This sermon, based on Ezekiel 34, was delivered by Nikki Blanks, Director of Youth and Children's Ministries here at First Presbyterian

As many of you know, I love the Old Testament, particularly the prophets.  So naturally, I was quite excited to learn that today’s lectionary reading came out of the book of Ezekiel.  And after I sat down and read through Ezekiel 34, I certainly had high hopes for a happy sermon!  I mean, you heard it!  It’s filled with all kinds of wonderful promises of God to His people!  What a glorious proclamation that our God himself cares for us!  Even when we’re scattered, he brings us home!  Even when we wander away from him, he searches for us!  Even when we’re sick and injured, he cares for us, and heals us!  What beautiful promises that our God will provide for our needs!

In fact if I wanted to write a really uplifting sermon for Christ the King Sunday, all I’d need to do is connect this passage to Psalm 23!  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”   Then, I could remind you all that in John chapter 10, when Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd, he would have known that he was referring back to Ezekiel 34 and Psalm 23.  Then, we’d have a beautiful Christ the King Sunday sermon about God as our shepherd-king…  Yes, I could preach that sermon, and it would all be TRUE and wonderful and uplifting.  And we could all go home happy and I’d be really popular, and everything would be fantastic.  That is, I could preach that message, if it weren’t for one little detail.

That little detail is the rest of this passage from which I am preaching!  Verse 16 reads, “I will search for the lost and bring back the strays.  I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy.  I will shepherd my flock with justice!”  I don’t know about you all, but this offends my sensibilities a little bit, and it certainly sheds a different light on our pastoral landscape.  Who wants to read about our Good Shepherd throwing sheep out of his herd?  What is going on here?

Well, this very question plagued me as I began writing this sermon, so I did a little research.  And as it turns out, Ezekiel is describing a very common shepherding practice of the Ancient Near East.  As members of 21^st-century, Western society, we aren’t too familiar with shepherding practices in general, much less those of the Ancient Near East.  However, Ezekiel’s original audience would have known exactly what the prophet was talking about.  So, I’ll fill you in!  What Ezekiel is describing in this passage is a process called culling.  This is a practice in which the shepherd goes through the flock and strategically slaughters some of the animals, particularly those that are weak, sick or injured.  This would allow the healthy and fat animals access to more food and water.  It was good for the flock and it improved the gene pool.  It was a normal part herding sheep, and any shepherd who was worth his salt would cull his flock from time to time. 

However, as Pastor Ben aptly observed last week, the Bible is not the best place to look for farming tips.  Here, Ezekiel describes God’s culling process as being a little different.  God actually keeps the sick and the wounded and also brings back those who are lost, but God culls the members of the flock that are fat and healthy.  It seems that God is dead set on creating the most pathetic, rag-tag flock this world has ever seen.  Yes, Yahweh’s version of culling is backwards.  He is a strange shepherd, indeed.  What kind of a shepherd kills off the strongest sheep?  Why might the Good Shepherd institute such a counter-intuitive practice?

Well, we may get some clue about this if we read the next verses.  “As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: “I will judge between one sheep and another, between rams and goats.  Is it not enough for you to feed on good pasture?  Must you also trample the rest of the pasture with your feet?  Is it not enough for you to drink clear water?  Must you also muddy the rest of the water with your feet? Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet?  Therefore, this what the Sovereign LORD says: I will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.  Because you shove with flank and shoulder, shoving the weak sheep with your horns until you have driven them away, I will save my flock and they will no longer be plundered.  I will judge between one sheep and another.”  It appears to me that some of Yahweh’s sheep may not have trusted him entirely.  They began to think to themselves, “Perhaps our shepherd actually doesn’t have enough to feed all of us.  I’ve got to start looking out for old numero uno! Maybe I’ve got to start pushing my way to the front of the feeding line.  Sure, I may hurt some other sheep on the way, but, hey, I’ve got to look out for myself!”  So they started shoving other sheep out of their way and poking them with their horns.  They used their strength against their fellow sheep.

Or, how about this scenario: maybe some of the strongest sheep became over-confident in their strength.  They knew that they could get what they wanted when they wanted it, so they grew quite contented and comfortable in their own strength.  They forgot that they whole reason that they were in good grazing land to begin with was because the Good Shepherd had brought them there!  They began thinking that maybe they didn’t need help from the shepherd after all.  Friends, I am convinced that there are fat sheep like this in every congregation.  When these fat sheep get together, they have all the right answers.  They know all of the godliest things to say.  They know the godliest solution to any problem you may bring to them.  But in all of their advice-giving and godly talk, all they ever really pronounce is their own self-satisfaction, a dangerous pronouncement, indeed!

What a proclamation this is for us today, friends!  In many, many ways we are all fat sheep!  Many of us work tirelessly to gain clout with the people around us, shoving ourselves to the top of our social circles.  Others desire to always be right, especially within the church.  We allow petty theological differences to divide us, working to prove that others are wrong and thus we are right.  Many of us are never satisfied with the things that we have, and continually work to gain more and more and more wealth.  Others of us simply think that our lives will be just fine without God in them.  We don’t recognize that our very lives are due to his grace.  

