Robert Barron - The Shepherd Has Arrived
Peace be with you. Friends, the readings for this Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time are very interesting the way they're kind of interwoven with each other. I want to start with Jeremiah. I want to go to the gospel, but then I want to circle back to the second reading from Paul, which I think sheds the most light on the thematics here. So Jeremiah, we find a theme that you can also find in other prophets. You can find it in the Psalms. In fact, all throughout the Old Testament. The idea of God's desire to shepherd his people. Listen, here's Jeremiah channeling the words of God.
"Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture," says the Lord. "Thus," Therefore, says the Lord, the God of Israel against the shepherds who shepherded my people, "You have scattered my sheep and driven them away". So there's that standard trope if you want of the shepherd is the one who should be guiding the people. Israel's had bad leaders, bad kings. I mean, David himself is a deeply flawed King Solomon. Even the greatest of Israel's kings are flawed. Then follow those two, you've got kind of a rogues' gallery of corrupt and defective kings. And so the prophets consistently, the Psalmist too, complain about the bad shepherding of Israel.
So what does God say? "I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I've driven them and bring them back to their meadow". God is going to come as the true shepherd of the house of Israel. He's given these human shepherds a chance and they failed. So he himself will come. We find exactly the same thing in the prophet Ezekiel. He envisions the flock of the Lord's scattered upon the hillside, and he decries the bad shepherds. Then he says, "I myself will come and shepherd my people". So that's the expectation that God would become king. Now here's where it gets kind of interesting. We got that God will shepherd his people, but how's this going to happen? "I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so they need no longer fear and tremble and none shall be missing," says the Lord. "Behold, the days are coming when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David. As king, he will reign and govern wisely".
Okay, the plot thickens. So God himself will shepherd his people, but precisely through the administrations of this Davidic figure, a human figure, a new David who will be the king. Somehow in the imagination of the prophets and therefore in the imagination of the people Israel, God and a Davidic king are going to work together to shepherd his holy people. All right. Fast-forward from the time of Jeremiah, which is the time of the Babylonian captivity around 587 BC. So go almost 600 years later and we find this peculiar, compelling, strange, disturbing figure emerging in the hills of Galilee. Listen, "The apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they'd done and taught".
So the Lord has sent his disciples out. They come back now, the 12 evocative of the 12 tribes of Israel. We had heard that the tribes have been scattered throughout the world. Jesus, this magnetic point around which the tribes of Israel are gathering. Then listen to this, "People were coming and going in great numbers and they had no opportunity even to eat. So they went off to a deserted place. But when he disembarked, he saw the vast crowd and his heart was moved with pity for them". So first, the 12 evocative of the 12 tribes, they come to him. But now, now this vast crowd, meaning it's the whole people Israel flocking to him. It's as though by a deep instinct they realize the shepherd has arrived. And then unless there's any doubt in our mind, listen to what follows.
"His heart was moved with pity for them". Listen, "For they were like sheep without a shepherd". Jeremiah called it long before, Ezekiel called it long before. I, myself will come and shepherd my people and I will do so through a Davidic king. Who is this figure? Who is this Jesus? He's called indeed the son of David. And he speaks and acts in the very person of the God of Israel. He's the one, everybody. He's the one who had been anticipated by the prophets and by the Psalms. The shepherd has arrived. He's come to gather Israel. But now we're ready for the next step. Israel's vocation was to become itself once gathered, a magnet to all the nations of the world. So this Davidic shepherd, God himself shepherding his people will first gather Israel and then through Israel, he will gather the whole world.
Now with that in mind, so there's reading one and reading two, Jeremiah and the Gospel of Mark. But now let's follow to the second reading, Paul to the Ephesians. Now Paul, Paul, Rabbi Shaul, right? Studying at the feet of Gamliel. So Rabbi Shaul knew Ezekiel and Jeremiah and the Psalms. He knew all of that anticipation. At first, I mean, a crucified carpenter cannot be the Masiach of Israel. So Shaul opposes early Christianity, but then, but then Jesus appears risen from the dead to Shaul and says, "Why are you persecuting me"? And with that Rabbi Shaul becomes the apostle Paul.
