The following was written on 7/20/24 and preached on the morning of 7/21/24 at Christ Lutheran Church in Orange, California mere hours before President Joe Biden announced that he was withdrawing from his campaign for a second term an endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party’s candidate. I have profound respect for President Biden and I deeply appreciate his leadership over the past four years.

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56; Psalm 23; Jer. 23:1-6; Eph. 2:11-22

When the disciples regrouped with Jesus after their first solo mission, they were excited to tell Jesus, “all they had done and taught.”  Jesus, for his part, wanted time to debrief them and give them some more personal attention, plus, he realized that they were all due for a break, so he said, “Let’s get away by ourselves for a while. Take some time to rest, and you can tell me all about it.”  

So, they set off in a boat, heading for a deserted place up at the end of the lake, but the crowds spotted them, and by the time they beached the boat at the deserted spot it wasn’t deserted anymore;  a large crowd was waiting for them.  

When Jesus saw all those the people, he wasn’t angry or disappointed or frustrated, even though it was pretty clear that their private retreat wasn’t going to happen now.  Mark tells us, “As he went ashore, he saw the crowd, and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.  And he began to teach them many things.”

They were like sheep without a shepherd.  

The people were starving for guidance.  

Oh, there was no shortage of authority figures.  On the political level there was Herod Antipas functioning as their local “king,” and if that still left them with idle time on their hands, there were plenty  of Roman soldiers and functionaries ready to lord it over them.

On the religious side of things there were Pharisees admonishing them to rigorously keep Torah, scribes collecting their tithes and telling them how Torah was to be officially interpreted, and priests conducting sacrifices on their behalf.  

They had all kinds of authority figures.  But they had no guidance.  They didn’t need another overseer.  They needed a shepherd.  

Mark is specific in calling out the people’s need for a shepherd because shepherd was a term that had a deep resonance and rich history with his audience.  It was a term often associated with the patriarchs, monarchs and heroes of the nation. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were shepherds.  Moses was working as a shepherd when he encountered the God in the burning bush.

David was the biblical paradigm of a shepherd and David, himself, wanted to make it clear that Israel’s first king, Saul, was not a good shepherd.  In the opening of his most famous psalm, Psalm 23, which was probably written while he was fighting to overthrow King Saul, David throws a clear jab at Saul with the opening line. “The Lord is my shepherd,” he writes.  Not Saul.  The Lord.  He goes on to describe all the comfort, nurture and protection that the Lord provides, all things which stand in sharp contrast to the abuse he suffered under Saul.  Later in the psalm David asserts his claim that he has been anointed by God to replace Saul, his enemy: “In the presence of my enemies,” he says, “you anoint my head with oil.”

If that reading of Psalm 23 sounds odd to you, I invite you to remember that there was no punctuation in the original Hebrew.  The line breaks and couplings we are familiar with come from the King James translation team who had an agenda quite different from King David’s.

The prophets often denounced bad or corrupt national leaders as unfaithful shepherds who had abused their flocks or even scattered them.  Jeremiah, writing as the Babylonians were bearing down on the Kingdom of Judah said, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord!”  He clearly blamed the kings before and after Josiah for the fact that Israel was already lost and Judah was  about to be crushed by the might of Babylon.  He knew all was lost but he could also foresee a day when hope would be restored: “I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall no longer fear or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.”  

In contrast to the failed or corrupt shepherds denounced by the prophets, the Good Shepherd becomes a figure repeated by the prophets as a symbol of messianic promise to carry the people through dark times.  “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch,” wrote Jeremiah,  “and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.  In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”  

Isaiah continued the theme of the Good Shepherd.  “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom.”  The Good shepherd is sometimes envisioned as the new David. “I will set over them on shepherd, my servant David,” wrote Ezekiel. “He shall feed them and be their shepherd.  And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them.”

Jesus had compassion on the crowds who followed him so relentlessly.  He knew they were following him for the same reasons they had followed John.  They were looking for a shepherd.  

It would be easy to say they needed leadership, but they needed a special kind of leadership.  They didn’t want or need another leader making pronouncements from a throne or pontificating in the synagogue.  They needed a leader who walked among them, who shared their bread, who touched them with healing hands.  They needed a leader who could inspire them with a vision to make life meaningful and not just another plan to control them.  

They needed a shepherd.

I have to tell you, I feel such a connection to those people who ran ahead, that crowd that was waiting on the shore and hillside when Jesus stepped off the boat.  Those sheep without a shepherd.  They are us.  

We are in a strange and precarious state in our country right now.  We are barely keeping the lid on chaos and turmoil as we try to make our way through the riptides of this pre-election season.  For a host of reasons, many of them having to do with media, we find ourselves in a crisis of leadership at a moment when we need real leadership to guide us as we think through the process of selecting our future leaders.  We need candidates who will honor and guard the integrity of that process.  We need to feel confident that whomever we select will be a person of integrity because, as Dwight Eisenhower said, “The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.”

We need integrity and we need a vision.  We need a collective vision to bring us together in a healing peace with each other and the world, a vision of shalom to help us build a nation where there truly is “liberty and justice for all.”  We need a vision that promises the unalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all of us, not just some of us. 

Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, the former president of Notre Dame University said, “The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.  It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion.  You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”

We need a vision to guide us toward unity, not a false unity of coerced conformity, but a unity that honors our diversity and understands it as a strength.  

What we don’t need is a coercive plan that enriches some and deprives others.  We don’t need an “agenda” or “project” that increases rights and freedoms for some while taking rights and freedoms away from others. We don’t need a bullying scheme that marches us lock-step into enforced uniformity.  As Dwight Eisenhower also said, “You don’t lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership.”

The late, great Rosalynn Carter once said, “A leader takes people where they want to go.  A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”  We need a great leader.  We need a shepherd who can walk with us to where we ought to be.

When Jesus stepped off the boat into that great flock of sheep without a shepherd, Mark tells us that “he began to teach them many things.”  He began to tell them about the kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness.

He shared with them his vision of the way things ought to be, the way they ought to be. 

Between 1933 and 1944, as the nation slowly climbed out of the Great Depression then found itself thrown into the chaos of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a series of 31 informal evening radio talks to the people of the nation.  In these Fireside Chats, Roosevelt kept people informed about what was happening in their nation.  He taught them more about how government and the economy works.  He kept them informed about what he and the rest of the government were doing to deal with the challenges people were facing.  He let them know that he knew what those challenges were and he understood how events that were far beyond their control were affecting their lives.  He let them know that they were not alone, that he was on their side.  Most importantly, he consistently inspired a hopeful vision of life beyond the crisis.  And in doing all of that he changed the relationship between the people and the president.  He became their companion, not just their leader.

John Quincy Adams said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” 

Jesus, our Good Shepherd, inspires us to dream more, learn more and do more, and teaches us to bring that kind of inspiration to others.  He leads us out of all the us vs. them dichotomies and binaries that lead to so much dissension and violence.  He brings us together in all our wonderful diversity so that, as St. Paul says, “he might create in himself one new humanity in place of two.”  

In the remaining days of this election year, I pray that our Good Shepherd will look on us with compassion and raise up for us a shepherd with integrity who inspires us to dream more, learn more and do more as we work to make the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness a reality on earth as it is in heaven.