Ezekiel 34:11-24 (links validated 10/10/23)

My friend, Vince Amlin, is a pastor in Chicago. Last summer, during his sabbatical, he had a powerful experience. He describes it like this, On a rainy Wednesday afternoon, my family gathered with a dozen others outside the mouth of a cave in Northern Spain. Our guide unlocked the gate and led us on a 20-minute walk, deeper and deeper into the earth. Finally, we stood in total darkness at the heart of the cavern until our guide turned on his flashlight and panned it slowly across the rock wall to reveal a horse, painted in purple with a black mane and standing in a red field. This image, the cave’s earliest, is thought to be as many as 36,000 years old. By far the oldest human-made thing I have ever been in the presence of. It was beautiful…and daunting. To hold my own life up against that timeline. To reckon my days against that horse’s. It makes my time here seem very small. And makes the God who stretches from everlasting to everlasting seem very large.” “It makes the psalmist number his days,” Vince says. “To count each one as precious, knowing how few we have been given by the one who was before horse paintings, and before horses, before caves that lead into the earth, and before the earth itself.”...

Ezekiel’s language of gathering and bringing the sheep to him resonates with other descriptors of Jesus the Good Shepherd, particularly in John 10 where the sheep hear and follow his voice. In the Middle East today shepherds regularly talk to and play music for their sheep. At night, multiple flocks will bed down together in the pen. In the morning, when it’s time to leave for the grazing fields, the shepherds fan out from each other and each sings or plays their song. As the sheep leave the pen, they lock on to *their* shepherds song. For a children’s message or a sermon illustration you could invite some children to participate along with a familiar grown-up. There are many ways to do this. You could invite all the adults to close their eyes and have the children take turns saying something like, “I love you.” Each adult must raise their hand when their child has spoken. You could have the children do the same while the adults take their turn.

Nate closed his eyes and sighed in frustration. For the first time, Wyatt had accepted an invitation to go to Bible club. The teacher explained that people are lost in sin, and Jesus came to find and save them. But Wyatt didn’t understand. “I don’t get it,” he said as he and Nate walked home. “It doesn’t make sense! A perfect God wouldn’t search for people, because He wouldn’t need them for anything–especially not people who keep messing up all the time.” Nate didn’t know how to explain it any better than their teacher had. “I’ve had enough God talk,” added Wyatt. “Wanna stop at my house for a while?” Nate nodded. When the boys arrived at Wyatt’s house, his little sister, Rosalie, ran up to them. “Wyatt!” she called. “Ranger’s missing!” “What?” Wyatt began to panic. “I looked all around the neighborhood for him, but I can’t find him,” said Rosalie. “Can you go look for him, Wyatt?” “I’ll help,” said Nate, and the boys took off in different directions, calling the dog’s name and whistling for him. Nate circled the block, and when he got back to Wyatt’s house, he found Wyatt throwing sticks for the dog. “Ranger heard me call and came to me,” said Wyatt with a grin. “I think he wanted to be found!” That gave Nate an idea. “Why did you have to go look for Ranger?” he asked. “Because he was lost,” said Wyatt, looking puzzled. “Besides, I didn’t have to look for him–I wanted to! He’s my dog–he belongs with me.” Nate grinned. “Right,” he said, “and you know what? God didn’t have to look for us, either. He wanted to because He made us, and we belong to Him. God loves you, Wyatt, even more than you love Ranger. God wants to find you, and He can–but you have to want to be found.” Wyatt looked a bit startled. “Come over tomorrow night and we can talk about it some more,” said Nate. “Okay?” Wyatt watched Ranger chew the end of a stick. “Maybe,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ll think about it.”...

I vividly remember Pedro, a day-labourer who with his wife Isabella lived in one of the 400 favellas/slums around Fortaleza, in north-east Brazil. They had five children (of nine live births) – all malnourished. Pedro could only get work about every third day; Isabella made clothes on a basic sewing-machine lent by World Vision. But sometimes they had no food at night, and to stop their starving kids crying from hunger Isabella would feed them little balls of rolled-up moistened newspaper, sprinkled with sugar. These had almost no nutritional value, but at least they wouldn’t cry so much and Pedro could get some sleep. They’d owned a black bean farm, inherited from Pedro’s father and grandfather, and one day the police, bribed by a wealthy neighbouring landowner, drove them off their farm. They had no legal redress – the authorities were in the pockets of the rich...

