SHEPHERDS AND KINGS
Jeremiah 23:1-4 Common English Bible
Watch out, you shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, declares the Lord. 2 This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, proclaims about the shepherds who “tend to” my people: You are the ones who have scattered my flock and driven them away. You haven’t attended to their needs, so I will take revenge on you for the terrible things you have done to them, declares the Lord. 3 I myself will gather the few remaining sheep from all the countries where I have driven them. I will bring them back to their pasture, and they will be fruitful and multiply. 4 I will place over them shepherds who care for them. Then they will no longer be afraid or dread harm, nor will any be missing, declares the Lord.
Colossians 1:11-20 CEB
11 by being strengthened through his glorious might so that you endure everything and have patience; 12 and by giving thanks with joy to the Father. He made it so you could take part in the inheritance, in light granted to God’s holy people. 13 He rescued us from the control of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. 14 He set us free through the Son and forgave our sins.
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God,
the one who is first over all creation,[a]
16 Because all things were created by him:
both in the heavens and on the earth,
the things that are visible and the things that are invisible.
Whether they are thrones or powers,
or rulers or authorities,
all things were created through him and for him.
17 He existed before all things,
and all things are held together in him.
18 He is the head of the body, the church,
who is the beginning,
the one who is firstborn from among the dead[b]
so that he might occupy the first place in everything.
19 Because all the fullness of God was pleased to live in him,
20 and he reconciled all things to himself through him—
whether things on earth or in the heavens.
He brought peace through the blood of his cross.
Reflection: “Shepherds and Kings”
It’s been quite a season for elections and changes in leadership. New premiers in Alberta and British Columbia. Mid-term elections in the USA and candidates for 2024 throwing their red hats into the ring. A new leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives and a new/old leader of the federal Green Party.
And, of course, the death of Queen Elizabeth II followed by King Charles III’s accession to the throne.
Each of these changes gives rise to new conversations about leadership. What do we expect of our leaders? How much authority do they have? What are the limits of their authority? What are our responsibilities as citizens to our leaders? Do our current government and election structures raise up the leaders that we need?
Rooted as we are in the democratic political tradition, most of us see the British monarchy as primarily symbolic, but still carrying the stains of a dark history of colonialism and corrupt power. So when the church observes Reign of Christ Sunday, we’re uncomfortable with all the talk of kings and kingdoms. It might help to put our scripture readings into some basic historical context.
Jeremiah was writing at around 600 BC at the end of ancient Israel’s relatively brief flirtation with monarchy. Four hundred years before that, the Israelites were dissatisfied with their decentralized system of judges, who were similar to clan chieftains. These judges weren’t always male, and Deborah is the best known example of a female judge. They also didn’t necessarily rule for life, as the tribes tended to select the leader they needed for their current situation. However, their powerful neighbours all had kings, and so the people of Israel demanded that the prophet Samuel select a king to lead them. Samuel warned them of the dangers of giving so much power to one leader, but the people insisted and so Saul was anointed as king.
Four centuries and quite a few kings later, the kingdom of Israel was in disarray, defeated by Babylon, and many of the people forced into exile. This is the situation in which Jeremiah is writing in our first reading, in which he compares the kings to bad shepherds and promises that God will provide shepherds who will care for the people.
In contrast to powerful kings ruling from their palaces, shepherds live on the margins, outside the gates with their sheep. Since sheep were first domesticated, they have followed the grass with their guardians in the wild places far from the cities, in the scrub land that is useless for crops and for less-thrifty livestock such as cattle. Shepherds find them the best grazing and water holes, protect them from predators, and sooner or later they smell like their flocks. A good shepherd is brown and strong from long days following the flock and rescuing them from danger, a vigilant shepherd doesn’t get very much sleep. A shepherd is used to solitude and the rhythms of nature. Shepherds live and work a long way from the centres of power and are not welcome in polite society.
And yet, in spite of this humble and marginalized existence, the Good Shepherd is one of the most common metaphors throughout the Scriptures for God, for Jesus, and for God’s chosen leaders, while poor leaders are compared to bad shepherds. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, the leaders of Israel and Judah are like shepherds who have driven their flocks away, who have ruled so badly that their people have been taken into exile. God promises to punish these poor leaders, and then to bring the sheep back to the fold where good shepherds will care for them. “And they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.”
