COLUMN: I’ll show you what a shepherd looks like

This week, we continue featuring Old Testament prophets. Our scripture is in Jeremiah 23: 1-6, as the prophet is sent with a word from God for the shepherds of Judah. As an additional lens, we also read Psalm 23 with this.

Jeremiah’s message was one of judgment upon the kings and priests. They had been entrusted to shepherd God’s people, but they had become selfish and failed in that task.

First, we have to briefly suspend most of what we know and think of when the Bible uses a “shepherd” as a metaphor. We might think of Psalm 23, with the notion of a heroic and dedicated King David, as our example.

We’ll think of the first to receive the Good News at Christmas concerning the arrival of the Christ Child. The Shepherds were out in their fields, tending their flocks by night, only to depart in wonder to seek after this thing they had been told about.

We can hear Jesus teaching later on, saying, “I Am the Good Shepherd,” and then pointing out the qualities he brought to humanity through his nurture, provision, and guidance. So, we’ve got to recalibrate our hearing this morning so that we can hear the word shepherd in a new light this week.

Likewise, a natural question might be to try to remember what a good Shepherd did. They took guarding their flock seriously and wouldn’t let anything bad happen to them if they could help it.

They fed their sheep. They collected or gathered up their sheep and counted them daily.

They also led their sheep. Because sheep need a certain amount of structure and guidance lest they lose their way or become vulnerable, that’s you and me, by the way. We are in any of these scenarios, sheep.

The consequences of bad shepherding are devastating. That was true then, and the same is true now. When the leaders sin, the flock is scattered. God’s “woe!” in our text is out of compassion for the victims of these self-serving figures.

God vows to attend to the shepherds who have failed to attend to God’s flock. Injustice, inequity and oppression have become the way of the land and now shape the behavior of God’s people. Divine judgment is presented as a necessary response to an intolerable situation.

I’ve always viewed Israel being dispersed into exile as punishment and a sad result of God taking favor away from them, so it seems. Now, I’m not so sure.

The scholars I have studied make me wonder if God might not see it differently. That exile removed them from a bad environment and system.

A type of “reset button,” we might call it, today. Drastic, though it may seem. Exile possibly was the rescue of the sheep away from the bad shepherds. I don’t know. That’s just a possibility I am considering.

The implications and damage of bad leadership are devastating. Even for a short time, we can look back and see the consequences of any historic, political, religious, or cultural moment.

Corruption, deceit, self-centeredness, laziness. Such noticeable results spread like an infection through a people. Whether king, prime minister, or president, irresponsible leaders make the lives of their citizens much harder.

God had to intervene. God had to speak up. That’s what Amos had come to warn the kings and priests about.

Elaine Jones, another writer on today’s scripture, says that there is a persistent ethical thread throughout the Hebrew Bible: God requires the community to be ruled with justice and righteousness, which is manifested in the fair treatment of people.

But rulers who seek their own fortune, expand their power, legacies, and egos and enrich their coffers at the expense of the poor are in egregious violation of God’s covenant and will be held accountable.

Well, here’s the thing. Jeremiah didn’t just come to drop the hammer on Judah’s leadership. As all prophets get too little credit for doing — part of their job was also to deliver good news. God was going to step in. God was going to intervene.

God would become their shepherd. Of course, we Christians hear this promise as being fulfilled in an ultimate way through Jesus Christ. Emanuel is translated as affirming that God was now with us. Or, a fulfillment of what Jeremiah came to tell them. It was God saying, “I’ll show you what a shepherd looks like.”

DR. CHARLES QUALLS is senior pastor at Franklin Baptist Church. Contact him at 757-562-5135.

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