God, the Good Shepherd

God, The Good Shepherd (Ezekiel 34:11-16)

            I have mentioned this before, but I bring it up again because I continue to find the question tricky.  What is God’s job?  Steven Colbert posed the question to his guest, a Catholic clergyman, and the priest responded, “God’s job is to sustain the universe.”  I thought it was brilliant. 

            It though a very general way of answering the question, and general works in the setting of a talk show, especially a comedy show like the Colbert Report.  But when you and I are living our very real, day-to-day lives, what answer to that question will help us?  What knowledge of God will inspire us to push ourselves through the challenges we face?  What reality about God will carry us when we can push ourselves no farther?  The specifics of the priest’s general observation that God is the great Sustainer are varied and go in countless directions.  We find one thread of God’s sustenance, God’s upholding of everything, in these words of the Prophet Ezekiel which we have read.

            To get to this, I look to another passage, one familiar to some readers, Psalm 23, and I compare Psalm 23 to opening verses of Ezekiel 34.  In Psalm 23, between the years 1000 and 930 BC,[i] David who was a shepherd sang about the ways God took care of him in the midst of trying circumstances.  God often, not always, but very often works through people.  This includes God working through his chosen people Israel.  Ezekiel 34 opens with prophetic condemnation of Israel’s leaders who failed to lead the nation to trust in God’s provision in the face of difficult times. 

            Ezekiel fires off his prophecy.  “You shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves!  Should not the shepherds feed the sheep?  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” (34:2-4).

            Ezekiel speaks 400 years after David wrote his shepherd poems in the wilderness of Israel.  David could not see what would become of the nation.  It is quite possible that when he first imagined the words that eventually became what we now call the 23^rd Psalm, he did not even know he would become Israel’s king.  Surely the poem went through many versions in his own singing of it.  Verses 5-6 make more sense from the lips of a king than a shepherd.  But however removed, David was from Ezekiel and even more from us, there is a constant that draws him and the prophet and you and me together.  God is watching over us with a big picture perspective that takes into account the experience of every human being simultaneously.   At the same time, God is with each person individually.

            We just read Ezekiel’s condemnation of the leaders of the Israel, the king and the leaders in the temple.  In summation, they neglected the needy of society as they used their privilege to advance their own wealth and well-being.  There can be no more damning words of someone with privilege than to say they who already have everything take what little the poor have.  They who are strong load the backs of the lower class with taxes, high prices, endless work on back-breaking tasks.  This can apply in numerous ways in countless situations, but the principle is someone in power using that power to exploit someone without power.  Think of what’s happening in Hong Kong right now, or the imposed conformity in North Korea of the past 65 years.

            In Ezekiel’s day, God’s nation, the people of Israel in the southern Kingdom of Judah, had survived intact during the terrifying Assyrian empire.  Then, a new power arose, Babylon.  With Egypt to her east and Babylon advancing, why did Judah fail to stand?  Ezekiel’s prophecy, time and time again, declares that the exile imposed by Babylon was permitted by God not because of Babylon’s might but because of Israel and Judah’s sin.  In chapter 34, Ezekiel specifically cites the leaders of Israel for failing to care for the nation. 

            In contrast to their self-serving, heavy-handed leadership, David tells of how God does thing.  The leaders scattered Israel and did not seek the lost.  They left the lost out in the cold to whatever hazards the wilds would present.  David said that God as a shepherd led him to green pastures and still waters.  When all David had in the wilderness to rely upon were his wits, his staff, and prayer, he never felt safer.  He could feel that he was in God’s hands.  There was no lion or enemy warrior that could pose a credible threat.  God held him.

            It was not always easy.  He says in the Psalm, “I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”  But he does not stop there.  He does not die in that shadow.  He walks through and without fear because God is with him.  This is the extent of faith that David declares.  He’s not trying to teach it.  He does not offer four steps so that if you follow these you too can have a David-type faith.  He simply sings.  I walk through the valley … and I fear no evil.  Nothing could happen that was scarier or mightier or as powerful as the God who held him.

            In verse 4, Ezekiel rattles off a succession of specific failures.  “You did not strengthen, you did not heal, you did not bind wounded limbs, you did not gather the distracted, you did not seek the lost.”  Leadership comes with responsibility which is magnified 100 fold when your leadership is in God’s name.  In God’s name leaders are to point people to God.  Those falling under Ezekiel’s condemnation may indeed have spoken God’s name and recited temple prayers and led sacrifices in worship and done it all quite eloquently.  But their actions involved gathering all the food, property and money for themselves.  When they came across the broken, the broke them even more.

