Between Sheep and Sheep
Ezekiel 34
Christ the King Sunday
20 November 2005
Let me be the first to say: Happy Christ the King Sunday to you!
You probably won’t be hearing that from anyone else today. It
doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “Happy Thanksgiving!” or
“Merry Christmas!”, does it?
We Americans are not altogether comfortable with the notion of Christ
as our king, anyway. I think we are not really interested in
someone having that kind of authority over us. Give us democracy,
give us liberty, give us representation, give us a vote. Do not
give us someone to rule over us. I recently read about a minister
who wanted to change the name of Christ the King Sunday to “Christ Our
Friend” Sunday. That would be a bit more comfortable, wouldn’t
it?
It would also miss the point. Jesus was not crucified and
resurrected just so we could have another friend. We needed
something more than just friendship. What we needed was a
sovereign.
In contemporary culture, we deny our need for any authority but our
own. But the history of the human race shows that what we want,
what we need, is a leader. It is a basic human, communal need –
for peace, for order, for security, for progress – things we cannot
secure on our own, either as individuals or as an unorganized
collection of individuals. And so we follow a leader.
The problem is, our leaders always fail us. Sometimes in
spectacular ways. Sometimes with disastrous consequences.
Some of the worst things that have happened in the history of the world
have happened because of our leaders. War. Genocide.
Economic collapse. Religious persecution. The
Crusades. The Inquisition. The Holocaust. The history
of the world rises and falls on the decisions and actions of kings and
despots, presidents and dictators.
The prophet Ezekiel knew the horrors of corrupt and failed
leadership. He was among the first to be taken into exile by the
Babylonians who invaded and occupied Jerusalem in 597 BCE. 10
years later, after an ill-timed, ill-planned rebellion by the Israelite
king, the Babylonians leveled the city entirely. The Temple was
destroyed, more people were sent into exile, and Ezekiel’s own wife was
killed in the siege. All of this happened while Jerusalem’s
leaders first stood by and then tried to flee, more concerned about
themselves than the people they were entrusted to lead. In the
history of Israel, some of the kings were merely weak. Others
were worse than weak, blatantly breaking biblical commands, oppressing
their own people, and rebelling against what had been prophesied as
God’s will. The city of Jerusalem prior to its siege had become
thoroughly corrupt, and its leaders were to blame.
For 33 chapters, Ezekiel, a prophet and priest, has prophesied
judgment. He has told the truth – about the brutality, the
exploitation, the abuse, the failure. He has indicted the
political and religious leaders for their deceptions and
distortions. They misled the people, calling war “peace,”
(13:9)* and pretending everything was fine while the people under
their leadership suffered and suffered, and suffered some more.
Now the city has finally fallen and Ezekiel himself has endured
very personal losses because of it. Ezekiel points his words
directly at the kings who led the people into such a state of collapse
and despair. Thus says the Lord God: “Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have
been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the
sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you
slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have
not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not
bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have
not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled
them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and
scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep
were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high
hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no
one to search or seek for them.” (vv. 2b-6)
It’s an incisive description of the terrible damage bad leaders can
do. They are entrusted with so much, and they can fail so
thoroughly.
But the word that now comes to Ezekiel from God is a new one – a word
of comfort and hope, a turning point in his prophesies. The worst
that could happen has happened, and now a new day is coming. “For
thus says the Lord God,” this morning’s reading begins, “I myself will
search for my sheep, and will seek them out.” (v. 11)
If there is one biblical image of God that may be even more foreign to
our contemporary experience than that of king, it is that of
shepherd. We at least have some awareness of how monarchs in
other nations rule, but most of us do not have much experience with
real shepherds.
Still, the image of a shepherd and his sheep has some kind of almost
primal hold on us. If you spend any time at all with children and
their books, then you probably have noticed what a large and delightful
role shepherds and sheep play. Maybe you remember some of these
from your own childhood.
“Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes, sir, three bags full….”
“Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.”
“Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and can’t tell where to find them….”
“Little boy blue, come blow your horn, the sheep’s in the meadow, the
cow’s in the corn. Where is the boy who looks after the
sheep? He’s under a haystack, fast asleep.”
In the child’s world, sheep are everywhere. With just a quick
look through our boys’ books and toys, I saw sheep all over the place –
sleeping sheep, dancing sheep, rhyming sheep, fence-jumping sheep,
sheep to be counted, soft furry sheep to be petted and cuddled.
The first baby gift our boys ever received, right after we announced we
were expecting, was a little stuffed lamb.
I can remember one of my favorite pictures from one of my own childhood
books. It was a man standing with a little lamb draped around his
neck, with the kindest smile and the gentlest eyes. I loved that
picture and the warmth and compassion it conveyed. Later I would
learn that the shepherd in the picture was Jesus and that the little
lamb was me.
Most of us don’t have much experience with real sheep and real
shepherds, but somehow this image strikes a chord in us. How
tender the kind shepherd must be with his vulnerable flock. How
he nurtures and cares for them, protects them and guides them. He
is as gentle as a lamb himself, but also strong. And he picks us
up when we are weak and tired, when we cry and when we grieve,and wraps
us around his big shoulders, and carries us home.
