One of the reasons I memorize the Gospel text each week is because in saying it aloud over and over again, parts of the text will pop in my attention differently than they do when I’m reading. And maybe it’s just that not being able to run these past couple weeks has me feeling really tired, but the part that caught me as I was memorizing this week was verse thirty-one, “Jesus said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’”
We had that weird interruption last week, so let me really quick remind you of where we’re at here. Two weeks ago Jesus sent the disciples out with his authority over unclean spirits. Verses twelve and thirteen from two weeks ago read, “So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” As you can see, they were really busy last week while we were hearing that weird story about Herod and John the Baptist.
This morning, verse thirty started, “The apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.” “Apostle” comes from the Greek apostello, the verb to send, and literally means “the sent ones.” While “apostles” is a common title in Acts, this is the only time it shows up in any of the four Gospels. That Mark called them “apostles” here was to help bridge the gap between Jesus sending them in verse seven, and those who had been sent returning in verse thirty.
So they got back, they told Jesus everything they’d done, and he said, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest.” I read that line and instantly relaxed. Like, my shoulders physically dropped and I didn’t even know I’d been tensing them. I just felt this deep sense of peace, like oh my gosh, Jesus sent his disciples out to do this really hard work, and then he offered his disciples rest. He wanted them to have a break. Again, I may just be overtired from how not running has screwed up my schedule, but what a gift that verse felt like!
But then I kept reading. They went away on a boat to a deserted place, where of course the crowds followed them and were there when they landed. These poor disciples/apostles can’t catch a break! They’ve just gotten back from this hard journey they’d been on, Jesus finally gave them time to rest, and then the dumb crowd followed them. And what’s more, verse thirty-four reads, “As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.” Come on Jesus, the disciples must have been thinking, don’t encourage them! They’re like puppies, if you feed them, they’ll never leave!
Or, at least, that’s certainly what I was thinking. I was thinking, how selfish was this crowd that they couldn’t give Jesus and his disciples even a few moments break to catch their breath and eat some lunch! And what a bad model of self-care Jesus is showing here, working on his day off. But luckily for all of us, and especially me, I am not Jesus. Because getting a break is great and Jesus certainly wants for us to have times of rest, that’s why God invented the Sabbath after all, but what’s going on here is more than just about Jesus answering work email on the disciples’ day off. This isn’t about Jesus modeling something for us at all. What is happening here is Jesus demonstrating the very nature of God.
You may have noticed a bit of a shepherding theme throughout all of the readings this morning. Today is what some snarky theologians jokingly refer to as “bad shepherd” Sunday, to distinguish it from “Good Shepherd Sunday” in Easter. We’re all mostly comfortable with thinking of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, thanks to a million bad Sunday School posters, you know, the one with the strikingly handsome and decidedly light-skinned, blue-eyed Jesus dressed in white on a hillside of perfectly manicured grass and surrounded by pristine baby sheep. Which, I could go into all the ways that image is wrong, but that’s another sermon for another Sunday. The point is there is a distinctly political slant to this “sheep without a shepherd” line that is much deeper and more subversive than handsome German Jesus and fluffy sheep.
Since the time of King David, “shepherd” was a metaphor to describe the role of the king as the one who was responsible for looking out for God’s people. Just a little bit before the part of Jeremiah that we read, God described how leaders ought to “act with justice and righteousness… and do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow.” That’s how leaders are supposed to act, but more often then not, they don’t. Throughout all of the Old Testament, there is this persistent theme of these so-called “shepherds” being terrible leaders. The part of Jeremiah we read today starts out “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” The reason behind Jeremiah’s warning to the leaders was spelled out earlier in chapter twenty-two, “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and makes his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing.” The message of Jeremiah was a message to the Israelite leadership, who claimed the title of “shepherd” but thought only of themselves, while their “sheep,” the people of Israel, suffered. But in the midst of this judgment of the leaders, Jeremiah also offered a message of hope to the people. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when… Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety.” The promise of Jeremiah is that while human leaders fail and fall short, God in the end is in control and God will gather again God’s people. God will not abandon God’s people to bad leadership, to bad shepherding.
Flashing forward, when Jesus said the people were “like sheep without a shepherd” that was a political critique on the leadership. Because Galilee had a leader, they had a shepherd. You may remember him from last week, the thoughtful and trustworthy King Herod, please have caught the sarcasm in my voice. This is the guy who beheaded John the Baptist, even though it “grieved” him, because he didn’t want to appear weak. One of the jobs of an actual shepherd in first century Palestine was to protect the sheep from literal bears and lions, and Herod does not strike me as someone who’s going to stand up to a lion, metaphorical or otherwise, to protect his flock. As the John the Baptist story clearly demonstrated, with Herod as the leader, the people may have been better off shepherdless.
But when Jesus saw this crowd, “he had compassion for them… and he began to teach them,” and eventually feed and heal them. The word “compassion” comes from Latin and it literally translates “with suffering.” Compassion is not a feeling one can have from afar, to have compassion means to enter into the suffering of another, to be with them in their suffering. Jesus didn’t teach, feed, and heal the people in this story because he felt bad for them; this is deeper than that. Jesus had compassion on these shepherdless sheep because he was with them, because he was them. Compassion is what God did when God in the person of Jesus Christ took on flesh, was born in this world, and walked among us. And unlike Herod, Jesus put the needs of those around him above his own needs. He drew apart to rest, but when the crowd came after him, begging for healing, he healed them, he taught them, he fed them, he was with them. And eventually, he died for them. That is what it means to be a shepherd.
The point of this passage is a statement about who God is. That God is not a leader from afar, God is not a high-off deity whom we worship. Rather God is with us. Com-passion, with suffering, with us in our suffering. In the person of Jesus God came to dwell with us, and through the Holy Spirit God still dwells with us. In this bread, in this wine, in the water of baptism, and in the Word we hear around us, God is with us. Earthly leaders will fail us, we will fail ourselves, that is the nature of being human. But God, God will never fail. Because, “The Lord is our shepherd; we shall not be in want… Though we walk through the valley of darkest shadows, we need not fear; for God is with us; God’s rod and God’s staff, they comfort us… Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Amen.
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