A New Shepherd
Ezekiel 34:11-24
Click here for the viedo: A New Shepherd
11 For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12 As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. 13 I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. 14 I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. 16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
17 As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: 18 Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? 19 And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?
20 Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21 Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, 22 I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.
23 I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24 And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken.
A couple years ago, waiting at a crowded bus stop on a dreary London morning, I noticed a dad waiting with his two elementary school aged children. While everyone was staring down the road looking for the number 13 bus to crawl over the horizon, the little boy noticed the security gate for the shop rising up behind us and decided to play a trick on his sister. Holding out his arms superman style, he pretended that the security door was rising up by his own magic powers. The roll of his sister’s eyes said she clearly wasn’t going to fall for it. By now the security gate was all the way up, but the little boy wasn’t done with it. The curiosity in his overactive imagination registered clearly on his face as he raised his arms back up, concentrated really hard, and tried with all his might to use his magic powers to lower the security gate. I’ll always remember the look of sheer disappointment on his face that followed when it didn’t work and he quickly rejoined his dad and sister just in time to hop on the crowded bus back to reality and off to school.
In 2014, a couple of engineers wrote a book about how to engineer happiness, and it all boiled down to a simple equation that says: Happiness= reality minus expectations. This is illustrated perfectly by the boy at the bus stop: If you don’t expect to have magic powers, you won’t be disappointed when you find out that you don’t, in fact, have them. The key to happiness, apparently, is to just not expect anything. Might be good advice for the holiday season ahead of us?
But in all seriousness, this touches on a much bigger reality about what it means to be human. We come wired with imaginations and expectations, hopes and dreams. And most of the time, these do not match up with the real world we wake up in every morning. The Philosopher and Theologian Abraham Heschel talks about the fundamental problem we encounter as human beings as arising from this basic contradiction between expectations and reality. To feel this tension between the world we wish for and the world we live in, is to share in the most basic human problem the world over.
It’s that feeling of dissonance you get when you listen to happy Christmas music while reading the news these days, it’s the disappointment you feel when life doesn’t work out the way you had always planned on.
Unlike any other creature, humans are uniquely burdened by the sense that things are not as they should be. Buried deep in our souls is the longing for a different kind of world, a longing for life lived together in a good, safe land where what we have is enough and where there is enough for everyone, where all may dwell in safety and know God’s peace-filled presence with every breath. But that’s not exactly what our world is like, and in Scripture, this problem is called: exile.
And that brings us back to our passage from Ezekiel this morning, where we find God’s people neck-deep in an exile moment. By the time we make it to the 34th chapter, Ezekiel’s earlier warnings have transpired - the temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed, their leaders have failed, the Babylonians have taken over, and God’s people find themselves disempowered and disenchanted in a foreign land far from everything that had given them joy, safety, meaning, and hope. Their whole known world came crashing down in 587 with the destruction of the temple and now they’re left to sit in the tension between their situation and the covenant they thought God had made with them. Stuck between reality and expectations, in a present that doesn’t feel much like what they’d been promised. Into this heavy, hopeless moment, Ezekiel now speaks of a new reality. Ezekiel speaks words of hope beyond anything they’d dare imagine:
I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12 As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.... 15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. 16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak
At this point it might be important to know that in the Ancient Near East, the term shepherd was a common way to refer to a king. So when God says that God will be the shepherd, it’s not just a heart-warming pastoral promise about cute sheep, but about God as king, ruling with power, compassion and justice, and doing everything right that the previous failed shepherds (kings) had messed up. The previous shepherds, who had failed to feed the sheep because they only fed themselves. The previous shepherds, who were more interested in domination than they were in protecting the weak. The previous shepherds, who protected themselves but neglected the sheep who became easy prey to wild animals. It’s because of these failed, power-hungry kings that Israel found itself in this situation in the first place, scattered, hungry, and broken. Kings who failed to protect the vulnerable, feed the hungry, give justice to the oppressed. Kings who failed to trust God and instead pursued their own power and made their own alliances. It’s a story that plays out over and over and over again across the pages of Scripture, from the moment God’s people begged God to let them have a king so they could be like all the other nations with kings who love power. It’s a story that continues to play itself out in our world today. (We have never been good at this whole king thing).
Perhaps you saw the study just published recently about how a neuroscientist at UC Berkeley is studying a connection between power and a certain kind of brain damage that impedes the brain from empathizing with others, suggesting that for those who hold a lot of power, it becomes increasingly difficult to notice or understand life in other peoples’ shoes.
From the stories we read in Scripture, from just looking at our world, this feels true.
It’s because of this relentless tendency toward selfishness that God says through Ezekiel, basically – if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. And so God makes the bold promise to enter our world as Shepherd himself to do things a different way. Instead of feeding himself, God will feed the hungry. Instead of protecting himself, God will gather the ones who have been scattered, bind up the wounded, and give them good land to dwell in safety. Instead of pandering to the powerful, God will judge the ones who trample the land and dirty the water.
These are big promises about an end to exile, promises about a day when reality will finally meet our hopes and expectations.
And they all lived happily ever after, right? That’s where we are in this story, isn’t it? …well, not exactly.
Next Sunday we begin the season of Advent. Advent reminds us that we are still waiting with all God’s people for the day when these promises spoken to Ezekiel will be true. Advent reminds us that Christ has been born in our world, but is still continuing to be born in our world. Advent is honest about the fact that things are not as they should be, that our reality does not always match our expectations, that in many ways we are still a people in exile.
But today, today at the end of the church calendar, we find ourselves at Christ the King Sunday. This is the day when we celebrate the reign of Christ already present and at work in world. This can be a difficult thing to see sometimes – especially in a world so full of other kings hungry for power.
In our first reading this morning from Matthew 25, Jesus tells a parable about that day when the Son of man will come in glory. And in this parable he tells of those who will be blessed and inherit the kingdom saying to them, “35 I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,[g] you did it to me.’
Could it be that in our expectation to see God as a powerful shepherd king, we fail to recognize his presence among the sheep? Christ is a very different kind of king and in this parable we hear the good news that Christ is indeed present in our world - but maybe not where we expect to find him. Perhaps we are too busy looking up that we miss him here on the ground – present in a very real way among the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, the vulnerable.
Christ’s reign is present through the ones who feed. Christ’s reign is present among the ones who visit. Christ’s reign is present among those who heal. Christ’s reign is present when families find shelter and new hope within these walls, when we fill 80 boxes with food for families who struggle during the holidays. Christ’s reign is present when the grieving among us find comfort, when the sick are visited, when the lonely are invited into community.
On this Christ the King Sunday, we are invited not to passively watch and wait. We are invited into the very work of the Good Shepherd – to gather the scattered ones, to feed the hungry, to bind up the injured and strengthen the weak- that we might see the reign of Christ with new eyes and new expectations.
As we remember and celebrate the reign of Christ in our world, it is a good day to also remember the words from Teresa of Avila, the 16th century Spanish mystic who said:
“Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.”
May it be so. Amen.