Ezekiel 34:11-16 + 20-24: ¹¹For thus says the Lord god: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.  ¹²As 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.  ¹³I 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.  ¹⁴I 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.  ¹⁵I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord god.  ¹⁶I 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.

²⁰Therefore, thus says the Lord god to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.  ²¹Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, ²²I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.  ²³I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.  ²⁴And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken.

 

          Today is Christ the King Sunday, according to the liturgical calendar.  It is a Sunday where the message seems like it would be pretty simple to come by.  Christ the King rolls off our tongues naturally when we are in church, so naturally, we hardly think about it.  And as Americans, thinking about what that means makes it more difficult to accept.  We don’t particularly like kings in America...in fact, our country was formed partially to get away from them.  A king evokes images of authoritarian rule, with little consideration for the common citizen.  We think about Henry the 8^th and his parade of executed wives, or Louis the 16^th quite literally losing his head, and we get a sour taste in our mouths.  Yup, we decided several centuries ago that we’d prefer to choose the person in charge of us, not have it settled by lineage or a “divine” appointment.

          To make matters worse in preaching today, our text is all about how the king will be like a shepherd over sheep.  This image probably worked great back in ancient Israel, and would even work in places like the UK, where sheep outnumber people.  But not for us.  Can I get a quick show of hands if you have spent more time with sheep than a few minutes a year at the state or county fair?...That’s what I thought.  We can’t say we know a ton about what sheep are like, or really what a shepherd is like either.  Outside of the Bible, this metaphor is generally forgotten in our modern urban and suburban lifestyles.  So, we have to take Ezekiel for his word here.

          Fortunately, the Bible is fond of this metaphor, so we are not completely clueless when God says, “As a shepherd...I will seek out my sheep.”  We have Psalm 23 and Isaiah to thank for also using this image to describe God.  Ezekiel fills this metaphor out further.  The shepherd he describes sounds like an appealing character, especially compared to the shepherds the prophet talks about right before this passage.  Immediately before this, Ezekiel talks about the bad shepherds, the old rulers of Israel whose self-serving actions led, in the prophet’s mind, to the nation being overtaken by Babylon.  These rulers fit into the mold of kings we Americans get uncomfortable with.  These guys tended to their own needs, leaving the flock to suffer.  They hoarded what the sheep produced, keeping all the wool and consuming the fatlings.  They thought nothing of their duty to the sheep or the one whose sheep they were.  By the time these kings were done with Israel, the Jewish people were scattered throughout the ancient world, either taken as slaves to Assyria and Babylon or as refugees in Egypt and around the Mediterranean.  As a result of this uncaring approach, the flock of God’s people was dispersed across throughout the nations and God is not happy about it.

          And this passage is Ezekiel’s good news to those who have been dispersed.  The prophet who is best known for his dark warnings against the sins and idolatries of Israel speaks to them this message of hope: God has spoken and will send the shepherd who will seek us out.  A king who cares about the people would return, one who lived up to the memory of King David.  Before singing his song “Refuge” at a concert, the Jewish singer Matisyahu describes what the king was supposed to be for the people of Israel.  He says, “The King was the people...the king loved the people with his whole heart, he would do anything for them.  He was not just a politician...he would die for his people.”  This is the king Ezekiel is describing, who will come to seek out the people of Israel.  The shepherd he illustrates loves the flock he watches with all his heart.  He will do anything for them.  He will search them out from far away countries and travel to distant mountain fields to bring his sheep back to the fertile pastures and running streams of Israel.  These sheep are his, and he, unlike the bad shepherds, will reclaim them at any cost.

          Through the prophet, God speaks to the people of Israel, saying, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.”  God will do the things the bad shepherds failed to do.  They allowed the sheep to wander off and were too lazy to search them out.  It is God who promises to seek the lost and bring back the strayed.  When the sheep were injured, the shepherds of old ignored their bleating of pain.  The good shepherd will bind up the injured.  The weak sheep became weaker under the watch of the self-centered keepers, and God will now come to strengthen them.  God will restore those who have been ravaged and driven away from their familiar grazing lands.

          Not only will this good shepherd take care of those who have been ignored, though.  He will also end the dominance of those sheep that have become strong and fat under the bad shepherds.  When my parents decided to get their first dog together, they traveled out to a farm where they had learned a litter of German shepherds were for sale.  As they talked to the owner of the farm, they witnessed feeding time for the puppies.  When the puppies came to the food bowl, they noticed the larger in the litter shouldering the smallest of the litter out of the way to get food.  My parents decided that the small, lean puppy was the one they wanted to take home.

          In similar fashion, this new shepherd takes pity on those sheep that are weak and lean, those who have been shouldered out of the way when there is food and water to be had.  He shows them favor over the strong, fattened sheep, doing justice.  Not only have the strong sheep been violent against the other sheep in the flock, taking the food they want, but they are also accused of trampling the grass left over and muddying the streams when they have finished drinking from them.  They aren’t just selfish, but destructively against their fellow flockmates.  The new shepherd has little tolerance for this behavior, though.  The good shepherd will right the wrongs inflicted both by the previous tenders of the sheep and those sheep who have sought their own at the expense of the others.  He will be a shepherd like David had been, one who will feed the sheep.

          And why do we go through this much trouble with a story about a bunch of sheep and shepherds from the Old Testament on Christ the King Sunday?  Well, the description Ezekiel gives in his message of hope to Israel sounds a lot like the life we saw Christ live in the accounts given to us by the Gospels.  We will learn in the coming weeks of the lineage from David to Jesus as we hear the birth narratives and genealogy.  The Gospels teach us that Jesus’ ministry was among the lost and weak of Israel, a people who, despite returning from Babylon, were still ruled by bad local shepherds and oppressive foreign emperors.  During his handful of years traveling the Palestinian countryside, he sought out and gathered together the strayed sheep, the weak, the poor, and the forgotten.  He taught them and healed their injuries.  He fed many who were lean and hungry, and led them to the streams of living water he proclaimed.  He gave strength in the form of hope to all who came to him.  It is Jesus who took up the cry of justice for those who were weak and ravaged due to the actions of those who sought to make themselves stronger in Israel.  He challenged those who had made their wealth on the backs of the weak and poor.  And it was Jesus who, as the king of God’s people, laid down his own life for the wellbeing of the flock he was called to tend.  Christ embodied the vision of the true king Ezekiel wrote about.

          It is Christ we proclaim as the true king, the head over all things.  We believe this, because Christ lived out the life of a king who has been chosen and empowered by God.  And through his resurrection, Christ has been enthroned in heaven, as a merciful and gracious ruler, truly sovereign over all.  As the church, we are called to continue enacting that which he did in his earthly reign.  We gather God’s people from every nation, binding the injured and strengthening the weak.  We remember Christ’s words to Peter, to “feed my sheep,” and we too serve the hungry, because of our love for Jesus.  We hear Christ’s challenges to the strong and oppressive, and we cry them ourselves in confidence.  We put our faith in Christ, because not only does he seek us out, guide us, feed us, and lay down his own life for us, but because He is Risen.  He is our shepherd and we are his flock.