Emphasis Preaching Journal

We do well when reading the prophets to remind ourselves
that they were, first and foremost, preachers and not writers. In
fact, the writings were probably done by scribes who recorded
what they said. When we read we should try to imagine ourselves
listening to a preacher who is giving as much attention to
delivery as to content. In Ezekiel's case we have a rather unique
prophet. He comes out of a priestly family. This is evident in
many places in the book. But he is above all else a preacher.



Chapter 34 comes from that part of the prophecy that
addresses exiles who have returned and are trying to reestablish
themselves in the land. It is not a good time. After some initial
enthusiasm, reality had set in. They do not have the resources
they need. Nor do they have the spiritual leadership from the
priests that they expected. On top of all other miseries, it is
apparent that a few are getting rich at the expense of the
masses. The situation is not unlike that of many post-Communist
countries where social upheaval quickly dims the first flush of
hope and enthusiasm and where the clever take advantage of the
weak.



The image of a shepherd leader was common in ancient Near
East cultures, including Israel. David, of course, was the
standard for all who followed. Verses 11-16 are the positive
counterpart of the negative picture of the spiritual leadership
of that time as depicted in the first part of chapter 34. It is
so dismal that God must now assume that role in a very direct
manner. When put together the picture is quite overwhelming: "I
myself will search for my sheep" (v. 11), "I will seek out my
sheep," "I will rescue them" (v. 12), "I will bring them out," "I
will feed them" (v. 13), "I will feed them with good pasture" (v.
14), "I will seek the lost, and will bring back the strayed, and
will bind up the injured, and ... strengthen the weak" (v. 16).
Is there a passage anywhere in the Bible that speaks more
forcefully of the love and grace of God?

Ephesians 1:15-23



If the message of Ezekiel beats with a personal accent, this
word from Paul is even more powerful. The God who promised to be
a shepherd to the lost and weak and needy has now been revealed
in the coming of Christ. "I am the Good Shepherd." Now the gifts
are multiplied: "wisdom and revelation" (v. 17), enlightenment,
"hope," "the riches of his glorious inheritance" (v. 18), "power"
(v. 19). Through his life, death, and -- especially -- his
resurrection, Christ becomes the eternal embodiment of the
shepherd.



Though Paul begins this section with words of praise and
gratitude for the faithful believers in Ephesus, it is clear that
his intention is to focus, not on them, but on Christ and the
gifts he brings to the believing community. Beginning in verse 17
we have another of those passages of ecstasy where we hear more
of Paul the preacher than Paul the writer. We might well have
shouted, "Preach it, Brother!" had we been at Paul's side when he
wrote these words.



On a Sunday when we want to sum up a year of reflection and
preaching on texts from many parts of the Bible we could ask for
nothing more appropriate than these words from Paul. The church
is seen here as a living and dynamic organism, with Christ as the
head, blending in himself both power and tenderness. We get no
better picture of the church than this one -- a faithful people
gathered about a faithful Shepherd who promises to sustain us in
this life and in the life to come.



How is the world to know all this? Paul says that it is
through the church, the body of Christ, that others will come to
know him as King and Shepherd. Weak and imperfect though it be,
God has chosen the church as the means by which the world will
come to know him. When the church is described as "the fullness
of him who fills all in all" (v. 23), it could be said that
Christ's work is not complete until the work of the Gospel
through the church is complete. Thus, the call to faithfulness
that echoes from Ezekiel is made even stronger in the New
Testament era.

1 Corinthians 15:20-28



Those who think they can make it on their own will not be
very comfortable with this text! From start to finish the
attention is on Christ. The setting is Paul's word about
resurrection hope. No matter how long and how well one lives,
death is inevitable. What is the answer to that great question
about what happens next? There is only one possibility, says
Paul. It is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.



We are reminded again that the life of Christ, as seen from
Paul's perspective, draws itself together in the cross and the
resurrection. Whatever Paul thought about the other elements of
the life of Christ -- birth, parables, miracles -- he knows that
if the cross and the resurrection are left out it will amount to
little more than one could garner from other religions. Taken as
a single event, this is the one great moment on which hangs all
of history -- the death and resurrection of Christ.



"The last enemy to be destroyed is death." A wife tells of
her sixty-four-year-old husband's fear of death. When he learned
of his inoperable cancer he was anxious for many weeks about the
unknown beyond the grave. In the time before his death, his
pastor visited faithfully and shared God's word of hope and
comfort. In his last days the clouds of uncertainty disappeared.
Darkness was overcome by light. He died in peace. Most every
pastor has seen this same grace-filled time as we bring Word and
Sacrament to the dying. When even death, the most feared of all
enemies, submits to Christ, then we know that he is indeed the
King!

