And what feelings come to your heart when you imagine such a shepherd? Admiration? Respect? Trust?.
These images and feelings are very much like the ones that would come to the minds and hearts of people of Ezekiel's day when they thought of shepherds. O, I don't want to romanticize the shepherd too much. After all, some shepherds were dishonest. When Jacob was working for his father-in-law, for instance, he stole his father-in-law's best sheep (Gen. 30:37-43). And if you've ever been around a sheep pen that hasn't been cleaned recently, there is a limit to how gushy you can be about shepherds and their lifestyles..
Nonetheless, ideas and feelings were positive enough about shepherds in the world of antiquity that Ezekiel could use the word shepherd to speak about the religious and political leaders of Israel. A king, a queen, a priest, a prophetess -- they were supposed to function in the community much like the shepherds functioned in relationship to the flock. And even more. A number of Biblical writers speak of God as the great shepherd of Israel..
Ezekiel and his contemporaries had good reason to speak of their leaders as shepherds. The shepherds really did take care of the flock. They lived with the sheep which meant that they often lived in tents or lean-tos or even slept in the open air. Summer and winter. Because sheep eat a field clean, the shepherd had to know several pastures and how to get to them..
The sheep digestive tract is rather delicate: the sheep gets indigestion if it eats weeds instead of grass. And in the world of Ezekiel they did not have Pepto Bismal for sheep, so the shepherd needed to know how to prepare the field -- which grasses to leave which weeds to cut. And in a relatively dry land like Palestine, finding water is sometimes a problem. The shepherd knows the springs, creeks and wells..
The sheep are a little cantankerous. Sometimes they bite one another and even draw blood. And sometimes they wander away from the flock and stick their faces in briars. The shepherd has herbs and medicines to heal them..
Sheep are especially easy prey for wild animals such as wolves. And the origin of the expression "sheepstealer" is as old as sheep themselves. Since wild animals and thieves often crept up on the flock at night, the shepherd was often awakened. The effect on the shepherd's sleep would be much like having a crying baby that never grew up. The shepherd often had a big club for the purpose of protecting the sheep -- beating off wolves and thieves..
Shepherds often lived alone. Days, weeks without seeing many other people..
The shepherd had another role with the sheep -- one that we do not often talk about. The shepherd disciplined the sheep. The shepherd taught the sheep how to be a flock -- how to get from one place to another in a group that stayed together, how to drink at a waterhole, how to behave at the shearing so that they could fulfill their purpose as sheep. And sometimes the shepherd had to give a sheep a whack as if to say, "No. That behavior is not acceptable..
Small wonder that Ezekiel called the religious and political leaders of his day shepherds. And the figure of speech is doubly accurate when you consider how much people are like sheep..
But do you notice how Ezekiel describes the human shepherds of Israel? False. False shepherds. "Oh, you shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding yourselves! .
Should not the shepherd feed the sheep? You eat the fat (the best part), you clothe yourselves with 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 brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost but with harshness and force you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd; and scattered they became food for all the wild animals" (Ezek. 34:3-5).
What has happened? Why does Ezekiel speak with such invective? Because the shepherds of Israel -- the political rulers, the priests, the prophets, the prophetesses -- have failed to care for the flock. The community has grown weak. The wild animals, the Babylonians, have conquered Israel and have carried many into exile..
In the years before the exile, the people practiced idolatry. They built elaborate altars to pagan gods on the mountains of Israel (6:1-14). They practiced paganism in the temple itself. They painted loathsome animals and creeping things on the wall of the temple. These were pictures of Babylonian or Egyptian deities. And the 70 elders of Israel, the Board of Directors, lit incense and worshipped. Women wept because Tammuz, a vegetation deity, had descended to the underworld and had taken fertility with him. The men turned their backs on the Holy of Holies and worshipped the sun (8:7- 18)..
Where were the shepherds? Not only did they fail to condemn such activity, but they blessed it and participated in it (12:21-14:23). Even more, they profited from it. Instead of caring for the sheep and disciplining them, the shepherds ate the sheep to feed themselves. Now, the whole community has gone into exile..
As I think about what this passage has to say to the church today, my first inclination is to point to the United States at large. There are plenty of ravenous shepherds. Our political leaders, for instance, feed themselves and their friends and constituencies thru the patronage system and the pork barrel. Corporate executives make salaries 3, 5, and even 10 times those of their Japanese counterparts. And lest we lesser salaried ones feel too self- righteous, let me point out many of us hold stocks in companies who hire part-time workers so that the corporation will not have to provide health care and other benefits. I may not be promoting idolatry, but I am fattening myself while others go into bankruptcy to pay their hospital bills..
But the more I think about it, the more I conclude that is really sidestepping the direct forward movement of the text. Ezekiel, after all, is speaking about shepherds and sheep. These are terms that specifically apply to Israel and the church. Why not apply the passage to the church?.
