Proper 11, Year B, Track 2
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 23
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
"'Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!' says the Lord." Thus begins our lesson from Jeremiah. Whenever a Biblical prophet uses the word "woe," it's time to listen up. When the word 'woe' is a pronouncement directly from God, an existential crisis is upon us. But saying "Woe to you!" isn't simply synonymous with saying "shame on you." The word "woe" comes from the Hebrew "hoy," a word used to express grief and lament for the dead. In David Petersen's book, The Prophetic Literature: An Introduction, he writes, "If an oracle began with a woe, then the prophet seemed to be saying that someone or some group was as good as dead."
To whom, then, is this woe addressed? This passage refers to them as "the shepherds," a ubiquitous metaphor for kingship in the Old Testament. In Jeremiah 22, the prophet very clearly and pointedly calls out the three previous kings of Judah for failing to be good shepherds. He lists specific acts that have led to this pronouncement of woe. These include economic injustice and violence: "Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbors work for nothing and does not give them their wages…your eyes and heart are only for dishonest gain, for shedding of innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence." In today's reading, the wickedness of these kings further results in a flock that will be destroyed and scattered by Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem. It also offers an ominous pronouncement of justice upon those kings: "It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord." God is saying that he will give these kings—and indeed, all shepherds entrusted with the care of his people—the same treatment that they gave their flocks.
But Jeremiah is not only pronouncing woe because after the shepherds' judgment, God begins healing the damage they have caused. "Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply." Notably, God does not appoint a shepherd for this particular task. Having been scattered by the actions of an unfaithful shepherd, only the direct intervention of God can truly move their hearts to return and become part of the process of healing what was broken. We also read that God will gather "the remnant" of the flock. Not all will heed the call to return. Not all will have the ability to do so. The damage has been done, and some of it is irreversible. But as for the remnant that returns to the fold, "they shall be fruitful and multiply," a phrase hearkening back to God's promises at the creation of mankind in Genesis 1.
We also see what we, as Christians, interpret as a prophecy regarding the coming of Jesus Christ. "The days are coming, says 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. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: "The Lord is our righteousness." However, the significance of this passage to the Jewish people before the coming of Jesus must be addressed. God promised David in 2 Samuel, "Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever." God had established a divine covenant of rulership with the line of David, and with the fall of King Zedekiah and Judah, that covenant seemed forever broken. Who would be their shepherd now? Was greater woe yet to befall them? Were they as good as dead?
Today, seemingly at every level, we have doubts and fears about the capacity of our leaders to guide us in right pathways—shepherds unresponsive to the cries of their flocks, professing that they are the ones to give us everything we want without understanding or caring about what it is we need, eying power for the sake of using it for violence, oppression, or personal enrichment. We may not have an invading army on our doorstep, but we face many of the same fears about the consequences of bad shepherds.
We also share another important characteristic with the Israelites in Jeremiah's time: personal and communal agency. As Zedekiah plotted the war with Babylon that would lead to Judah's destruction, Jeremiah offered a choice. The destruction of Jerusalem would happen, a punishment for the wickedness that had seeped into the land. But the people of Jerusalem could lay down their arms, leave the city, and be spared. He says in Chapter 21, "Thus says the Lord: see I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death." These words echo God's covenant with their ancestors in Deuteronomy as they finished forty years of wandering and prepared to enter their promised land: "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life that you and your descendants may live." The sheep ultimately bear some responsibility for the shepherd's actions and for who we allow to lead by our inaction or apathy.
But God's mercy returns to us even when we sometimes make the wrong choice. Amid tragic loss, God plants a seed of renewal, a "righteous Branch" from the house that was cut down, what Isaiah calls "a shoot…from the stump of Jesse." So sure of this promise is Jeremiah that he purchases a parcel of land in Judah just before the doom he prophesied. He claims a tangible stake in the remnant flock gathered together again, not knowing what the future would look like but confident that its shepherd would be the one we read about in Psalm 23, who leads us beside still waters, who comforts us, who anoints us with oil, who restores our soul, and whose goodness and mercy follows us all the days of our lives. Amen."