Today is the first Sunday after Christmas and we have before us another passage that is quite difficult to interpret. Last time I preached, I dealt with Micah 5 and we saw the various difficulties in interpreting the passage. Today’s passage holds other difficulties. So let us begin.

The passage begins with a denunciation of the shepherds of Judah. From the immediate context, both preceding the passage and in it, we realize that the word ‘shepherd’ refers to the kings of Judah. The charge against the kings is that they have scattered God’s flock, the nations of Israel and Judah, and have driven them away.

But almost immediately God promises to gather the remnant from all the places where – note carefully – he has driven them. What in the world is going on? Who was the one who caused the exile – the kings or God?

 

As is often the case in scripture, this is not an either-or situation, but a both-and situation. The kings were not faithful shepherds. They did not keep the people safe. They allowed the people to wander into idolatry. They did not promote the reign of justice. And as a result God thought it necessary to send the nation into exile.

As we continue with the passage we see that God promises to set shepherds over his people, shepherds who will care for his people so that they have no cause to be afraid or terrified. Further, God insists that none of his people will then be missing.

This is a reference to the tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel. In the 8th century BC, the Assyrian empire demolished the northern kingdom and took the people into exile, dispersing them throughout the empire. And just as the prophets to the northern kingdom had prophesied, there was no return. Those tribes were effectively missing.

Certainly there were a few individuals here and there from those tribes who remained in the southern kingdom of Judah and who were not dispersed. But the large chunk of those tribes was and is effectively lost.

We will skip the verses we Christians most often read and move to vv. 7 and 8. In these verses God speaks of bringing about such a grand return to the land of Israel that it would overshadow the Exodus. People would now have a new benchmark with which to speak about God’s deliverance. After all, taking a people group from one place, namely Egypt and bringing them to Canaan is a much easier task that bringing a scattered people from numerous places back to the land of Israel.

As an illustration one could think of the Exodus as being a long line of needles pulled along by a powerful magnet. All of them move one behind the other in one direction. A very simple, linear process.

 

But the return Jeremiah promises is like bringing together all the molecules of sugar from a sugar solution without evaporating the water. You can easily appreciate how much more difficult the second is.

Sounds good right? This is a wonderful promise to hold on to, a great hope to cherish. So what is the problem?

The problem is that the promise of vv. 3-4 has actually been fulfilled as far as the Jewish people are concerned and we dare not forget that we are reading what is originally their scriptures.  In 1948, after centuries of being dispersed, many Jews returned to that same region of the world and formed the modern nation of Israel. In fact, Jeremiah 23 is a prominent text for the Zionist movement that led to the formation of modern Israel and it is still a mainstay in Zionist arguments.

 

From a Christian perspective we can possibly respond that modern Israel is hardly a nation that is not afraid and not terrified. How can it be not terrified when on any day there is a likelihood that someone will strap a bomb to themselves or plant one in a car and attempt to kill a few Israelis?

But despite this, modern Israel as a nation is quite safe. Every threat to its borders since its institution has been successfully thwarted by its armed forces. So one could say that in the larger scheme of things, modern Israel actually lives up to what Jeremiah promised.

Also the Zionist movement does consider the modern return to the land to be a greater miracle than the Exodus. The oath in Jeremiah may not be a literal oath taken by modern Israelis, but the idea is certainly there. They may not use the terminology of miracle but they certainly believe that something more improbable and grander than the Exodus happened in 1948.

In other words, the return in 1948 constitutes a valid fulfilment of vv. 3-4 and 7-8. But the Zionists have a problem with vv. 5-6. Modern Israel has no place for the kingdom of David, even though the flag bears the ‘star of David.’ Moreover, none of the heads of state of modern Israel ever took the title ‘the Lord our righteousness.’ Indeed, righteousness has not been a part of the manifesto of any of Israel’s heads of state.

The problem with the Zionist interpretation of Jeremiah 23 is precisely that it picks and chooses. Indeed, it rejects what is evidently the core of this passage, the figure of the righteous branch of David.

But lest we rejoice right away at having a better interpretation, it is only right to admit honestly that most often we too pick and choose. We say that vv. 5-6 refer to Jesus. But we need to be honest and admit that there is nothing in these verses that literally indicates Jesus.

First, Jesus has not literally reigned in the land of Israel. Second, Israel was destroyed in AD 70 a few decades after Jesus was crucified. In other words, since Jesus started his ministry, Israel has actually not been fully safe. And third, Jesus was never called ‘the Lord our righteousness.’

So how do we proceed? Does this passage constitute a prophecy about Jesus or not? Adam Clarke, in his commentary on Jeremiah writes,

“As there has been no age, from the Babylonish captivity to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, in which such a state of prosperity existed, and no king or governor who could answer at all to the character here given, the passage has been understood to refer to our blessed Lord, Jesus Christ, who was a branch out of the stem of Jesse; a righteous king; by the power of his Spirit and influence of his religion reigning, prospering, and executing judgment and justice in the earth.”

