We do this, all of this, because of love

From Ezekial:

The word of the Lord came to me:

Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds:

Thus says the Lord God:

Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves!

Should not 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.

So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals.

My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.

And some 6 and a half centuries later, Matthew writes:

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

God’s sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth and Jesus had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus had compassion on the poor and the bereft, the harassed and humbled.

Or, as the King James translation reads, Jesus had compassion on them because they fainted.

Fainted from fear?

Fainted from excitement at seeing the Messiah before them live, in person, and in the flesh?

Fainted due to hunger?

Sickness?

Dehydration?

He had compassion on them because they had no wealth or carried no status, because they were ruled under a thumb of oppression or lacked food.

Jesus had compassion on them because they were rudderless, they lived their day to day without joy or great comfort, under blue skies made gray by the drudgery of an existence spent prostrate to those who ruled over them.

Jesus had compassion on them because they were sheep without a shepherd, wandering the countryside, the brightness of a desert clime dimmed by lack of opportunity, food, water.

These are the folks Jesus is talking about when he asks us, no, commands us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, heal the sick, visit the prisoner, the prisoner imprisoned in a cell or in their mind or home or wherever they might be.

Visit.

Clothe.

Heal.

Sate.

Feed.

Jesus had compassion on those sheep without a shepherd.

And thinking about them, thinking about the number of them, thinking about the overwhelming mass of people who need food or healing, Jesus did something profound.

Jesus did not call down manna from heaven as his father rained down food upon the Israelites.

He did not ask Athena to weave the naked clothes.

He did not ask God to heal the sick as God did Abimelech.

He did none of these things.

No, thinking about the people for whom he had compassion, Jesus said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

And he gave his disciples the authority to cure the sick and to cast out demons.

Imagine that.

Jesus.

Jesus, who fed the 5,000.

Jesus, who could heal a person if they touched but the fringe of his cloak.

Jesus, who could forgive all of humanity of its sins, passed on his power to his disciples.

The harvest is plenty but the laborers are few.

And he said, “Go!”

Just go and heal people.

Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.

Just go!

Don’t even take a bag, don’t worry about paying for a hotel, you will be taken care of.

Just go!

And go from house to house and village to village.

Go!

This is incredible.

And…

And…

This is not over.

Friends, here we are.

Sitting in church on Sunday in the soon to be summer and we are now the apostles and we are now the disciples and we are now the followers of Jesus.

And we must go!

~PAUSE~

I almost wonder if along with Jesus’ compassion was his disappointment that his flock was without shepherds.

And if it was disappointment, I wonder if his disappointment was similar to that of God in Ezekial saying,

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord:

As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild animals, since there was no shepherd; and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep;

therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves.

I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them.

In Ezekial, God saved his sheep from the shepherds’ mouths.

In Ezekial, God saved his people from the hands of those who would harm them.

Yet from Jesus’ compassion came the commandment for his disciples, not Jesus himself, but his disciples to go from door to door and heal those who were sick and so on.

In this case, Jesus is calling on his followers, and I would imagine after two thousand years, he is calling on us as his followers, to perform the work he has done himself.

Is he doing so because he senses his own time on earth is short?

Is he preparing the disciples to do the work the performed in the book of Acts which we read throughout Easter?

I do not know.

Perhaps he is looking for the right people to perform these tasks and is unconcerned at this point in Matthew about his mortal shell.

What matters though is that his disciples are now called to heal and to cure and by extension, we are to do the same.

We are the right people to do this work.

~PAUSE~

I referenced Ezekial for two reasons.

One, I always enjoy it when Jesus speaks the words of the scripture with which he grew up.

There is a certain continuity here between the Old and New Testaments that I enjoy because assuming that the New Testament somehow supersedes the Old Testament and is just an historical document has led to such a great sin as antisemitism.

I love reading Jesus in his Jewish context because that was who he was.

He was not separate from his fellow Jews, he was not above, beside, or below.

He was leading a movement that might have had some distinctions but was never wholly different from the context in which he was raised, even when he criticized that context.

The second reason why I quoted Ezekial is the constant theme of God searching for and taking care of God’s sheep.

This is a theme throughout the Bible.

God created humanity so that humanity could experience the perfect blessing of creation.

And honestly, over and over again, we’ve kinda messed up that creation from time to time and yet, God sent God’s only and eternal son to serve as our shepherd, to forgive our sins, and to put us back in line.

In Ezekial, God rescued God’s sheep.

In Matthew, Jesus rescued God’s sheep and then passed that task on to the disciples.

And now it is our turn.

That has been the theme of this living book for its entirety.

God took care of us, Christ took care of us, and now we are to take care of each other.

We are sheep when we are sheep, when we need healing, when we are led astray, when we are in need of food or clothing or wealth.

And we are shepherds at other times.

We are to heal.

We are to lead the ones who went astray back to the flock.

We are to share our food, our clothing, our wealth.

We are the shepherd as Christ is the Shepherd for we love one another.

And we do this, all of this, because of love.

Amen.