Whatever our issues may be, the self-sufficient, self-satisfied and self-serving sheep cannot remain in Yahweh’s flock.  Instead, he keeps the sickly, the scrawny, the weak and the injured.  He keeps those who are last to get a taste of food and who must drink the water that the others have muddied with their feet.  He keeps those who are neediest, and most dependent on his care.  Yahweh’s promise to care for his flock is truly one of great joy and hope for those who rely on him!  But for the fat sheep, it is an announcement of judgment.

Yet, Yahweh loves even the fat sheep!  That’s why he issues this warning to them, so that they may realize their need.  And who better to warn the fat sheep of Israel than Ezekiel?  He once was a fat sheep himself.  Ezekiel grew up in Jerusalem, as a member of the priestly elite.  As a part of Ezekiel’s theological training, he would have learned that God’s glory was only ever in the temple in Jerusalem.  He would have learned that God would never allow harm to befall his holy city.  And Ezekiel would have believed it with his whole heart.  Also, as a member of the priestly elite, he would have had quite a bit of stock in maintaining the status quo because he had it good!  He was able to live quite comfortably off of the people of Israel.  He was well-educated and well-respected in the community.  Yes, Ezekiel had everything going for him!  Sure, there was this one “prophet” named Jeremiah who kept telling everyone that Jerusalem was going to fall.  But nobody listened to him.  He clearly had no idea what it meant to have faith.  He didn’t even trust that Yahweh had placed special protection over the city of Jerusalem.

But then something very shocking happened.  The things that Jeremiah predicted actually started to occur.  The Babylonians came into Jerusalem and took their first set of captives, which consisted of the elites of the society.  Ezekiel was among those taken into Babylonian exile with this first group.  Five years later, Ezekiel sat in despair on the banks of the River Chebar in Babylon, worried that he would never see his glorious city again.  Everything he had been taught about God didn’t make sense any more.  And as young Ezekiel despaired in exile, the glory of the LORD appeared to him, right there!  Not in Jerusalem, but in the sky over BABYLON of all places!!  What was it doing outside of Jerusalem?  As Ezekiel faced the terrifying realization that the glory of God had left Jerusalem, he went from being a priest of the status quo to being a prophet of hope and destruction.  He went from being a fat sheep, to being a lean sheep, for he realized that only God could help him now.  The fact that he was of a special lineage wouldn’t help him, nor would the fact that he lived in Jerusalem (for he no longer did), nor that he was a priest (what is a priest without the temple, and what is the temple without the glory of the LORD for that matter??).  He finally understood the way old crazy Jeremiah saw things.  This is where we find Ezekiel in chapter one of the book that bears his name.  It was from that place of confusion and despair that Ezekiel was able to see the truth of what God was up to.  And friends, he did not only receive a message of doom and gloom!  I mean, sure, the first 33 chapters of the book are doom and gloom.  But then, beginning in our chapter, chapter 34, Ezekiel begins to recount promises of God for a bright and hopeful future for the people of Israel.  In contrast to the darkness of the first 33 chapters, the light of the hope found in chapter 34 shines even brighter for those are counting on God to shepherd them!              

So, if dependence on God is what is important to him, we SHOULD pray, “O, LORD, do whatever it takes to make us completely reliant on you.  Challenge everything we ever thought we knew about you.  If it means that our dreams must be smashed, that our hearts must be broken, that we must become abject failures, that we must go without, that we must be sick, sad, lonely or distraught, hopeless or helpless, let it happen LORD!  Let it happen that we might come running, bruised and naked to the foot of your cross, bereft of any earthly hope and there find our one true, stable hope in the midst of pain and chaos.”  Do you ever pray like that?  I don’t!  He might answer it.  Then what?  Then I too may have to sit alone, in exile and in despair along the banks of the River Chebar.  No.  Instead, we’re much likelier to pray, “LORD, fatten your flock.  Provide us with ever increasing comforts.  Amen.”

Friends, I am here to today to remind you that our faith is not about becoming fat sheep.  Our goal is truly to realize how weak and scrawny we actually are.  And I’d like to speculate here that none of us are 100% fat sheep and none of us are100% lean sheep.  When things are going well, we tend to get kind of fat, and think that we’ve got things under control.  We say to our Good Shepherd, “it’s okay; I’ve got this one.”  But in times of trouble, when we’re overwhelmed with grief, we transform into raggedy, needy sheep.  It is then that we’ll turn to our Shepherd-king and beg him to have mercy on us, to bind us up, to carry us, to bring us home.  Yes, it is windows of humility that help us see what we really are.  Windows such as a bad diagnosis, the loss of a job, a loved one a dream.  When our hearts break, or it becomes clear that our lives have moved well beyond the realm of our control.  So, friends, my invitation to you today is to identify the areas where you are a raggedy sheep and for them, praise God.  No, being a raggedy sheep is not any fun at all, but it does teach us to hold onto God.  I also encourage you to seek out areas of your lives in which you may have grown into a fat sheep: self-sufficient and overly confident.  It is in those places that you’re going to need God’s help most of all.  It’s in those places that you’ll need to turn to the Good Shepherd who lays down his life, even for his fat sheep.  Amen.