A Sermon on Ezekiel 34
A Sermon on Ezekiel 34: 11-16
by Dr. David Adams, Concordia Seminary, St Louis, MO
This sermon was delivered to the seminary students at Concordia Seminary, St Louis, on Good Shepherd Sunday 2006 (Good Shepherd Sunday is the fourth Sunday in Easter. This sermon was transcribed from the Issues, Etc mp3 archive by Bill Powers (with apologies for any errors in the transcription). The text, of course, cannot convey the unique force provided it by Dr. Adams delivery, so we have included here as well the audio from the sermon review at Issues, Etc.
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Here now the text of the sermon by Dr. David Adams:
There seems to be something wrong with my text this morning. It’s just not working right. In the book of Ezekiel chapter 34 verse 11 reads:
“For thus says my Lord Yaweh, pay attention to Me. I myself will seek out my sheep and will attend to them.”
Well, that part’s OK.
Verses 12 through 13,
“As a shepherd attends to his flock when he is among his scattered sheep, so will I attend to my sheep, and will gather them from all the places they have been scattered on a dark and cloudy day. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the lands, and I will bring them to their own land, and I will tend them on the mountains of Israel, among the streams and all the habitable places of the land.”
Well, that sounds pretty good.
Verses 14 and 15:
“On good pasture I will feed them, and on the high mountains of Israel shall be their grazing. There they shall lie down in good grazing and on fat pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares my master Yaweh.”
Is this a great text for Good Shepherd Sunday or what? Connect this to the 23rd Psalm and to Jesus as the Good Shepherd and your home and dry. I wish all the pericopes for all the Sundays were this easy to preach.
Verse 16:
“The lost I will seek and those who have been tempted to wander I will bring back. The broken I will bandage. The sick I will make strong. But the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them on judgment.
Hmm, that’s where the problem lies. This last bit seems to strike something of a discordant note.
I see what’s happened here. Old Ezekiel had never read Walther’s Law and Gospel. So he got it reversed. He’s got the gospel first, and he seems to be using gospel to set up the law.
Well, we can fix that in the sermon.
Isn’t Good Shepherd Sunday wonderful? In the 23rd Psalm we have such a rich and powerful message of comfort that God is our Shepherd, and that we shall never want. He will make us lie down in green pastures and lead us beside still waters, and restore our soul. We will not fear in even the darkest times because He comforts us and prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies.
Truly, Jesus the Good Shepherd, will see to it that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
You can practically close your eyes and see the picture of bucolic loveliness here. Rolling green fields, the shady trees, the gently flowing brook, the young byronic [this word is uncertain] shepherd, the fat contented sheep. Jesus himself striding with genial purpose into the scene, with that little lost lamb draped over his shoulders.
That little lost lamb rescued by God and carried on his shoulders is you.
Gosh! That’s good. Who wouldn’t love to preach that message? And more to the point it’s all right, and it’s all true. But there’s just one bit of this picture that’s still slightly out of focus for me.
Ezekiel mentions one aspect of shepherding that doesn’t quite fit into our little bucolic idyll. The shepherd is also going to cull the flock.
Now culling is not a word we use a lot today in our consumer oriented, high tech, information age. Culling refers to reducing the size of herd or the flock by selective slaughter of unfit or surplus animals. You improve the quality of the herd by taking out the culls, the weak, the small, the ill. You kill them so that the biggest and the strongest and the best and the fattest animals will have all the food, and all the water that they need. Thus only the best will survive and reproduce, and the gene pool will be improved. Culling is an important principle of what we might today call strategic flock management.
God, as Ezekiel tells us, is going to cull his flock.
Well, that’s a natural and comprehensible thing, at least in a shepherding society. Culling, as I said, is a normal part of shepherding. Though, to be honest, we hardly ever hear a sermon with the theme “The Good Shepherd culls the flock” on Good Shepherd Sunday.
But here’s where the real oddity lies in this text. When we cull the flock, we get rid of the weak and the sickly so that the prize sheep can reproduce in greater numbers. When God culls the flock, He keeps the weak and the sick and the ugly and he gets rid of the prized sheep, the fat, the strong, and the healthy. That seems a bit strange.
Why does God cull the fat sheep? Because in their security and in their comfort they become satisfied and self sufficient. They think they can get along just fine without the shepherd. For fat sheep, with the Good Shepherd, says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God” those words sound like lovely rhetorical prose. Fat sheep do not hear them sounding like a warning bell, ringing out the alarm of the impending cull. There’s no place in the flock of God for the self-sufficient and the self-satisfied, those who have no need of God to make their lives complete. So when the fat sheep gather together they say all the right things.