Perhaps it is a somewhat romantic image of the shepherd and his
sheep. But we are not alone with this wistful view. The
Israelites, too, longed for this kind of shepherd. The kings were
meant to function as shepherds, which is why Ezekiel’s prophesy against
the kings is framed the way it is. They have failed because they
have not nurtured and tended their flock the way good shepherds
do. The Israelites look back longingly towards the one real
Shepherd King they once had in David, who was a shepherd of sheep as a
boy and then became a shepherd of people. He had been a true
shepherd, a man after God’s own heart and after the welfare of the
people he led.
In the devastation and disillusionment that followed the collapse of
their city and their Temple, the Israelites receive the promise of
another Shepherd King to come. This one will be no mere human,
capable of corruption and susceptible to self-interest. This time
God himself will be the Shepherd. I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As
shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered
sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them…. I
will feed them…. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I
will make them lie down…. 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…. I will feed them with justice. (vv. 11-16)
The divine shepherd-king will be entirely devoted to the welfare of the
sheep in a way that mortal kings have never been able to manage.
This king will not fail us because this king will not only lead, he
will love.
To be led by the One who loves, and loved by the One who leads, and to
know that this same One is sovereign not just over us but over the
whole universe, is a powerful realization. When we grasp it, if
we grasp it, we cannot help but rejoice with the psalmist – “Make a
joyful noise to the Lord, all ye lands! Know that the Lord is
God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people,
and the sheep of his pasture. The Lord is good; his steadfast
love endures forever.”
His love-infused sovereignty changes everything. Whatever bad
news you read in the paper this morning, whatever horrible images are
shown on the television next week, whatever political scandal or
failure is on the cover of the magazines next month – none of this is
the last word. Terrible things are happening in our world.
Some would even say that things are getting worse all the time.
Ezekiel would beg to differ. There have always been atrocities,
abuses, oppression, senseless violence, moral failure. The
leaders of our world have always failed our expectations. Perhaps our
allegiance has been misplaced. This is the main reason we
celebrate Christ the King Sunday, as a reminder that there is only one
ruler who will not disappoint, and we pledge our ultimate allegiance
only to him.
Ezekiel promises that the leaders who fail their people will be dealt
with. But here comes the blow: so will we, the
people. The Shepherd-King will also judge. I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.
Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak
animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will
save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge
between sheep and sheep. (vv. 20-22)
When the light of Christ’s goodness shines on our world, what will be
revealed is not only the failings of our political and religious and
economic institutions. Yes, our leaders and our institutions fail
us in countless ways. But we fail each other, too.
Ezekiel tells us that God will judge the shepherds, but he will also
judge between sheep and sheep. Some sheep, he warns, push weaker
sheep around in their efforts to get more food for themselves.
These fat, strong sheep also trample down the good pasture when they
are done with it, and muddy up the clear water when they are through
drinking. Leaders are not the only ones who tend to put their
self-interest above the interest of others. We do it too.
Part of the problem with the fat, greedy sheep is that they do not
depend on their shepherd to feed them and care for their needs. The
problem with the strong, fat sheep is that they act as if they do not
need and do not have a shepherd. This failure to see this need,
and the consequent failure to trust the shepherd results in us hurting
each other because of our fear, greed, and self-centeredness.
It would be easy to dismiss Ezekiel as an old crank from the Old
Testament if his words didn’t sound so alarmingly similar to those
Jesus would speak 600 years later, when he offered his own
prophecy. One day he will be coming in glory, he promises, and
all the nations will be gathered before him. And he will separate
people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the
goats. You know the rest of the story. The people on his
right will inherit the kingdom, because they treated the weak and the
vulnerable and the needy with compassion and mercy, hospitality and
kindness. The people on the shepherd-king’s left will be punished
because they failed to treat others this way. It is not that they
horribly abused other people, or committed acts of outrageous evil, or
lived a thoroughly wasteful life. It is that they simply did not
follow the shepherd’s lead of setting self-interest aside and treating
others with generosity and care.
If we are honest about ourselves, we know that we often miss the
mark. It is so hard to always treat other people the way Christ
would, let alone to treat them as if they were Christ himself. We
know we act like the goats, the strong sheep, more often than we’d
like. It is easier to blame leaders and institutions for the mess
our world is in than to take an honest look at ourselves and see how we
have failed too.
Here is the good news, though, for the strong sheep like you and
me. Recognizing and admitting our sin is the first step towards
seeing how much we need our shepherd. It is not only the weak who
are lost and needy. We are lost too – lost in our self-concern,
lost in our anxieties, lost in our many needs and wants. Ezekiel
has a word from God for us: I will seek out my sheep, I will seek out
the lost, and I will bring back the strayed.
That is us. We get lost, we stray, we get scattered. And
the shepherd comes to find us. He comes as a king who will not
disappoint. He comes as a shepherd whose name is Love.
God will judge between sheep and sheep. He will judge us for
whether we looked for Christ in the least among us, he will judge us
for whether or not we looked out for the weak and the vulnerable and
the needy. He will judge between sheep and sheep. But
between sheep and sheep there the Good Shepherd stands, waiting to tend
us and to lead us and to love us. He will feed us with justice,
he will feed us with peace, he will feed us with love and goodness,
too. All we have to do is see that we need him, we need a
shepherd to save us, not just from the wolves out there – but from
ourselves.
* Walter Brueggemann. “Truth-Telling and Peacemaking: A
Reflection on Ezekiel.” The Christian Century. November 30,
1998.
