"Woe to the Shepherds" (Reign of Christ)

Jeremiah 23:1-6

1 Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. 2 Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: 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. 3 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. 4 I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord. 5 The days are surely 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. 6 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."

              In 1963, Bob Dylan released his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and on that record was a track titled “Masters of War.” Now, the first time I ever heard the song it wasn’t Dylan who sang it, but Eddie Veder, lead singer of Pearl Jam (a personal favorite of mine). The lyrics to Dylan’s “Masters of War” were aimed directly at those people who were in power, those people with money and influence who were often the driving forces behind wars and military conflicts that (at least in the 1960s) drafted young men into combat, putting them in harms way while the wealth elite stayed home and reaped the benefits of such bloody conflict. In case you haven’t heard it, here are just a few of the lines from the fourth verse: “You fasten all the triggers/ For the others to fire/ Then you sit back and watch/ When the death count gets higher/ You hide in your mansion/ While the young people's blood/ Flows out of their bodies/ And is buried in the mud.”

              The next year, Bob Dylan would release The Times They Are a-Changin’ and on that album, Dylan included a song titled, “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” a sort of musical tribute to civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963. In his song, Dylan didn’t lay the blame solely on those who shot Evers, but instead placed it directly at the feet of those Southern politicians in those days who used fear and ignorance to influence poor whites to vote for racist legislation and enact violence towards people of color. In both “Masters of War” and “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Bob Dylan sounded less like a counter-culture musician and more like the exiled prophet, overlooking the shambles of Jerusalem as it lay smoldering in the wake of Babylonian might. Dylan echoed the truths that the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed in those early years of exile: in the end, the people’s hearts turned from God, because their kings, priests, and leaders had sought for themselves power, wealth, and self-adulation.

              Our passage this (Reign of Christ) morning (the final Sunday of the liturgical year before we enter in the anticipation of Advent) begins right after the prophet’s words of judgement directed at the king Jehoiachin, and it continues the prophet’s theme of judgement aimed at those who were over the people of Judah: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord…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.” Rather than aim his words at the people, the mass population of the folks in Judah, the prophet’s words are barbed for the nation’s leaders. They were supposed to be the ones who led Judah in the paths of righteousness, the ones who called the people back to God whenever they were tempted to stray, The kings, priests, and tribal elders were supposed to be the ones who exemplified lives lived by the Law, lives lived in line with the commandments of God. Instead, they used their inherited positions for personal gain and comfort. They used their power oppress the poor, to exploit widows, to malign the stranger, to gain for themselves even more power and wealth—and all at the expense of the people and their security, knowing that’s God’s judgement was coming from Babylon, yet refusing to listen to the voices of those prophets who came before Jeremiah. Now, Jeremiah stand among them in exile and declares that God’s judgement has fallen on them, and while there will be a remnant that will return to Judah, to Jerusalem, they will not be found among them.

              Jeremiah’s words are harsh, most especially if you found yourself on the pointed end of them. Of course, I can hear what many might say these days about the prophet’s words: “Amen! Woe to those leaders who don’t do the will of God! That’s why we have to vote for people who share our values! That’s why we have to have leaders who will stand up for God! Amen, Jeremiah! Woe to those shepherds!” Those voices aren’t wrong, of course. We should vote for people who share values important to us, who will act and lead in ways we find to be congruent with the words of scripture and our faith in Jesus. But I am not so sure that’s all Jeremiah’s words have for us. No, I think on this Reign of Christ Sunday, as we’re staring down the hall at Thanksgiving and the Christmas season, the prophet’s words might need to hot us a little closer to home, they might be words we need to hear, those of us who are less likely to call ourselves “shepherds of the people.”

              You see, our text this morning doesn’t just leave us with the prophet’s judgement of the kings and leaders of Judah. No, there are some words of promise as well: The Lord says, “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. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.” For the people of Judah, God still has a plan for them to prosper in their land: God will raise up new shepherd, and under these shepherds (the prophet declares) the people will no longer be afraid, and they will flourish and thrive. And that’s the thing—God is the one who will bring this all about, and God is going to accomplish it all by way of the promise God had made to David, a promise that had become a sort of prophetic prediction by the days of the exile: “The days are surely 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.’”

              Now, here we are, Christmas trees in some of our living rooms, Mariah Carey singing to us about all she wants for Christmas on the radio, lists laid out for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and “Why did I buy that?” Wednesday, looking forward to shifting into holiday high gear once we’ve put up the Thanksgiving leftovers. We’re anticipating carols, ugly sweater parties, candles, “Silent Night,” and communion on Christmas Eve. We know the one whose name will be called “The Lord is our righteousness,” and we’re all but ready to hang the green and welcome him into the manger. We know he’s coming because he’s already been here, already heard the Little Drummer boy, met the three kings, smelled the shepherds, preached his sermon on the mount, healed the sick, raised the dead, been crucified, dead, buried, and raised on the third day. We are in the likely enviable position of sitting on this side of Judah’s Babylonian exile, with “The Lord is our righteousness” having already come to show us the way, the one Good Shepherd to lead us all back into the flock. So what do we take from Jeremiah’s words into these joy-filled, hopeful, anticipating days ahead of us? Well, I have a thought.

              While you and I may not be like the priests and kings of Judah, with the power and wealth to lead and manipulate a nation, you and I are in the position to show others the way, and there may be no other time of the year when the eyes of others are so intently trained on us. What does that mean then? It means that during this week of thanksgiving, folks are watching to see if those of us with so much for which to be thankful are truly living with gratitude, or simply looking for another opportunity to complain, another opportunity to gain, another opportunity to want more. It means that as we enter into the Christmas season, folks will be watching to see if those of us who claim “the reason for the season” celebrate and revere that reason, or if we simply seek to use it as a pious ploy to set ourselves over those we deem to be spiritually inferior.

              No, you and I are not kings, but we are leaders—whether we want to be or not, for there are those who are following us into this coming season of hope, peace, love, and joy, those who are following us like sheep behind a shepherd to see if we’ll lead them to the cradle of Christ or if we’ll lead them towards more of the empty, self-seeking materialism the coming weeks put before us. As those who follow Christ, those to whom others look when they want to know what it means to be a Christ-follower, will we lead others in the path of God’s kingdom, or will we be like those to whom the prophet Jeremiah speaks, those who sought only what was best for them? Amen.