SermonStudio

Trying to See; Three Kings Who Failed and the One Who, in Failure, Succeeded (All About Shepherds, How Justice Comes and God Working Secretly With a Secret Christian).

All three of the lessons we read today are straining for something beyond their ability to understand. The Gospel is at the center, and, in the Gospel, the question is how can it be that the One Most Beloved by God, the Chosen, the Anointed, the One in whom the heart of God delights, the Faithful One - how can it be that this One hangs there, stretched, nailed, helpless, gasping in pain unrelieved, despised, scorned, spat upon, abandoned, alone? How can this be? Luke is straining to give a rationale for the horror of the crucifixion, something beyond understanding.

In the second lesson, scholars tell us the author is quoting hymns corporately composed by groups of Christians, perhaps a whole congregation, as they developed materials for their worship. In this one they were trying to describe the risen, ascended and glorified Jesus who now lived beyond space and beyond time, and yet was with them. Combining both the human language of the street and of the human philosopher they attempted to describe something beyond human experience.

Jeremiah came 600 years before this. But, he, too, is straining toward something beyond his understanding. Jeremiah knows that his people are a special people, a chosen people, that God has called and spoken to them in a special way. He knows that in history theirs is a destiny that is unique. But it is a destiny unachieved and unrealized. That mission and message of justice and mercy, faithfulness and peace, committed and commissioned to them, has not been fulfilled. They have not become the people of God sent to all God's people on earth.

This failure, Jeremiah sees, has been primarily a failure of leadership. There was King Manasseh, before Jeremiah's time, but his memory and legacy lived in infamy - an overt and avowed pagan who put Assyrian flags in the temple, who set up pagan shrines in every sizable town. On the payroll there were what were called priests and priestesses of love, but openly they were nothing other than prostitutes and their pimps. The courts of justice bent to those who could produce the biggest bribe. For almost sixty years that went on under Manasseh.

Then Josiah. Ah yes, Josiah. He was gone now too, and people looked back on him as many, in our time, look back, justly or not, on Jimmy Carter. Nice guy, really nice guy. But just couldn't make anything work.

Now it was Zedekiah and where did he come from? A spineless incompetent. That's what Jeremiah, near the end of his life, surveyed, as he pondered the meaning of the destiny of God's chosen people - a failure of leadership. And, because of that failure, that God-given destiny is unachieved, unrealized.

As Jeremiah strains to understand this, he knows God will have that achievement. The leadership problem will be solved. He is not exactly clear how. His picture of that king to come is still shrouded in fog. But fog-shrouded as Jeremiah's vision is, it still does provide us with some insights into the nature and character of this king God did send, the King on the cross, the King ascended and glorified beyond space, beyond time. Jeremiah sees that king first as a shepherd, then as the bringer of justice and finally as the direct hand of God.

A beloved analogy of the Hebrews is that of the shepherd caring for his sheep. Abel was a shepherd, Abel whose sacrifice was blessed and accepted, while that of Cain, the farmer, was not. Abraham was a shepherd and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Moses was a member of the Egyptian court; but it was when he was a shepherd that he heard the voice of God. And David, who forever would be the model king, was a shepherd. That analogy of shepherd comes up over and over again in the Psalms they sang in their worship. It was utilized somewhere by almost all their Prophets.

The shepherd gathers, guards and provides security for the sheep. There are times I don't like what Christians do with that. They make it an escapism. The young college student out witnessing to another: "Shouldn't you be studying for that English test?" "Oh, God will help me. This is much more important, and if I fail it, well, I'll just know God has other plans for me."

"Have you managed to sell your house yet?" "Oh, no, God hasn't sent me a buyer yet." So he wants you to continue to make two payments? If that is his will, it is indeed mysterious. Have you thought of changing realtors?"

"Your daughter was killed in an accident? Just leave her to God. He had his reasons for taking her." Please don't say that to people in the agony of grief. It's like a knife. You are telling them their grief is illegitimate, and so they won't be able to share it with you. And you are telling them their grief is illegitimate in God's eyes, so they won't be able to share it with him either.

