Sermon: In Need of a Shepherd

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

In Need of a Shepherd

James Sledge                                                                                       July 22, 2018

They had no leisure even to eat. Some of you may know what it’s like for work to keep you so busy that you must eat at your desk. Perhaps your harried, over-scheduled life makes you grab something to eat on the way to school, practice, work, volunteering  or whatever.

Jesus’ disciples have just returned, exhausted from their first mission trip without Jesus, but the demands of the crowd are constant. "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while," says Jesus. He is concerned about them. Humans are not designed to keep going all the time. They need Sabbath, rest, times of silence and stillness.

Jesus’ concern for his disciples causes him to shut down the ministry for a bit. Unfortunately, the planned retreat gets interrupted. The only alone time they get is in the boat. When they get to their destination, a crowd is already there. Jesus is concerned for his disciples, but he is concerned for crowd as well. They are lost and need help, like sheep without a shepherd to guide and protect them.

I wonder if they realize they are lost. Perhaps they are just curious about this strange new rabbi. Perhaps they are looking for healing for themselves or a friend or family member. Regardless, Jesus sees that they’re lost and feels pity, empathy, compassion for them.

Have you ever thought of God being moved by your plight, compassion welling up in the divine heart because you are harried, tired, hurting, or lost? Have you ever thought of God longing to give you rest, Sabbath, or desperately wanting to give guidance and protection?

That’s certainly not the picture of God I acquired growing up in the church. God was a distant figure, impassive, unchanging, static perfection. This God could not be moved, would not decide on a different course of action out of pity. You see this picture of God is some understandings of the cross. A perfect, impassive God ordered the world perfectly and cannot simply pardon humans who refuse to abide by God’s ways. Punishment is required, demanded. Without someone to take the punishment for us, we’re all doomed.

Such pictures of God come more from Greek philosophical notions of perfection than from Scripture. The Hebrew Bible, the Bible of Jesus and the first Christians, knows well a God who could rethink plans out of pity or compassion. One of my favorite prophetic passages is in the book of Hosea. The prophet speaks of God’s anger at Israel. Despite all God has done for them, they have turned away, and now they will suffer.

But then, surprisingly, God’s anger is replaced by a different emotion. “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? …My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”

Perhaps even more surprising, in the Old Testament book of Jonah, God “repents” of plans to destroy Nineveh for their wickedness, although most English translations describe it as a divine change of mind. I suppose it makes translators queasy to speak of God repenting.

Along with the Hebrew Bible’s witness to God’s compassion and tenderness, we Christians have Jesus himself, the one we say is the clearest picture we have of God. The concept of the Trinity says that to look at Jesus is to look at God, and Jesus looks very different from the stern, distant, impassive God I came to know growing up in the church.

But if we are able to recognize the tender, sympathetic, compassionate nature of God, the God who looks like the Jesus in our gospel, the God who is concerned that we need rest, Sabbath, the God takes pity on us because we are lost, are we willing to let God help us? To put it in the terms of our gospel reading, are we able to admit we need a shepherd?

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Unlike us, most people of Jesus’ day were very familiar with sheep and shepherds. Sheep needed protection from wild animals, and they needed to be moved to different places in order to find food and water. Middle Easter shepherds typically didn’t drive sheep from one place to another. They called to them and walked ahead with a line of sheep behind, a bit like a kindergarten class following the teacher to the cafeteria.

Because of this crucial work of guiding and protecting the sheep, ensuring that they had enough food and water, shepherd became an important metaphor for kings and other leaders. Kings, priests, government officials were supposed to care tenderly for the people like shepherds, to face danger for them and protect them. These shepherds were to reflect the tender, sympathetic, compassionate nature of God.

There a faint echoes of this in the original notions of American government. When the US Constitution was drafted, our second try at establishing a federal government, the preamble read, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence (sic), promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The institutions that followed were to function in shepherd-like fashion, protecting, giving justice to all, ensuring the general welfare, the good of all. Granted, women and slaves did not yet fully count among those to be cared for, but the notion of a government that provided safety and benefits for all was not so different from Israel’s idea of kings as shepherds.

Of course kings often failed miserably at this. Our own government often seems less concerned with the general welfare and more focused on the good of those already at the top. So too the people of Jesus’ day had plenty of people who should have been shepherds for them. From priests and local officials on up to Herod and the governor  and finally to the emperor himself, all manner of people were in a position to provide compassionate protection and care for the sheep. But much of the time, they were more interested in making sure that they, their interests, their friends and family did well and prospered.

It’s an old, old story. The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel speaks God’s disgust with Israel’s false shepherds. “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.”

The prophet speaks a day when God will judge false shepherds, as well as the fat sheep who have “pushed with flank and shoulder and butted out all the weak animals…” of a day when God will be the shepherd, when one from the house of David will feed the flock and be their shepherd.

And (Jesus) had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

But I wonder, did they listen? Do we? “You need to stop, observe Sabbath, be still, take time for prayer and spiritual reflection,” says Jesus. But our response is, “We’re too busy, Jesus.” Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself, to equate their needs with your own. But we say, “You know Jesus, it’s a cutthroat, competitive world out there. I’ve got to look out for me and mine first, but if there’s any left over…” Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  But we say, “Jesus, that’s just crazy.”

And Jesus looks at us and has compassion for us. He can see that the voices we listen to are too often not compassionate and caring, the voices of consumerism, the voices saying you’re not yet good enough, accomplished enough, impressive enough, beautiful enough. And he tries to teach us many things. If only we will listen.