Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God the Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!
I remember watching a mini-documentary one time and it was in Oregon or Washington or some place where they had strict environmental laws. The issue was an enormous overgrowth of weeds and invasive plant species around waterways. They couldn’t use spray or chemicals to nuke all the weeds because of the environmental regulations but these plants were getting out of control and starting to choke out the native vegetation as well as being an unsightly mess. Something needed to be done. Everyone agreed that manually weeding this mess would take forever. Nobody wanted to return to the Garden of Weedin’! So what was the solution? The municipal council contacted a local shepherd and brought in about 200 head of goats and sheep. Up and down the water ways they went, gobbling everything in sight! Purple loosestrife, thistles, blackberrys you name it and the ‘pasture pals’ cleaned it right up! And, they fertilized as they went! What’s not to love!? It turned out to be not so baaaad of an idea!
Shepherding is where we are at today. Normally we have ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’ in the few weeks after Easter. But we get another blast of it here today in our scripture readings. Truly it’s a strong theme throughout the whole Bible, which is fitting for the original audience was primarily pasture people. But we can still connect with the warm, shepherdly imagery in our modern urban setting. The staying power of ‘The Lord’s my shepherd’ in Psalm 23 is a testament to that. So we look at our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah. God established David’s line of kings to shepherd His flock, His chosen nation. When Jeremiah is writing this, Zedekiah was King. And like most of Israel’s Kings, he was a total deadbeat! Instead of being a good shepherd to the people he was doing the complete opposite. Jeremiah’s writing calls out people like Zedekiah: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! … 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” (Jer 23:1-2).
The Lord is going to smack these snidely shepherds for the evil that they have done! The have laid waste to the flock, destroying and scattering, not attending to and caring for their needs. This is written to the Kings and prophets of Israel, people whose first duty was to care for the people. It extends to us today too. Pastors have this same great commission to care for the people and ‘feed the sheep’ as Jesus told Peter. But also it extends to anyone in places of authority. Like politicians. Wouldn’t it be swell if people entered into politics to serve the people rather than themselves?? If they existed to enrich the country and the province and the city rather than their own bank accounts? There is a stark warning from the Lord about this in His Word. The Divine recompense is coming.
Contrasted to this evil and corruption of bad shepherds is God’s good shepherdly heart for His people. He has compassion for them. He promises to be the good shepherd that they lack. The Lord Himself will bring back the remnant of His flock. The Lord will watch over them, bless them and keep them. He will install shepherds of substance over them to care for them. Jeremiah says that the days are coming when the Lord Himself “will raise up for David a righteous Branch” (23:5). From the old dead stump of poor and pathetic shepherds will come one who is truly a good shepherd, whose heart is always for the people. We know who this righteous branch is. The green shoot that springs forth with life is none other than Jesus Christ, our Good and Beautiful Shepherd who cares richly for the scattered flock. He gathers His people together. He is perfect and righteous, just and wise. He is the Good Shepherd who has come to save the sheep.
There is an interesting connection in the names here too. Zedekiah. Right up there with fun Bible names Jebediah and Obadiah and Zechariah! But Zedekiah means ‘the Lord is my righteousness.’ Jesus’ name, Yeshua, means ‘the Lord is our righteousness.’ His perfect shepherding in our place and His sacrifice on the cross for the sheep let each of us stand before our Heavenly Father, completely covered in His perfection by faith. We are brought into the Lord’s pasture, cared for and richly loved because we belong to our Good Shepherd. Just as the Psalm writer says: “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (95:7).
Our Gospel reading highlights these themes all the more. It takes place right before our Lord Jesus’ miracle of feeding the 5000. The disciples just got back from their mission trip, undoubtedly excited like kids back from their first day of school! ‘Jesus, guess what we did! It was awesome!’ And no doubt, they were also tired and played out from such a journey. They themselves were in need of rest and recuperation. But rest was not going to happen. Our Lord was at the apex of His popularity. The crowds had heard about the miracles or witnessed them first hand. Same thing for the healings and His teaching with authority. Myriads of people wanted to see Jesus and they were coming out in droves. This is probably the last thing the tired disciples wanted to deal with.
In an effort to get a bit of downtime from these massive crowds, they jump into a boat and sail away for a bit. But the crowds saw this and they persisted. They go along on foot around the lake and beat Jesus to the other side! You can imagine how Jesus and the boys felt when got to the shore. All these people who they left on the other side were now on this side! And they brought all their friends and relatives too! It’s tough being a celebrity. What’s the first thing that probably ran through the disciples minds? ‘Are you kidding me?! We need to deal with all these people again!? Ugggggggg!’ But notice the key detail about Jesus: “When 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” (MK 6:34).
Sheep with no shepherd. It’s a dig on the scribes and Pharisees and teachers of the law who were supposed to be looking after the people but instead were burdening them with the law and loading more and more hardships on them. In contrast to this was His compassion and Good Shepherd’s heart. He cares for the sheep. He cares for us. He laid down His life for us and our salvation. He richly forgives our sins and calls us to follow Him. Pick up our own cross and follow in the footsteps of our Good Shepherd. It’s going to be fine. Whatever burden we are bearing, whatever struggle we are facing, with Jesus leading us as our Good Shepherd, we know that everything is going to be ok, even if we can’t see it right now. He teaches us this and many other things in His word. He leads us beside the still waters of our Baptism. He prepares the table of Holy Communion before us that we may taste and see that the Lord is Good. He cares for us His people. He leads us and shepherd’s us only the Good Shepherd can do. We are not like the crowds as sheep without a shepherd. Rather, we are fed and cared for by the Good Shepherd Himself. Thanks and praise be to our God now and forever more. Amen!
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