First Presbyterian Church of DuPage - The Five O’Clock
Ps 23 & Jer 23.1-6 & Mk 6.30-52 - Jesus Is My Shepherd
[After reading Ps 23 & Jer 23.1-6]
1. Jesus is the good shepherd. In the passage from Mark we are centering our time together on this evening, Jesus cares for the crowds who come to hear him and for his followers through actions that show what it means for him to be the good shepherd. We’ll see this when we look at it a bit later in the service.
In the passage from Jeremiah that we just heard, God is accusing the leaders of ancients Israel of being bad shepherds, of failing to care for the needs of the people and instead being concerned only with their own wants and desires. The Bible often uses the picture of shepherding to describe what a good ruler is supposed to do. Ezekiel, another prophet, blames Israel’s leaders for failing to care for the sheep. He accuses them: “You do not feed the sheep! You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bandaged the injured, brought back the strays, or sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled over them. They were scattered because they had no shepherd, and they became food for every wild beast.”
If we think about kings as shepherds, king David comes to mind pretty quickly. David is the most important king in the biblical imagination, a king who had a special relationship with God. He was not only a good shepherd to the people, but he had in fact started out tending actual sheep in the fields before he was anointed king.
God always maintains that he alone is the true ruler of Israel. The psalm we read tonight begins, Yahweh is my shepherd. The prophets often return to the idea that because Israel’s rulers have proved themselves to be poor shepherds, Yahweh, the true shepherd, is going to step in personally to care for his people, often by setting up a good king, a good ruler. In the passage we heard from Jeremiah, God says, “Then I myself will regather those of my sheep who are still alive from all the countries where I have driven them. I will bring them back to their pasture. . . . I will install shepherds over them who will care for them. Then they will no longer need to fear or be terrified. None of them will turn up missing. . . . I, Yahweh, promise that the days are certainly coming when I will raise up for them a righteous Branch, a descendant of David. He will rule over them with wisdom and understanding and will do what is just and right in the land.”
We’re trying something a bit different tonight. After we sing another song and listen to the passage from Mark, we’re going to go over to the tables where some large sheets of paper are laid out. We’re going to process artistically the ways in which Jesus is our good shepherd. Then we’ll hang the artwork up here to surround us as we look forward to Easter. Then afterward, we’ll come back and sing, I’ll say a few things more directly about the passage from Mark, and then we’ll go into our prayer and sharing time.
