Jesus and the Multitudes (OR Jesus, the Good Shepherd)
One of the foundations for our conversation this week is an ancient understanding of the responsibilities of tribal or community leaders. And by ancient – I mean we’re going back about 1800 years before Jesus’ birth.
The Code of Hammurabi is a carved record of legal precedents from the time of Hammurabi’s kingdom. Hammurabi ruled in the midst of the Babylonian dynasty, situated in present day Iraq. His kingdom and the record of legal precedent during his rule would have been formed by the tribal political, social and economic norms of the day (basically the shape of society) and would have laid the groundwork for the way society worked in the Middle East. Importantly, it would have influenced the practice and teachings of Judaism as understood in the Hebrew scriptures, remembering that Judaism was not merely a “religion” as we understand that today – it was a social structure, a whole cultural identity.
I want to lift a few key ideas captured in this ancient record from Hammurabi’s reign. One is the idea of retribution – an eye for an eye if you will. Another is a sliding fee scale for health care. I kid you not. A wealthy man paid 5xs for wound care what a slave was expected to pay. But on the flip side, the punishment for malpractice was also sliding – the cost to a caregiver for harming a wealthy person was much higher than for harming a slave.
Key in all of this, though, is the understanding that to be a tribal leader, to be a king, to lead a group of people is to be responsible for establishing justice – so that the people flourish.
Now, clearly, who flourished then and now is subject to our human-made hierarchies, right?
As McLaren describes in We Make the Road by Walking, our US society is structured like a pyramid, with a very small percentage of people possessing wealth and real power at the top.
At the broad base of that pyramid are “the multitudes,” those who, by nature of birth, education, physical and mental ability, have access to very little, and who find the ability to move up the pyramid the most challenging.
Then in the middle are most within the sound of my voice right now. Just by nature of our having access to the internet so that we can access this sermon in several forms implies a kind of privilege and wealth. If we are not among the one percent or the three percent, the majority of us here are in the middle.
And in the middle, McLaren points out, we serve as mediators between those at the top and the multitudes at the base of the pyramid.
Let’s dive into some scripture, carrying with us that information about Hammurabi’s code and the work of leaders to establish justice so that people flourish.
We begin reading from the prophet Ezekiel, who uses the language of good shepherds and flocks to paint a picture of responsibility for the good of the whole:
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.
As a result of their abandonment and mistreatment by the shepherd (their ruler, their chief), the sheep of the flock have scattered, and Ezekiel relays how the Lord GOD will gather them into God’s care:
As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.
This image – this image of God as the Good Shepherd, is the basis for an understanding about Jesus that comes through most clearly in John’s Gospel – in which Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd, I know my own and my own know me.”
In today’s gospel text from Luke, we see Jesus ACTING as a shepherd, prioritizing those least valued and navigating relationships with those further up the pyramid, calling them to pay attention to the multitudes at the bottom of the social and economic structures.
At this point in Jesus’ ministry, he’s drawing crowds everywhere he goes. People have heard of his teaching and his healing and his miracles. They are bringing children and babies to him and he is greeting each child as special and worthy. In society at that time, children would have had little value – they may have represented eventual raw material for the social structure – labor in the economy, but first they had to make it through infancy and childhood – a strain on any family’s resources and a fragile bet as disease and poverty made childhood treacherous.
So then, Jesus’ rebuke of the disciples for shooing these children and families away is a testament to his willingness to care for the most vulnerable of the flock. And it would have been noteworthy and attention-getting. Jesus is living into the ideal of a good shepherd.
In the image cast by Ezekiel, the good shepherd gathers the scattered sheep wherever they can be found, and seeks to restore them with provisions and safety so that they can be healthy and strong and fruitful. The care and keeping, the well-being and thriving of the least among us is vital to God. This is the work Jesus does as he wanders from place to place, healing the blind, the lame and the leper, touching the untouchable, addressing and teaching and caring for the needs of women and minorities and other cultural outcasts, playing with the little children.
He is gathering the scattered, tending and building the flock. He’s valuing the multitude resting at the bottom of societies order.
And he’s creating a new expectation for those not on the margins, for those in the middle and top.
That is made clear in the middle part of our passage from Luke. The teaching with the rich young ruler is a hard one for many. Not only must he keep the law, which he seems able to do, but beyond keeping the law he must let go of his worldly possessions so that others may eat and have what they need.
Uff. That’s hard.
It was so hard that the rich young ruler grieves, because “he is very rich.”
This story about the rich young ruler is also in Matthew and Mark – except in both of those Gospels the text includes the detail that the young man walks away because he cannot give up his possessions.
Oh, how many of us chafe under this story.
I tend to feel shame when I read this text.
How about you?
By shame, I am walking with the definition used by Brené Brown in her work on shame and vulnerability – “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” (Daring Greatly, 69)
I feel shame because when I look at need in the world, I know that I have more than enough. And then I feel a twinge of rebellion about how I am called to help others who have less than I do.
That’s the truth. Maybe you can related.
I wonder….I wonder if that shame causes us sometimes to walk away, much like the young man in the teaching, from the refining work God is trying to do in our lives?
I wonder what happens if we push through the shame, sit with it alongside other teaching that calls us worthy and beloved, and really start looking at how we might actually work to push the proverbial camel through the eye of the needle?
I invite you to sit with that idea of how shame might cause us not to dig deeper in this work in the coming week.
In the passage from Ezekiel, God announces that the flock will be regathered, that the injured will be bound up and cared for, that the weak will be made strong, that the community – the flock – will be restored to a place where they belong. The shepherd proclaims, “I will feed them with justice.”
I wonder, how we might be called to share this work of justice, especially as those who are mostly in the middle of the pyramid, mediating between those at the top and those at the wide base – the multitudes.
Old testament scholar Walter Brueggeman reminds us of this:
One of the misfortunes in the long history of the church is that we have mistakenly separated love of God from love of neighbor and always they are held together in prophetic poetry.
Covenant members who practice justice and righteousness are to be active advocates for the vulnerable and the marginal and the people without resources and THAT then becomes the way to act out and exhibit one’s love of God.
So love of God gets translated into love of vulnerable neighbors. And the doing of Justice is the prophetic invitation to do what needs to be done to enable the poor and the disadvantaged and the neglected to participate in the resources and the wealth of the community.
And injustice is the outcome of having skewed neighborly processes so some are put at an unbearable disadvantage.
And the gospel invitation is that people intervene in that to correct those mistaken arrangements.
Ah, we are invited to intervene, through works of mercy, compassion and justice to correct the mistaken arrangement that keeps people at or near the bottom.
Later today, many in our community will gather to hear from the Gaithersburg Beloved Community Initiative. I encourage you to join our zoom town hall and to listen closely…
Perhaps there is a way for us to intervene to correct the mistaken arrangement in which some are put to unbearable disadvantage.
How might we be called, as the community called Faith not to dwell in shame but instead to build beloved community?
Perhaps you are not so familiar with this term, “beloved community.” It was first used early in the 20thcentury by theologian-philosopher Josiah Royce, who founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a member of that fellowship, and took to using the term to describe his vision.
Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood (of sibling-hood). In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.
(https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/)
It is a lofty idea. Kind of like passing a camel through the eye of a needle, I think.
But does that mean we should turn away? Does that mean we should not seek to at a minimum to support the work of the Good Shepherd who seeks to gather the lame and the lost back into community where they can thrive in safety and wholeness?
Don’t we all benefit from that, ultimately? Isn’t that where the Kingdom of God emerges?
May it be so.
Amen.
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