Shepherds After My Own Heart: Chapters 10-13

[stevebraswell]

This group of chapters deals with the four voices of the Gospel writers and how they each portray the same Jesus in a different way. Laniak “tweaks” each view of Jesus to work in the “shepherd motif.”

Mark: Jesus as the shepherd king for the second exodus. Laniak’s point here is that Mark is intentionally using images from OT wilderness and second exodus stories in which to cast the ministry of Jesus, thus tying him in with those traditions and painting him as the ultimate fulfillment of them—for example, Jesus in the desert (wilderness), emphasis on bread (as the Israelites were fed manna) and the way of the Lord (a path home for those leaving exile in the second exodus). Of course, Jesus seeing the people as “sheep without a shepherd” ties in with Numbers 27:17; 1 Kings 22:17 and Ezekiel 34 as a description of people without leaders. So these people need a leader. But what kind of leader? They need someone to shepherd them and to be their king—and the only person that combines both of those qualities in the way God would have them be led is Jesus, the one presented by Mark as “the Son of Man” who must suffer but then will rise again.

Matthew: Jesus as the compassionate Davidic shepherd. Laniak points out that Matthew’s gospel contains 61 quotations from the OT and almost 300 allusions—both more than any other gospel by far. He then goes on to highlight five of those in particular that tie in with the shepherd/leader imagery:
 The shepherd of my people Israel who will be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:6; Micah 5:2)
 The compassionate shepherd who cares for these people who have been like a sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36; Ezekiel 34)—because they have gone without faithful leaders and have instead only had “false prophets” who have led them astray
 The Son of David who has come to heal “the lost sheep of Israel” (Matthew 14:14)—but he finds that the Gentiles receive him more readily
 The shepherd judge who knows how to separate the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:31-32; Ezekiel 34:17-22)—because sheep are more docile and receptive than goats
 The “struck” shepherd, whose sheep then scatter (Matthew 26:31; Zechariah 13:7), describing a gentle ruler who rides on a donkey (not a war horse), but who is then “struck” down, which causes the sheep to scatter in all directions

Luke: Jesus as the seeking and saving shepherd. If you know Luke’s gospel and read this title, your mind goes immediately to the parables of Luke 15 that focus on “lostness,” including the story of the one lost sheep, and the shepherd leaves the 99 sheep to go and search for the one lost sheep, because God loves lost things. And the theme of that story ties in with Jesus’ closing statement in the story of Zacchaeus: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (19:10). But there are also some other minor shepherd themes in Luke that Laniak notes, including the shepherds being the first ones told of Jesus’ birth as being the first to spread the word about his birth (thus marking Jesus as the Lamb of God) and the way Jesus functions as a shepherd/leader in his first sermon at Nazareth when he quotes from Isaiah 61:1-2 and declares that his ministry will be like that of the release of the captives in the second exodus.

John: Jesus as the self-sacrificing shepherd and Passover lamb. This is the one of the four Gospels that contains more explicit references to sheep and lambs:
 Jesus is presented from the beginning of his ministry as the “Lamb of God” (1:29)
 Jesus compares himself, in effect, to Moses the shepherd, in bringing God’s manna from heaven (6:32)
 Jesus is both the gate to the sheepfold or the way of entrance (10:9) and the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep (10:11)
 Jesus is the Passover lamb, because only in John is his death specifically timed as the same time that the Passover lambs were slaughtered (19:14)
 Peter is forgiven and reinstated to ministry by the command to feed Jesus’ lambs/sheep (21:15-17)

Reflection: All of these are standard facts in any presentation of what the four Gospels have to say about Jesus, but of what significance are they? I believe that the starting point is not us or our ministries but Jesus himself. We must be clear about who Jesus is before we move on to anything about what Jesus calls us to be or do. And one of the main themes this survey points out is that Jesus is clearly a continuation and fulfillment of God’s story of love and care for his people, Israel. We non-Jewish Christians want to begin history with Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem as if that’s when our story begins, but if we do that, we have arbitrarily chopped off centuries of history of who God is and how God works with his people—and we are well on our way to making Jesus in our own image rather than accepting him as the Jewish man that he was. And that error can also lead to failing to realize that apart from God’s grace, we are all “outsiders,” or to put it another way, wandering sheep who need the kind of leader that only Jesus can be for us.