But in their bleating voices God hears only the announcement of their contentment. Baaat, Baaat, Baaat. (sounding like faaat?).
It’s easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle than for someone who’s been on the David Letterman show to get into the kingdom of God. But God loves even the fat sheep. To warn the fat sheep God sends shepherds into the world.
So last week we had a national Day of Prayer. Did you pray for America? I hope so. If you didn’t, it’s not too late. If you did, what did you pray for? Did you pray this? Did you pray, “O God, pour out your righteous wrath upon us. Humble us in our pride. Raise our gas prices until you strip us naked of the wealth that our greed has accumulated. Take the food from our mouths. Inflict terrorism and plague and poverty upon us until we flee crying in fear and terror, in suffering and humiliation, and shame to the foot of the cross of Jesus. And there bereft of every human comfort and every worldly hope find our refuge in Him, and in Him alone.”
No, I suppose you didn’t. Very few of us pray that prayer. We daren’t. God might grant it. Most of us pray, “God bless us, and make us fat sheep fatter still.” And when you pray for this, our beloved Synod, do you pray, “O Christ, Lord of the Church, set us ablaze with the fire of your Holy Spirit and burn, this, our church, to the ground. Destroy all that we have built with our hands, and bring to ruin all of our plans, and frustrate all of our hopes, and feed us on the dust of our failure, and give us to drink with water from our own toilet, that smoldering in the ashes of this our rubble, you may raise up for your Church, for yourself, a new Missouri Synod, faithful, yet humble, penitent, yet compassionate, born of you, sustained and guided by you, living for you alone.”
No, I suppose you don’t. Very few of us pray that prayer. God might grant it.
Most of us pray, “God bless us, and make us fat sheep fatter still.” For we really are the fat sheep.
You don’t think so? You best look around. You’re sitting in this lovely chapel, on this beautiful campus in the very prosperous city of Clayton, in the center of the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world. And even in your present reduced circumstances as students you are more comfortable and better fed than most of the population of the world. And we faculty, we, with justice, can’t complain that we’re paid a lot less than our peers in the secular world of higher education, or even those Synodical bureaucrats out on Kirkwood Road. We too are fat sheep. Not only can we live in relative comfort and prosperity, we generally command, and sometimes get, respect from our students, and from the church at large. Yes, my friends, we are the fat sheep.
But God loves even the fat sheep, and has sent His shepherds into the world to warn them of the impending cull. And that’s why you’ve come here to learn to be a shepherd.
Who’s going to warn the fat sheep? You? Ha! I don’t think so.
When you get a call to leave this place, where do you want to go? You’re hoping to go to some nice prosperous, thriving suburban congregation, full of fat sheep. Or some pleasant, peaceful country congregation where you can nestle down and graze on the rich pastures of the heights of Israel in peace. And what about this Lutheran church, middle class Synod that we serve? What kind of congregations do we hold up as role models for others to emulate? Fat flocks, fill of fat sheep. That’s what you’re encouraged to build. And if you’re successful in building a fat congregation fill of fat sheep, we shall all admire you and say what a wonderful shepherd you are, and maybe even elect District President some day.
No, my friends, you’re going to be just another fat shepherd. You’re not going to warn the fat sheep.
Who is going to warn the fat sheep? Me? Ha! I’m worse than all of you. I love comfort more than any of you. I get all the new gadgets before almost anyone else. Of course, I tell myself that I’m just looking for creative tools to use for ministry. The truth is that I just love my techy toys, just like I love my books, and my wall full of guitars at home. And I curry the favor and respect of men so I can build up my ego. I’m the fattest sheep of all.
No, I’m just another fat shepherd. I’m not going to warn the sheep either.
I don’t know. I told you at the beginning there seems to be something wrong with this text. It’s just not working right. Who will warn the fat sheep?
Who hath believed our report and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned, everyone, to his own way and the Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted. Yet He opened not His mouth. He is brought as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare His generation? For He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people was He stricken. You shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied, by His knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many. For He shall bear their iniquities. So come here to the Cross where the Good Shepherd laid down His life for all the fat shepherds and all the fat sheep. Come here to this altar and eat the Body and drink the Blood of the sheep who was culled for you, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