And what does he construe everybody as his mission? To bring the message of the Masiach, of the Messiah, to bring the message of the shepherd of Israel to all the nations beyond Israel, to the Gentiles. Because he sensed Jesus as Lord and shepherd of Israel is meant to become Lord and shepherd of the whole world. So with that in mind, this marvelous passage. In fact, get out your Bibles and read Paul's letter to the Ephesians. It's a masterpiece, literary masterpiece, theological masterpiece, spiritual masterpiece. Listen now as I walk through some of these verses. "Brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have become near through the blood of Christ".
Well, remember Jeremiah, the scattered flock, the exiled tribes, they're all far off, but through the shepherd they've been gathered back. What's Paul intuiting? Yes. And now the gathering has just begun. "You who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ for he is our peace. He who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity through his flesh". Now, what's he talking about here? Well, here's Paul writing to the Ephesians. So the city of Ephesus on the west coast of Asia Minor, where is he? He's a long way from Jerusalem. He's a long way from the land of Israel. He's now in Gentile territory. What was one of the most fundamental divisions of Paul's time and in the minds of his Jewish audience? The division between Jews and Gentiles.
Jewish have nothing to do with Gentiles. It's unclean and they're uncircumcised and they're sinners. And I mean, we've been given the law and the prophets and we're the specially chosen people of God. And so we're not going to mix and mingle with gentiles. There was indeed, as Paul points out, a wall of enmity, a wall of hatred, separating Jews and Gentiles. But see, Paul has sensed, no, no, the shepherd of Israel has come for all the world. So what did he do? Is he broke down this dividing wall of enmity. Listen, "That he might create in himself one new person in place of the two".
Okay. You say, "All right, I get it. I get it. He's speaking for the Jesus, the shepherd of all nations. He wants to break down this wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles. He wants the message to go out to the whole world. But how's it happen? How is Jesus the shepherd, not only of Israel, but of all the nations"? Can I go back to this line, which is the key, "In Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, have become near by the blood of Christ". Somehow in the cross of Jesus, the great work of shepherding has happened. Somehow in the blood of Christ, these great divisions among the Jews and between Jews and Gentiles have been overcome. Now what could that mean? What could that mean? How's that work?
Look, Jesus crucified, the author of life came and you killed him. St. Peter says that one of his early kerygmatic sermons. What do we see in the blood of Jesus but our own sin? It's our sin brought him to the cross. I've said that to you many times. And in the passion narratives, it's as though all the forms of human sin are just on display, stupidity, cruel, de hatred, violence, injustice, Right? All of it. All of it. All of it. Sins shared by Jews and Gentiles. Sins shared by all of us. All of us are united in seeing in the blood of Christ our own sin. But what else?
When the soldier pierces the side of a dead Christ and out comes water and blood, what is that blood? Yes, we see our sin in it, but it's also the lifeblood of God offered in forgiveness of the sins of the world. On that very cross, that bloody cross, Jesus says, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do". The risen Christ returning from the dead says to those who killed him, "Shalom, peace". Do you see everybody? We're united in seeing our sin on that cross and we're united, all of us, in seeing our forgiveness coming from that cross.
See, everything else that divides us, whether it's ethnicity, nationality, language, all these things, they're trivial and unimportant compared to what unites us here, that we're all sinners. There's no escaping it. There's no hiding from the blood of Christ. We're all covered in it. We're all sinners and we've all been offered forgiveness through that same blood.
So again, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, whether you're Jews or Gentiles, have become near by the blood of Christ. It's this enmity which has been destroyed how? "Through the cross," Paul says. Do you see it now? Do you see it? That's what galvanized him. That's what fired his imagination. That was filled with all the Old Testament prophecies. But once he saw the risen Jesus, he got this. The shepherd long awaited by Jeremiah, long awaited by Ezekiel. Having appeared among us in Jesus, now does his work most thoroughly through the blood of his cross. The shepherd has come. Let's follow him and God bless you.