Matthew 25:31-46



These last words of Jesus' last discourse are appropriate
for the last Sunday of the church year. After the parables that
have been our lessons for the past several Sundays -- part of a
series of six -- and some warnings about how we are to conduct
our lives in this world, it all comes to a climax with this text.
This is not so much parable as drama. We are swept up into a
vision of the final judgment, but then returned immediately to
this world with the disconcerting word that the little duties and
responsibilities of this life -- done well or done badly -- are
intimately connected with what happens in the time to come.



Since this is, in a sense, a final word from Christ, it is
not surprising that we should find in the text an accumulation of
titles and phrases that summarize all that Christ is: Son of man,
King, Lord", Judge. It is important to keep this in clear focus.
Like those who like to refer to the Sermon on the Mount or 1
Corinthians 13 as the essence of Christian ethics, we might be
tempted to list the duties of this account -- feed the hungry,
welcome the stranger, visit the sick and imprisoned, clothe the
naked -- and conclude that this is all there is to it. But that
is only to say and do what many non-Christian groups say and do.
What we must insist on is that at the heart of all Christian
ethics is Christ himself.



Once we get it straight about Christ, we can speak about
ethics. And once we put Christ in the center of it all, we are
freed to do the things he expects of us. From that perspective,
ethics are not unimportant. We cannot be casual about our
responsibility as believers. Selfless love for others that brings
us into the most desperate places of the world is what Christ
speaks about in this last discourse. It is not optional. Our
eternal destiny depends on it.



It is also important to note that the text leaves no room
for idle ground. We might be tempted to say, "Well, I'm not as
involved as I should be, but at least I'm not doing harm to
anyone." That option does not exist. We are either with the sheep
or the goats. Most serious of all is the word that when we
respond to human need -- or fail to respond -- we are in fact
responding to Christ -- or failing to respond to Christ.



Is all this by deliberate, calculated choice? Not really. It
is clear that those who do these things find that they come so
naturally that they are surprised when Christ commends them on
the final day. That is as it should be. Love at its best is not
deliberate and calculated. It is reckless abandon. It never
counts the cost. It is surprised that its deeds are even noticed,
because it has no need to be noticed.


Suggestions For Preaching



After some weeks of rather heavy words of judgment, the
lessons for this week -- while surely calling for responsible
living -- give us an opportunity to end the church year with a
very positive and hopeful word of grace. God is in charge. God
cares for the world. God's people will never be forsaken. God has
come to us in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Christ
is now our Good Shepherd. We can look forward to the future with
confidence, knowing that he will have the last word and that it
will be a good word for the faithful.



That last and good word should free us to seek out Christ in
those in need around us. Nothing is complete until this happens.
"All morality," observes John Meier, "is ... interpreted
Christologically, in terms of what we do to the Son of Man in
every (person)." (John P. Meier, The Vision of Matthew, New York:
Paulist Press, 1979, p. 178.)


FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24



Whose mission is it? By Ezekiel's lights, those accustomed
to traditional assumptions around this question had better duck.
Whether tending the bureaucracies or holding the normal
suspicions, the good Lord is likely to blow right past, taking
matters into his own hands.



Both Israel and the church have a long history of wanting to
contain God's election. Blessed to be a blessing, Israel was
chosen not for itself, but for the other peoples of the world. In
fact, more than once, God spoke of Israel as a "stiff-necked
people," undesirable on their own terms (Exodus 32-34). The
stories of Ruth and Jonah, one a foreigner who wouldn't go away,
the other an unhappily successful missionary, echo a faith that
goes all the way back to the choosing of Abraham (Genesis 12:3).



Easter broke every boundary, the gospel pushing across all
the linguistic borders. Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic,
which in the normal ebb and flow of tradition would have made it
sacred. By the time Spirit got done, grace had spilled over into
every language of the Middle East and beyond. The New Testament
itself comes to us not in an affected, aristocratic inflection
but in Koine Greek -- a rough, brawling street language that
emerged in the marketplace, the tavern and the brothel.



But the pious, be they ancient or contemporary, have always
found a way to mend the fences. Israel reduced God's election to
genealogy, making blood the sign of God's choosing while
carefully guarding against the foreigner who compromised its
racial purity. Those who play along the borders, whether
Israelite or Gentile, are to be guarded against.



The church follows suit, across its own lines. Sometimes it
has been unable to distinguish the gospel from its cultural
packaging, turning mission into a process of westernization --
"teaching the natives to wear brassieres," as Bertrand Russell
sarcastically observed. Sometimes the church has grown so
apprehensive about the limits of its own culture that it has
fallen silent altogether, disguising its faithlessness in mission
as a more enlightened sensitivity. Either way, the church becomes
self-contained, self-absorbed, so caught up in its mechanisms --
pro or con -- that it can't see beyond them.



In the face of such fence building, Ezekiel sets out a
promise to put us all in our place: God's people are means to an
end, the recovery of the lost, the inclusion of all. In and
through, with and beyond, God is at work. It is his mission. God
is out ahead of us, leading, dragging, pulling, blurring every
boundary between "us" and "them" to bring in a new creation in
which "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord ..." (Philippians 2:5-11).