            David saw God in the Shepherd’s role do the opposite.  He said of God, “He restores my soul.  He leads me in paths of righteousness.”  He restores my soul.  Because of this, David could conclude him poem by saying, “Goodness and mercy will follow me and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

            The God who protected David in this way was still in business 400 years later.  When Ezekiel blurted out his seething invectives, it was not God’s way of stomping Israel into the grave.  God had not stopped being the good shepherd.  All the divine anger leading up to Ezekiel 34, anger at Judah and at foreign nations that deal in exploitation and injustice, came to a head in Ezekiel 34:11.  God’s demand for justice would not blot out God’s mercy. 

            As I again read the promise that comes in these verses take this to heart.  Just as the good shepherd of Psalm 23 was still a good shepherd 100’s of years later for Ezekiel, that same good shepherd came to walk in the skin of the sheep when God became a human himself in Jesus of Nazareth.  The God of David and of Ezekiel, the God who walk the dusty roads of Nazareth in human skin and died on a Roman cross, is as much a good shepherd today as God ever was.  Ezekiel spoke and wrote his prophecy at the beginning of the 6^th century BC.  The words, breathed into his heart by the Holy Spirit, still speak today.

¹¹ For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.¹² As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. ¹³ I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. ¹⁴ I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. ¹⁵ I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. ¹⁶ I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

            In Jesus, God has extended the invitation originally given to Israel.  All who come to Jesus acknowledging sin and complete need for God’s forgiveness and leadership will be received, forgiven, made new, and adopted as a son or daughter of God.  Jesus welcomes every person who comes in genuine repentance and sorrow for sin by.

            Once we are we in Christ, we are his church, and much of the work God does in the world today is done through the church.  We are not in the same position as the leaders of Israel in Ezekiel’s day.  The world is clearly a different place.  But we do have a calling to tell the world about Jesus, to invite the world into God’s Kingdom, and to show God’s goodness by using all our talents to do things God promises in  Ezekiel’s prophecy. 

            God says, “I will seek, I will rescue, I will bring my people together, I will feed them with good pasture.  I will bind up the wounded and heal the sick.  I will give justice, peace, and rest.”  We are beneficiaries.  As we have received these things from God, we are made new and then we are called to do these very things – seek, rescue, feed, heal.  We are commissioned by the word and empowered by the Spirit to be bringers of justice, peace, and rest.   

What’s God job?  God does many things.  Included is God’s provision.  This is no denial that we go through tough times and followers will face trials and difficulties, but never alone.  The good shepherd never leaves us alone. 

            This is a special day for our church. Today we enter into partnership with Pastor Lucio Moreno and Iglesia del Amor de Dios (the Love-of-God Church).  HillSong joins our efforts to other English-speaking congregations throughout our town and area in pointing the world toward the Good Shepherd God.  And Iglesia del Amor de Dios under Pastor Moreno’s leadership will join with us and with the other Spanish-speaking churches around to point the world toward our loving God.

            With God working through us, people will be drawn from the dangers of the wilderness of sin, disappointment, grief and loss into his love.  And together, in Spanish and English, we can truly say.

La bondad y el amor me seguirán
  todos los días de mi vida;
y en la casa del Señor

  habitaré para siempre.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us
All the days of our lives;
And we will dwell in the house of the Lord
Forever.

AMEN

---

[i] Gottwald, Norman (1985).  The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, p.601-602.

Do we Know Jesus? (Colossians 1:9-23)

Sunday, May 18, 2014

            If you open your Bible, turn to Colossians and begin reading in the very first verse, you are struck with how positive this letter is.  “Grace and peace … we have heard of your faith and your love … [we heard] from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant; … he has made known to us your love in the Spirit” (from v.1-8).  What a ‘feel good’ start! 

And yet, it is not all rosy.  It could not be, not for a first century church.  In the midst of a truly uplifting introduction, we read, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience.  … He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:11, 13-14).

            Why is Paul praying that the Colossians be “made strong?”  What ordeal required them to have strength?  Was the life of their church and their very selves as Christ followers threatened to the point that the only way they could maintain true faith and correct belief was by the glorious power of God?  Why did Paul think such a prayer was necessary?  What evil threatened the Colossian fellowship?

            “May you be able to endure everything with patience.”  He does not ask that God remove the threat, whatever it may have been.  He does not ask God to deliver the Colossians.  He asks God to uphold them that they might endure some trial.  I hear Christians ask God to protect them from trials and to heal wounds and for shelter in the storm.  Paul asks God to help the Colossian weather the storm.  The storm is inevitable.    The only hope they have is the help that comes from the Holy Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

What can be said about him?  Who is this son of God?  Who, exactly, is this Jesus to whom we have pledged our allegiance?  We have staked our lives, our souls, our eternal hope on what the Bible tells us about him.  Paul knew the Colossians could not hold up as a church without help from him.  For them and for us, he is the key to everything.  Do we truly know Jesus? 