Most of the old-line denominations are losing members. Why? A team of sociologists has investigated this phenomenon very carefully. They have discovered several factors, including low birth rates combined with a large percentage of older members who are (to put it bluntly) dying off. We are losing more to death that we are adding by birth, not us personally, but the denomination. We are generally located in parts of the country where the population is declining. WE are weeding our membership roles more honestly. Many of us think that the liberal churches have a vacuum cleaner attached to our members and that we are losing to the liberal churches in droves. But no, for every member we lose to them, nationwide, we get one back..
There is another factor that is more important than all these to explain our decline. People leave because they do not find participation in the church to be significant enough to justify their time and money. To put it bluntly, many feel that they get the same things from church that they get from the Jaycees, the Optimist Club, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, the Lions Club, etc. Our congregations, by and large, have not performed the oldest function of religion: helping people make sense of their lives in the light of ultimate reality. We have tended to boil religion down to a matter of ethics -- and in the worst instances we have let our faith drift into works righteousness..
Furthermore, this team of sociologists has compared the attitudes of church members and leavers on issues of race, women's rights and civil rights and has found that the leavers are actually much more tolerant than the average church member. "They'll know we are Christians by our love?" HARDLY..
Another group of researchers has found that responsibility for this situation cannot be lodged in any single place. We have had a system-wide failure to feed the sheep. .
As our congregations get smaller and become more absorbed with institutional self-maintenance, we pastors and denominational leaders sometimes view the sheep as means to keep the doors open and the machinery working. Many of our congregations, for instance, are desperate for "young families". If we can't have it like it was in the 50's, at least we want to have some children in Sunday School. So, as soon as a young family visits, we pounce on them like a mountain lion leaping out of a tree on its prey. These young families sometimes feel as though we want them in the church to keep ourselves afloat rather than because we have good news from a loving God that can help them in all the dimensions of their lives..
Our congregational leadership is getting old and tired. When a young person does come down the aisle, we so often push them too quickly into positions of leadership. We say things like, "Get them involved." "We've done our part. Let the younger generation have their turn." But the younger generation is not ready, and when put into office and faced with a task for which they are spiritually and administratively prepared, they become resentful. Boom. They're gone..
The situation is not much different in the middle and upper judicatories. Money is tight, the survival of our institutions was we know them is in doubt. People are anxious, afraid. "Will downsizing mean that my turf, my power, my money is cut?" We become preoccupied with institutional survival. We begin to tinker with structure. Soon, we have subtly begun to think that tinkering with church structure is mission. At our worst, we feed on ourselves..
And we pastors sometimes get into the act. We answer the gospel call to help the servant community. But along the way, we begin to think of our careers in secular terms of advancement. We expect to start small and to keep moving up. Much like our college friends who work for IBM. But it is not working out that way. Our old-line denominations do not have enough medium size congregations, much less large congregations, to accommodate all who want them. A subtle competitive atmosphere sets in. Jealousies. Curry favor with denominational officials in charge of relocation. Pretty soon, we may be eating one another: shepherds devouring shepherds..
I do not believe that God is causing our churches to diminish as one might imply from Ezekiel. And there is certainly no necessary correlation between institutional health (measured by corporate standards) and faithfulness. But, I do believe we are in trouble, at least in part, because we have become institutionally self-absorbed and have not led the sheep to the nourishing pastures of the gospel message in its practical implications for life. And I often think that we do not have the vivid sense that we are joined in every moment by the living God whose presence makes a positive difference for all..
This is precisely the point at which we can have hope for the future. According to our passage, God does not abandon the sheep, even if the flock fails. God still searches for the sheep and seeks them out. God still provides food on the mountains. And watercourses. God still seeks to bind us up and heal us. God still prepares pastures for our rest..
From this perspective, I think that our text is less a judgment than an invitation. An invitation to join God in feeding the sheep the things they need most in order to be healthy sheep who can fulfill their purposes as sheep. After all, their job is not to serve as our career tracks. Their job is to give wool and food for the world..
We need to face up to our institutional self-absorption and repent. As important as our denominational and congregational structures have been, they are not essential to God's purposes in the world. Let's face it folks, God can shepherd the world with Baptist or any other denomination. But the Baptist cannot live without God..
If the heart of our problem is that we are not fulfilling the oldest and most important function of religion, then we need to minimize our fascination with denominational and congregational mechanics and we need to concentrate on helping people discover the joyful meaning of life in the light of the gospel. In our sermons, in our Sunday School classes, in our fellowships (for women, men, youth, family), and in everything we do. In order to be good shepherding communities, at this juncture of our history, we need to be sure that everything we do teaches the Christian faith in its overflowing graciousness and fullness..
And as a corollary, we need to say "NO" to those programs and responsibilities that drain away time and energy and that have become weeds that give us gas..
In the process, I am convinced that something wondrous will happen. Even if our churches metamorphose into something altogether strange to us, we will discover that in the act of feeding, we ourselves are fed. And by no less than the Great Shepherd of the sheep..