There are times when I don't like what Christians do with this idea of the shepherd and the security he provides. It is not that kind of escapism, escapism from personal responsibility or from the jagged edges of life.

For me, the security provided by our Shepherd King works more like this: We all face those times of grief and loss, of frustration, of confusion, of being strayed and lost in some wilderness. Perhaps it is very serious where our lives really are thrown into disarray.

What comfort and what a re-gathering can take place when thoughts go thus: Where is it that we see the best life ever lived? We see it in Jesus of Nazareth. What is it that was the source, the fountainhead of that life? A trust in the never-failing grace of God. What was the path he invariably set for himself? That of responsible love.

That is where the Shepherd leads. That is where I shall follow. I will put my trust in that same never-failing grace that he did. And, as I do, miracle of miracles, it turns out to be there and real, as he said it would be.

I will put my feet on that path of responsible love and pursue it. Even though, from time to time, under the pressure of all kinds of fears and angers, I have to rein in, talk to, and remind myself, confess and pray and be restored. Again, miracle of miracles, as he said it would, it works far better than anything else. So my Shepherd provides my need, leading "me in his paths of righteousness for his name's sake ... and goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life."

Jeremiah sees the king as our shepherd who gathers us from our lost wandering and leads us along a secure path.

And Jeremiah sees the king will "deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness."

As Jeremiah's eyes strained to make out that still fog-shrouded vision of the King he thought he saw glistening an earthly crown of gold, he thought he saw arms extended in sovereign authority. What glistened was not a crown of gold, but beads of sweat and blood. The arms were not extended in command but stretched on the cross. And yet from that pain-wracked and helpless position, the justice and righteousness Jeremiah longed to see have flowed in a neverending stream.

Not just from one nation's king but to every nation that the citizens of the kingdom of the crucified have gone. There the hungry have been fed, the sick have been healed, the naked clothed, the homeless given shelter, the prisoner freed; so justice and righteousness have spread forth from his rule, from his cross.

The Apostle Paul in a first century famine, Raul Wallenberg in the holocaust, Father Damien with his lepers, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, Frederick Douglass of Easton, Maryland, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, Dr. Tom Dooley, George Fox's Quakers and John Wesley's Methodists and John XXIII, Catholic, Florence Nightingale, Schweitzer, Martin Luther King and Bishop Tutu. And the anonymous thousands who work in soup kitchens, shelters for the homeless, in African relief, or in a medical facility in Central America.

There glistening in the fog was not a crown of gold, but beads of sweat; the arms were not extended in command but nailed to a cross. Yet, from this king and his servants, there continues to flow "justice and righteousness as a never-ending stream." (Amos 5:24)

And, finally, Jeremiah saw as he strained to see, the very hand of God. "I myself will gather the remnant of my flock," says the Lord. In what this king does is the direct hand of God himself.

Shortly after his death in a plane crash, there was the posthumous publication of a book called Markings, the inner thoughts of U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. Many were quite surprised, and it is not unfair to say that quite a few secularists had a definite feeling of betrayal when that book revealed that Hammarskjold, through his greatest years, had been moved by profound religious sensitivities. That Hammarskjold sensed the presence of God equally and deeply in such diverse experiences as watching a drop of rain course its way down a pane of glass, at social contacts at a cocktail party, and in the work and decisions of the massive events of history, the course of which he was determining. In "all things ..." (you) "stand alone before God and that each of your acts is an act of creation." (Markings, page 165)

Don't be so surprised, secularist. The world is full of people who, once you start talking to them and they find occasion to reveal themselves, will tell you such things. People who have known the care of the shepherd king, who live and work in his kingdom, as they do, know that they are touched by God himself in a deep and mysterious sense moved by him, empowered by Him, sustained by Him.

So the prophet Jeremiah, surveying the clear past of his people, sees a failure of leadership. He looks into the future, still fog-enshrouded. There he sees that King who would come. A shepherd who would care for and give us guidance. A King who would bring justice and righteousness. A King who, when he bring us into his kingdom, gives us that deep sense it is God's kingdom in which we live and work.

That king he strained to see, we find in Christ, the One crucified, raised and set in glory.