Huckleberry Finn is a novel about a boy free boy who is adopted by a widow who tries to do what he calls civilizing him. He runs away along with a slave named Jim. Now Huck has grown up with and adopted the values of the slave south. He is surprised at how human Jim is, that he misses his family, that he cares for others. At a critical moment, Huck faces a choice: he has been preparing to do what his culture tells him is right, to return Jim to his owner. He believes that not doing that is stealing and it will mean he will go to hell for breaking a commandment. But he’s come to see Jim as a human being, come to see they belong to each other so he tears up the letter informing the owner and says I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. Many see this as the moral crux of the book: the moment Huck understands he and Jim belong to each other and neither is owned. He’s come to see himself in Jim, to see his connection to Jim as more important. He’s put on new glasses; he sees a new world...

the imagery of shepherds and of sheep, of being led so that we do not scatter out into our own little individual directions: all of this kind of language seems like an echo from another time, another world. It’s a little like what you hear whenever a teenager says he is going to “dial” his friend’s phone number. Because in truth very few people under the age of 18 have ever used a rotary phone that you really do have to dial. To speak of “dialing” a phone is to employ a linguistic anachronism–that phrase is an echo of a bygone world that did not yet know about touch tone phones and digital keypads. Maybe good shepherds are too. But as the Bible makes everywhere clear: we still need that shepherd. Probably now more than ever.

("Those of you who are familiar with art may recall a funny habit that many Medieval painters practiced for quite a long time in Europe, and particularly in Germany. Artists such as Lukas Cranach painted many depictions of biblical scenes but they did so with the curious twist of dressing the biblical characters in the contemporary garb of the Middle Ages...")

We’ve just gone through a bruising political campaign. There were many issues, but the central one was leadership. What kind of leader do you want? A tough law and order King? Or a kinder more caring King? By now we probably know who was elected “King.” And we already know that neither human candidate can do what we need. Only King Jesus can shepherd the scattered masses of the earth, because he is the shepherd who cares deeply for the lost and wounded and who has the strength to bring justice against the sleek and strong who shove and butt their way to dominance. Christ is King. Be comforted. And beware.

A modern day shepherd recounts his own experience raising sheep. He tells how ewes, ready to bear offspring, when chased by dogs or other predators will lose their unborn lambs. A shepherd’s loss from such forays can be appalling. One morning he found nine of his choicest ewes, all soon to lamb, lying dead where a cougar had harried the flock during the night. It was a terrible shock to someone new to the business of raising sheep. From then on, he slept with a rifle and flashlight by his bed. At the least sound of the flock being disturbed, he would leap from bed and, calling his faithful collie, dash out into the night, rifle in hand, ready to protect his sheep from whatever he might meet out in the dark. In the course of time, he came to realize that nothing so quieted and reassured the sheep as to see him in the field. His presence put them at ease as nothing else could do, and this applied day or night...

I serve a church in upstate South Carolina, where Clemson football is a sacred Saturday tradition on fall weekends. Recently I was watching a game where Clemson was significantly leading in the fourth quarter, so they put in their second-string players. As the second-string players came off the field, the first-string players came out to congratulate them. The television announcers commented on how unusual this is for college football. On other teams, success by the back-up players may be perceived as a threat to the starting players. They do not necessarily cheer on their teammates, because they are more concerned about their own career. But the culture and values of Clemson's football team encourages an environment focused on the team rather than only on the individual...

One night as a man was walking down the street he was suddenly attacked by a group of thugs. He was beaten, dragged into an alley and left for dead. As he was lying bleeding on the ground, he looked up into the dim amber light in the alley and saw the face of another looking at him. He felt the touch of someone's hands lifting his shoulder. At that moment, he lost consciousness. In the hospital, when he regained consciousness, he remembered the face in the alley and asked, "Is the one who helped me here? I want to speak to him." "Yes," the nurse answered, "He is here and has been waiting to see you." When the man walked into the room, the one who was injured said, "I want to thank you for helping me in the alley this evening and I want to tell you something. When I looked up into that dim light and saw your face, I thought you were Jesus." The man smiled and said, "When I heard your voice calling for help, I thought you were Jesus."

When Howard Henricks was growing up he had a reputation of being a troublemaker in the classroom. As a fifth grader he was feeling very insecure, unloved and angry at life. On several occasions his teacher, Mrs. Simon, said to him, "Howard, you are the worst behaved child in this school." It was a difficult year for young Howard and the words of his teacher were stuck in his head. But, somehow he managed to be promoted to the sixth grade. The next fall Howard was sitting in a new classroom with a new teacher, Miss Noe. She was taking roll call and when she came to Howard's name she said, "Howard Henricks, I've heard a lot about you," looking at him and smiling. But then she continued, "But I don't believe a word of it." For the first time in his life, Howard believed in himself. He had a heard a voice of hope and encouragement. From then on Howard was greatly interested in his schoolwork and he worked as hard as he could for his new teacher. It was a life changing event that led him from the darkness to a safe pasture...