            When he met a blind man, he spit in the dirt, made mud, and rubbed it in the blind man’s eyes.  Would you allow someone to rub mud made from saliva on your face?  It’s kind of gross.  Yes, gross, but the eyes of the man born blind were healed.  He could see.

Jesus enjoyed weddings so much he turned water to wine to keep the party going.  Before his disciples, he dropped to his knees and washed their feet.  He befriended prostitutes and disreputables, society’s dregs and rejects.  He partied with them and with those in high society.  Jesus was able to genuinely love everyone. 

All these anecdotes about Jesus form a picture of a great man – the greatest of human beings.  It is perfectly appropriate to talk of Jesus as a person.  You and I – we are persons, individuals.  So too was Jesus. 

            The very human Jesus truly is Jesus.  He was a first century Jewish man who came from the region of Galilee, received Rabbi training, whether formal or informal we don’t know.  His humanity must never be forgotten or ignored or intentionally shelved.  Neither may we do away with his divinity.  Jesus is both: 100% God and 100% human.  A robust, healthy Easter theology recognizes and insists upon the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus.  This duality is a great paradox, impossible to rationally explain yet undeniable.

            In Colossians, where the faithful have exhibited devotion in their faith, the accent is on the divine nature of the Son of God.  The Colossian believers are confused by other teachings that have come from countless angles in a culture so religiously diverse it’s dizzying.  Jewish, Roman, and numerous forms of Greek religious expressions competed for the attention and hearts of these people who have pledged themselves to Jesus. How could they maintain true faith?

Similar challenges confront Jesus’ church in every era and in every place.  Even though thousands of years and thousands of miles make us as different from our Colossians siblings in the faith as one might expect, we also are tempted by forces around us that would divert our loyalty away from our Lord.  Worse, we are weakened by sin.  Jesus has rescued us from sin in his death on the cross (v.13), but we are still vulnerable to temptation.  They were.  We are. 

            So Paul names his worries – weakness (he prays for strength), and trials and temptations (he prays for endurance).  Then , pointing to our source of help and hope, Paul quotes a poem that is dedicated to the rule and wonder of Jesus.  Most scholars believe Colossians 1:15-20 is a hymn Paul quoted, one likely older than anything Paul wrote.  What we read here was used in worship in the ancient church by the Christ followers probably even earlier than Paul’s conversion which is described in Acts 9.  Another example of Paul quoting an ancient hymn to make his point is Philippians 2:5-11.  In both cases, we find Christianity in its earliest most authentic form.  

In times of trouble, in times of confusion, when darkness threatens, we turn to Jesus.  Do we know Jesus Christ, the beloved son of God?  What would we say about him?  Look at Colossians 1:15-20 and see what the Apostle said.

            Jesus, the Son of God, is the firstborn of all creation.    Jesus, the man we meet in the New Testament, did not exist until the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary.  But Jesus as God, the divine logos described in John chapter 1, the Word, certainly did exist prior to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  He was, says Colossians, before the universe was.  From verses 16 & 17, “In him all things in heaven and on earth were created.  … He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together.”  Science can study observable phenomena, only that which occurs or exists within the history of the universe.  Jesus is before the history of the universe.  He is the pre-existent one.

            The son is distinct from the father, and here we find another paradox no theologian has adequately reduced to a definition we can grasp.  The term ‘trinity’ is not mentioned in the Bible, but it adequately names how God exists and how we know God.  Great minds have tried to make the trinity comprehendible for 2 millennia with no success.  The Father is God.  Jesus is God.  The Spirit is God.  They are distinct from one another.  There is only one God: 3 in 1.  This is where we turn, to this triune God, when we are in desperate need.  I could offer a plethora of metaphors to try to illustrate the trinity, but all come up short. 

            A while ago, a priest was the guest on Steven Colbert’s show.  The comedian is a devout Catholic.  I don’t know if he prepared the priest for what he was going to ask, but I was thoroughly impressed with the priest’s answer.  Colbert asked, “OK, what is God’s job.”  How would you answer?  I thought the question was kind of strange, but then I was struck by the thought that as a Christian, and especially as clergy, I should be able to answer that.  And I was stuck.  I did not know exactly where to begin.  What is God’s job?  Without missing a beat, the priest said, “God’s job is sustaining the universe.”  Brilliant! 

            The Father creates the universe and sustains it.  The Son draws humanity to the father, saving us from our sins and presenting us as righteous.  The Spirit is the constant presence of God in Jesus’ absence, the comforter and helper.  Each member of the trinity has a specific role and that is how we understand the trinity. 

