The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

The lectionary has impeccable timing. Our Old Testament passage warns, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” Israel’s story is full of moments of being scattered, displaced, and ultimately trying to find a way back home. The Babylonian exile is one of these moments spoken to by the prophet Jeremiah where Israel’s leadership brought about unfaithfulness to God resulting in Israel losing, at least temporarily, the land it had been given. The warning to those claiming to lead Christians but who do not enrich their faithfulness to God and instead draw them to other idols strikes close to home as we see Christianity wielded for so many alternative purposes these days.

All of this brings the message of the Ephesians passage, and the Psalm, into stark relief: Jesus is the shepherd who brings us home, who draws us back into communion with God and others and ushers us into God’s promises once again. We are going to come across controversies that scatter us, just as the debate around circumcision divided some early churches. But Jesus brings us back from those debates, reconciles us to God and each other. In a time of such powerful divisions, in a time when we often feel that faithfulness is rarer and rarer and God’s kingdom seems absent, our passage today reminds us that Christ unifies us across these walls and divisions and is faithful to ultimately bring us home.

– Evan Bassler