Note that Clarke, writing in the 19th century, cannot mention modern Israel and bases his argument on the fact that, in the few centuries preceding Jesus, no Jewish ruler fits the picture of the prophesy. But he conveniently ignores the promises made to Israel, just as many Christians do.

But that is just begging the question. Just because there is no one else who fits the picture, does not mean that this refers to Jesus. There must be something in Jesus that fits the picture. And there is! But it is not to be found by a literal reading of our passage.

The first thing about Jesus that fits is his claim that he is the Good Shepherd who lays his life down for his sheep. This shepherd would rather die than have his sheep scattered. And he says, “My sheep listen to my voice… no one will snatch them out of my hand.” In other words, with this shepherd, the sheep are safe and secure and have no reason to be afraid or terrorized.

We must also bear in mind that Jesus is not likening himself to an actual shepherd, but to a king. Israel’s kings, following the origins of David, were called shepherds as we have seen earlier. So when Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd, he is making a huge claim, namely that he is a king descended from David. We should do away with the fuzzy wuzzy sentimental pictures of Jesus carrying a lamb because that is not what Jesus was talking about. Rather, Jesus is making Jeremiah 23 a reference to himself.

Second, at the start of his ministry Jesus tells his disciples to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. His initial ministry is exclusively to Israel and through this he invited Israelites to return to their God by following him. Whoever accepted the invitation was part of the remnant that Jeremiah speaks of.

We see the same thing when Paul writes that the gospel is preached to the Jews first and then the Gentiles. The Jews were always the first to be given the invitation to return to their God and only after that were Gentiles invited.

Third, Jesus was wise enough to know what really counts. He accused the teachers of the law of focusing on the minor matters while ignoring the major matters of the law, like justice, mercy and faithfulness. Jesus himself focused on the major issues. He spoke out against injustice, as against the practice of saying that one’s money was dedicated to God, just so that the person was exempted from helping his aged parents. He showed mercy through his many miracles, especially the ones in which a person requested Jesus to have mercy on them. And he proved to be faithful to his first disciples, especially when he was raised from the dead as he had promised.

Jeremiah in chapters 21 and 22 urges the kings: “Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.” Jesus urges the religious leaders to do just such things.

 

Fourth, the work done by Jesus relativizes the Exodus. While the Exodus still has a lot of meaning for Christians, there is hardly a Christian alive who looks back to that event as being determinative of their faith in God. Rather, it is what Jesus has done that is determinative. And what he has done and is doing is to bring people from all over the world into his fold.

In other words, Jesus’ work has also relativized the land of Israel. In Jesus, God’s king, the heir of David, has become ruler not just of a tiny strip of land in the Middle East. Rather, he has become ruler of the entire world. And since now the land in question is the whole world, there is no need to return to the geographic land in the Middle East.

So to use our earlier example of the sugar solution, this relativization would constitute a different process. It is as though given a sugar solution, some of the sugar molecules and some of the water molecules changed and became salt molecules while remaining where they were. Infinitely more difficult, I’m sure you will agree!

So what do we take from Jeremiah 23? Is this about Jesus or not? We cannot have our cake and eat it too. This is a single prophecy and we must be consistent in how we interpret it. The Zionists are inconsistent, interpreting vv. 3-4 and 7-8 literally while ignoring vv. 5-6. And many Christians also interpret it inconsistently, by insisting that vv. 5-6 will be literally fulfilled in Jesus while vv. 3-4 and 7-8 are metaphorical.

But if we interpret consistently we will realize that the entire passage is metaphorical and that we do injustice to it if we interpret parts of it literally. Rather, than spelling out what is going to happen and when, the passage is spelling out the nature of things that God intends to bring about. When we do this we can conclude the following.

 

Jesus is the king spoken of in v. 5. And in him God is gathering people to himself from all over the world. Those whom Jesus has gathered have no reason to fear, not because the world has become safer for them, but because no one will snatch them from his hands. As Paul would say, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.”

Moreover, what he is accomplishing is far superior to anything done in the past for when he gathers people now he is changing their very nature so that for the first time in world history geographic land is actually rendered irrelevant for this people. At last, in Jesus the fact that Yahweh is God not of a small strip of land but of the whole world is realized. Does our faith and practice reflect this or do we cling to the now obsolete way of obtaining identity from a piece of land?

 

And finally, his is a reign of justice and righteousness. Wherever equity and right relatedness are supported, there is Jesus’ reign also supported. Wherever equity and right relatedness are opposed, there is Jesus’ reign also opposed. Are we those who support his reign or those who oppose it?

(Sermon preached at Christalaya, Koramangala on 30 December 2012)