Centuries later, the new Christian community in Colossae is also in danger of being scattered. They aren’t faced with physical exile, but they live in an atmosphere described by one writer as a philosophical marketplace swirling around the current culture. Indigenous religions believe in multitudes of unseen spirits that affect every aspect of their lives. Competing spiritual teachers advocate strict adherence to Jewish rituals, or classic Greek philosophy, or mystical Christian teachings. In the middle of all this, it seems that members of the small band of Christ-followers are becoming confused or frightened and drifting away.
Today we can certainly relate to some of the anxiety of those ancient Christians. The numbers tell us that we are probably witnessing the death of mainline churches in the western world. A recent study of Episcopalian church membership in the US indicates that at the current rate of loss there will be no members in 20 years. The United Church of Canada is losing members at a similar rate, accelerated even more by COVID 19. Surrounded by a modern philosophical marketplace of competing worldviews, we watch our members drift away and we wonder how we will survive as church. We no longer enjoy a position of power at the centre of western culture. Our future is as shaky as that of the early churches in the outposts of the Roman empire.
In worrying times like these, like the ancient people of Judah and Israel, like the Colossians, we are very vulnerable to the wrong kind of leaders. On Reign of Christ Sunday, we are invited to choose what kind of leader we will follow, what kind of kingdom we want to live in. Will we choose leaders like the bad shepherds in Jeremiah’s prophecy, who destroy and scatter the people by appealing to our fear and our instinct for self-preservation, who encourage us to defend the borders of our ever-diminishing territories? Or will we choose leaders who reach out to the margins to gather everyone in?
The English poet and priest Malcolm Guite frames the challenge this way in his poem “Christ the King”
Our King is calling from the hungry furrows
Whilst we are cruising through the aisles of plenty,
Our hoardings screen us from the man of sorrows,
Our soundtracks drown his murmur: ‘I am thirsty’.
He stands in line to sign in as a stranger
And seek a welcome from the world he made,
We see him only as a threat, a danger,
He asks for clothes, we strip-search him instead.
And if he should fall sick then we take care
That he does not infect our private health,
We lock him in the prisons of our fear
Lest he unlock the prison of our wealth.
But still on Sunday we shall stand and sing
The praises of our hidden Lord and King.
Like Guite, the writer of the letter to the Colossians tells the struggling church that because of Jesus they live in a different kind of kingdom with a different kind of leader. In the NRSV, he tells them that God has “transferred them into the kingdom of his beloved Son”. Neta Pringle tells us that this image “conjures up pictures of refugees, rounded up after battle and taken to the victor’s land, of Israelites marched far from home to live in Babylon…here the rules are different, the ruler is different.”
As followers of Christ, we dwell in a different kind of kingdom, a kindom, where the leader cares for us as a loving shepherd cares for the sheep and we are transformed by God’s love. Our ruler is both mighty and humble, a shepherd and a king. Christ’s unique power is both divine and human, present both before and in Creation, present in all places and all times and in one place and one time as Jesus of Nazareth. In the mystery of incarnation, in his very human life and death, Christ holds all things together. The end is the beginning, the humble are exalted.
Last Christmas I told you the story of Maisy and Walter, modern day shepherds who also lived on the margins, spending their summers in the southern Alberta foothills, living in their camper and guarding their flocks. Before meeting Walter late in life, Maisy had spent her life caring for other people – cleaning their houses and looking after her aging father. She was poor and unassuming. Her standard greeting as she entered was, “It’s only me, it’s only Maisie!”
I know that in Christ’s kingdom, people like Maisy and Walter are always welcome and loved because God has always used the most unlikely people to embody the Good News. Like Maisy, often the brunt of unkind jokes, who spent most of her life with almost nothing to call her own, taking care of other people’s babies and houses, caring for the sheep in the hills. But in her life of humble service, in her willingness to always put other’s needs ahead of her own, in her faithful church attendance, she heard and told God’s story with her whole life.
When we choose Christ as our leader and Christ’s kingdom as our country of allegiance, we are exiled to a place where our leaders are servants and our kings are shepherds. That country will always exist at the margins of worldly power. The end of the church’s privilege and prestige in the western world may just be the beginning of our true citizenship in God’s kingdom, following Jesus, shepherd and king.
So might it be. Amen.
A Time for Silent Reflection:
To what do we show allegiance?
Does our allegiance serve others, the world, and draw attention to God’s ways of peace, mercy and love?
