applies: Woe to anyone who would, through intentional acts, laziness or indifference confuse, wrongly teach or refuse to teach or who do not properly attend to those whom they have influence over. Behold I will attend to your evil deeds, declares the Lord. As I said, almost everyone here today is included in this warning. The good news is that even when we fail in our obligations as shepherds, those who have been led astray are not lost. God wants to gather them back up, if they’ll listen, and give them the guidance and care they need.
There is hope for all who have been led astray. Jesus was sent to fulfill God’s promise of providing a righteous Shepherd. Our call, as faithful shepherds, is to point everyone to Jesus. He is the faithful and righteous One who will lead His people with wisdom and justice. He is the One who leads us to the green pastures and still waters of rest and refreshment. And He is the One who will walk with us even in the dark valleys. You and I, whether we are young disciples, or supervisors, or parents and grandparents or leaders in our family units have been given a great responsibility.
We’re called to lead, teach and properly attend to others, showing them in our words and deeds God’s commands and statutes and in turn point them to the one true Shepherd; the Good Shepherd, Jesus.
Amen
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