Shepherds (part 1)

I‘ve been thinking about how two primary examples of leadership, apostles and kings, actually contain a shepherds heart, and how that might apply to us.

David and Peter are foundational paradigms of King and Apostle. One starts as a shepherd, the other is commissioned to behave as one. So the big hitting roles in the Kingdom, are underpinned with a pastoral role and function.  There are things we can learn from these two individuals, and leadership roles more generally.

When their own faith and devotion breaks, when they are in need of pastoral care, the  terms of God's restoration to them forge the pastoral role more deeply.  Peter is commissioned to replicate that role, and David is humbled in these terms, and retains his heart in God.

Lets start with David.  The greatest of Israel’s Old Testament kings, David is the pre-eminent example of royal lineage, who even appends a title to the King of Kings.  Thus Jesus is known as son of David, not son of Solomon or son of Josiah. More tragically, he’s not ‘son of Saul’ (tragic since Saul is told, as he loses the kingdom, that he had potential to be granted an everlasting name, and lost it).

So it's David who is the great king after God’s heart, the king who knows God is really King, better than the failed king before him and most of the ones that follow.  It seems God has gone to a lot of trouble to build all of this on the heart of a worshipful shepherd before kingship was added. More on him in a moment.

Fast forward to one of the great leaders of the New Testament – Peter.  At first glance he doesn’t look overly pastoral. If anyone might seem prone to missing it, impatiently overshooting the mark like Saul had, then Peter would seem to be the man.

He is certainly on the brash side. He sometimes nails it in one sentence, and overshoots in the next.  His ardour is intense, and yet he swings from one edge to the other.

So it's Peter refusing to let Jesus wash his feet – seemingly offended by the humility of the idea -  then wanting a full bath when he gets it.  Confessing Jesus as Messiah and Son of God, then being rebuked the next minute for letting Satan speak into the inner counsel.  Jumping out of the boat to walk on water, and then falling in, seems almost like his standard mode of operation.

He’s a fisherman, so it seems he has not had the temperament or academic edge for religious studies. Later in life he admits he finds some of Paul’s writings confusing.  But he knows what he knows.  He’s a chosen eyewitness who reads the signs and is a leader.  He saw the prophetic sign in the mighty haul of fish and reckoned his own sinfulness without any sermon.  He saw Moses and Elijah appear in glory with Jesus, discussing the pending exodus. 

 Jesus obviously knows him through and through.  Indeed knows Peter will finally confirm his shortcomings, will be on the wrong side of the line in spectacular fashion, and tells him so in advance - that his faith will fail as the dawn breaks on his darkest day.  

So after promising so much, he does deny Jesus on that crucial day. Takes the others back  fishing after the  crucifixion, the final terrifying end to the strange adventure.   But then there he is again, leaping into the sea as a new haul of fish, the same sign that had originally reached him, is issued again. He dares to hear a new call, a resurrection call, from the Stranger on the beach, and he is literally all in.

It's at that low point God hammers home the need for pastoral heart into this bold and natural leader. At his lowest, face to face with the one he had promised so fervently to serve, to never deny, comes a pastoral charge.  

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”Jesus said, “Feed my sheep"

John 21.

The exquisite wounding of the Son of God; relentlessly hewing into his disciple’s heart a new call, tracking deeper then even his deepest devotional assertions.   Feed my lambs, feed my sheep, feed my sheep.  At this low point of restoration, it sinks in.  In the masters hand the vulnerable place, the place of restoration, drives a new call.  Like Jacob wrestling with the angel and his old ways, here comes forth a new way.

And Peter gets it. Later, when he writes his letters, he holds fast to that same teaching.   Addressing church leaders, specifically elders, he re-iterates this one point: be shepherds, as Jesus is the Chief Shepherd.  

to the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: ² Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; ³ not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. ⁴ And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.
⁵ In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because,
“God opposes the proud     but shows favor to the humble.”^[a]6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.

(Not, be evangelists with my boldness, or seek first hand prophetic voice and encounter like the one I had on the mountain, or pioneer new domains of outreach, or teach into spiritual experience as clearly as I did at Pentecost or with Cornelius … in the end, he has one main charge to elders: be shepherds. 

So, back to David.

 He had started as a shepherd – and sees deep truth in the heart of God.  he wrote the most famous of all Psalms, on the theme.

“The Lord is my shepherd…

He makes me lie down in green pastures, by still waters

He restores my soul.. 

 And from that point on, it’s a recurring theme in the scriptural revelation of God, and his own life.

But after all this, David, too, had a similar break of faith to Peter. He didn’t only deny his Lord by committing adultery with Bathsheba. He’ hammered home his rebellion by arranging the murder of her husband, with a treacherous use of the armed forces. It's a king going astray, wickedness in high places.

A prophet gets sent to him, and tells a pastoral parallel in intimate, almost sugary, brushstrokes. The story of a poor man who treasured his only lamb as a daughter, and yet is forced to give her up to the slaughter. It's designed to provoke the heart of a sullen king, one who had been a shepherd, to an elementary recourse to justice. After provoking the judgment of the king against this hypothetical transgression, Nathan turns it back onto him.  “you are that man … ..you have killed the lamb of the poor man …   and now the sword will never depart from your house.”

 The image reaches him, stops his abuse of power and privilege, sparks the touch of  justice that is needed for David to not ignore or kill the prophet, as other kings would later do. It pierces him to repentance.  The consequences do never leave, the prophet had been right about the sword in the house; the whole episode releases dynamics of rebellion, violence and adultery among some of his sons, but at least he has found a way back in God.  And in the end, he is still, partly because of his contrite ways, the man after God’s heart.

God works deeply within both leaders. David and Peter, to restore and save them, as the Shepherd; and to reinforce that heart in them. Isaiah says of Israel’s Mighty One;  “He carries his lambs close to his heart”,  and it must be so in the hearts of his kings and apostles.  Even those who do not start with this grace or heart, can find it being worked in, even via the low points of the journey.

Part 2  rounds this out with some of the counterbalancing risks.