Grace and Peace to you in the name of Jesus.
Our message in our scriptures today tell of Jesus, the shepherd who is king forever, full of righteousness and who leads with justice. Jesus is the shepherd who gathers the scattered flock; heals them, feeds them, and gives them rest. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mark 6:31) That sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Let’s start with Jeremiah. Do you know about the prophet Jeremiah? Jeremiah was Prophet for the last 5 kings of Judah. Here in beginning of chapter 23 we hear a pretty good summary of his core message. Now, he was living during a time when God’s people were not taking their responsibility as God’s chosen people very seriously. In fact, they were hardly worshiping God at all according to some of Jeremiah’s depictions. And, at his time, there were other nations rising up and vying for superpower positions—Babylon to be specific. So then, what happens to a tiny little nation, no longer living into their mission and purpose in the world, when a big bad superpower comes to expand their empire? In this case? Exile. They are literally scattered—deported, enslaved, spread over Babylon, unable to identify, worship, and live as God’s collection of people, who are meant to be a light to the nations. This event of Exile defines the people of God. Historically speaking, it is the moment that prompted all the stories of scripture to be written down—to preserve them when they could not be told. Because of that, all the stories before the exile, lead up to it. And everything after, including the promises and prophecies of God’s deliverance, are shaped by Exile and look toward the future when God will re-gather God’s people. Jesus comes into the picture, into the world of God’s people defined by Exile. In Mark’s gospel lesson of today, it is no coincidence that Jesus sees the great crowd and has compassion for them because they “were like sheep without a shepherd.” He, himself, is the final fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy of hope, that “God raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land…” More about that in a moment… First, let’s talk about exile and new creation, exile and re-gathering. The book of Jeremiah is about Exile and Re-gathering—he prophesied, and actually lived through himself, the coming of Babylon to scatter what was left of God’s people, the southern kingdom of Judah. But Exile is not just a 587 BCE event; it is a description, a metaphor, also of how things are, how we as humans exist in the world. We live in an already/not-yet world where sin and disorder touch every aspect of our lives, yet we know that Jesus is already at work gathering the world to himself, building his kingdom here—a kingdom that is forever in all senses of the word. While we know the kind of world God has in mind, and we know that we are headed there, we still live in the anticipation of that world being realized. Life is in a kind of exile while we meander in and out, toward the realized kingdom of God. God created the world with limitless potential and abundance. God gave orders to all of it to “be fruitful and multiply”—you know those words? From Genesis 1? And we, humans, were to be a part of tending to things and making that happen. Well, right away we know, if not from our own lives then from the story in Genesis two and three, that humans own plans and designs tend down a path away from fruitful and multiply: toward divide and scatter. The humans get Exiled from Eden. And the whole story that follows is how we deal with that exile and look toward the one through whom God will bring us back , as in Jeremiah’s words, “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.” That’s in Jeremiah! Genesis 1 language “fruitful and multiply”. Language of new creation! That’s the thing about God…no matter what calamity or exile we face, there is that promise. That God will gather up the remnant of us, gather up all our broken pieces, pick you up when you crumble, God will bring you in, and make new life of it all. That’s Jesus’ promise, that’s the kingdom he’s building. We’ve been scattered in a very real way recently. Over the last year-and-a-half, the pandemic has exiled us from our houses of worship, from our families and friends, from normal economics. We were cast out of our happy habits and thrown unprepared into a place of exile—but also a place where we were still called to be God’s light, still called to spread Jesus’ message to those people we could when normal was taken away. Then, vaccines started rolling out, we began to get things under control in this part of the world, and we started seeing that glimmer of hope. We started to see the promise of re-gathering. And we are still working through that act of re-gathering. That’s precisely where today’s Gospel lesson enters the story—that promise is beginning. Jesus, right at the beginning of our story today is re-gathering his disciples, the apostles. They come back after being sent out on their own, totally unprepared: “no staff, no bag, no bread, no money.” (Mark 6:8). That’s much the way we’ve been sent out these past 16 months. Sent out, out of touch with how we normally gather, to be the scattered and sent church in the world. And as excited as those apostles were to come back, gather together and around Jesus, just as are we, they were a bit exhausted. I don’t know if any of you feel the same. The first thing Jesus does is—part of that kingdom he’s building, that act of new creation and re-gathering, is—to listen to their stories—"they told him all that they had done and taught.” Gathering a people, forming a new creation, making a kingdom, involves hearing/listening to one another. We might take a page from his book: not at this moment, but maybe at coffee afterward, or by another means later, answer and talk about these things: During pandemic: what did you lament, what did you miss? What scripture held you? What did you see that you really need to tell Jesus about? “They told him…” Then, the very next thing—is he sends them away to rest. He starts providing for their needs. Gives them REST, The Lord makes me lie down in green pastures, then (part of the verses our gospel skipped today) he FEEDS a multitude, You prepare a table before me then HEALS, not sure which line of the psalm that one is, BUT he’s being the prophesied Shepherd! Jeremiah, and Jesus, they’re with the same people, talking to a people who are scattered, exiled. They’re talking to humans, in need of a shepherd, because left to ourselves we eat the forbidden fruit, we let injustice run rampant (that was Jeremiah’s biggest critique). We trod the path away from fruitful and multiply toward divide and scatter. And that’s why God doesn’t leave us to ourselves. Jesus is here. Jesus is with us. He entered the story as the shepherd we need, and he is present leading, guiding, building us back to his kingdom, leading us down right pathways for his names sake. He doesn’t magically take away the Exile we throw ourselves into. But he comes and meets us there. Gives us strength (and rest), gives us community, feeds us with himself, and heals us by his blood. The words of Jeremiah provide us that vision of HOPE. That God will not leave God’s people to their own devices, but that a future does remain. A Shepherd will come, and God’s people will come together again to be what they were meant to be. The shepherd is Jesus. And his message is to follow him, and live in the kingdom now! Which, today, leads us to that prayer we prayed as we began hearing the Word, O God, powerful and compassionate, you shepherd your people, faithfully feeding and protecting us. Heal each of us, and make us a whole people, that we may embody the justice and peace of your Son Jesus, that we may reach out to share Christ, our Savior and Lord, with all. Amen. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorRev. Chris Sesvold is currently the pastor at Halfway Creek Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Holmen, WI. Archives
October 2021
Categories |