Not so fast!  Colossians 1:17 says in the Son all things hold together.  Yes, God the Father sustains, but Jesus the Son has a role in holding everything together as well.  And, per v. 16, Jesus has a role in the creation of all that we see.  This verse, Colossians 1:16, indicates that the man from Galilee, before he was ever born in a Bethlehem stable, was the agent of creation and the goal of creation.

            Then verse 18 zooms in from the view of everything that exists in the cosmos to a focus on a particular people on earth, those who follow Jesus, the church.  We are the church.  From believers in megachurches housed in multimillion dollar facilities that sit on campuses that would make many colleges jealous, to groups of believers that gather in dirt floored third-world huts, the church is the gathering of people who follow Jesus and worship God through their knowledge of Jesus.  From the first century believers in Colossae to us who gather on Sundays at HillSong in 2014, we are the church.  Colossians 1:18 says the beloved son, the pre-existent one and creator of all, is the head of the church. 

            He who formed the Milky Way galaxy astronomers spend their lives observing is the one who watches over and leads us and all churches like us and those thoroughly unlike us.  Why?  Jesus is the firstborn of the dead.  The resurrection links his humanity and divinity; and it links us to him. 

            We would be destined to be separated from God for eternity if not for Jesus.  Our sins cut us off.  I think Hell is eternal separation from God.  All the descriptions of unquenchable fire and lakes of sulfur and weeping and gnashing of teeth – these are Biblical metaphors employed to show just how bad eternal separation from God is. However, Jesus came, died, and rose.  The New Testament says over and over, because of what he did, we have hope of resurrection.  He paves the way and makes resurrection a reality for us, his followers, so he holds first place in everything.  Any portion of life we can imagine, no matter how we see our lives or divide life into segments, Jesus, the resurrected, is first in all.  Not only is there no portion of life Jesus does not touch.  There is no portion of life Jesus does not rule.

Because of sin, the world is a fallen place, a place of pain, but Jesus is working through His church for the healing of the world.  Verse 20 says, “Through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven by making peace through the blood of the cross.”  This verse does not say that the purpose of Jesus’ death on the cross was to provide salvation for us from our sins so we would go heaven when we die.  It does not say his death on the cross was for that.  Salvation is a consequence of the crucifixion of the son of God.  We are saved.  We are made righteous by him and promised to be with him eternally.  But Colossians 1:20 says through the cross all things are reconciled to God: animals, plant life, the elements (wondrous rock, gems, and metals in the earth), the cosmos, and people – all was declared Good in the creation.  All was corrupted in the fall.  In the death and resurrection and return of Jesus, all will be reconciled to God.  When we love the earth and act as the stewards God has called us to be, we are caring for what God made and what God will make new in the future through the work of Jesus, the Son.

Paul prayed that his readers would be made strong and be prepared to endure.  They worshiped as a minority faith in the midst of an empire that was pagan, polytheistic, and insistent upon all acknowledging the supremacy of the Roman emperor.  They were surrounded by people who sneered at their monotheism or mocked their claim that the Messiah had come and had been resurrected.   The first readers of Colossians were trying to follow Jesus in a world that potentially could hurt them severely for doing so.

We read Colossians as we live in the American empire.  Ours is vaguely Christian, or at least was born in the tradition of Christendom.  What threatens and causes us to rely upon Jesus for help? 

-                           Some reduce our faith to a system of morals.  We cannot.  The way of Jesus is very moral as are many religious faiths.  We are distinctive in that we insist that Jesus is Lord. 

-                           Another threat is the idol of materialism.  Life is all about me, so following Jesus is fine as long as it is good for me.  This idolatry will lead us straight out of the kingdom of God and in America, where freedom has been corrupted into the notion that we “deserve” immediate satisfaction in all things, we are bombarded by the deception of materialism. 

-                           Another threat is the way our culture has turned the concept of tolerance into the undiscerning practice of saying all things are OK and all religions are basically the same.  It’s a double lie; all behaviors are not OK and all religions are not, at the core, the same.  Each religion is unique from all others. 

We need help from our Lord so we can be strong enough and clear enough and loving enough to say Jesus is King, to kill the idol of materialism and to overcome the lies that are birthed by the siren song of tolerance. 

We could probably name numerous other threats to Christian faith in America.  If we considered other places in the world, the threats would be deadly in addition to being ideologically dangerous.  The Colossians prayer fits.  We need Jesus if we are to stand for him and with each other.  That we will be made strong and be prepared to endure so that with a gentle voice of welcoming love we can tell the world around us that all things come together in Christ alone – that prayer is one we need.  And we need to look to and point the world to Jesus, the beloved son of God, the creator and sustainer of all. 

He is Lord of the universe and head of the church and we and all his followers, no matter how different than us, comprise the church, the body of Christ. 

No matter the cost or consequences, together we are in Christ, the Lord of all.

AMEN