Jer. 23:1-6

I always have trouble with Christ the King/Reign of Christ. The readings rarely seem to get me anywhere.

Jeremiah is a case in point-OK- near east leaders were called shepherds, and God is disappointed in the shepherds of Israel, secular and sacred, in Scripture. Then we get a reversal, as God moves to take charge and have particular attention to the flock where the old blessing of fertility will return. This gets heightened with a messianic promise. Note well the leader will act to execute justice and righteousness, that political pairing of the OT. The last verse seems to refer to Zedekiah, the last king of little Judah, so it would have lingering discouragement in its reading. (As we approach Advent, the Hebrew has a different word for branch-I suppose one could work with the image of a tree and a branch, or even go with an organizational chart that uses a branch).
Emotionally, the leader should deal with fear and dismay to comfort the people from poor shepherds, and physically, it comes  with the shalom of safety and security. In other words, good times will be with the good shepherd/leader.

In 2019, does the flock image work in our situation of hyper-individualism? To what degree is the pastoral image of the sheep helpful or indeed harmful? While we bow to Ps. 23, do we want to be regarded as sheep?

With the current occupant of the White House, exceeding even Nixon in perfidy, as the worst president in my lifetime, it is too easy to attack him. Further, it is too easy to go with the plague on the house of politics as doomed to failure. Some then may hope for religious revival as the cure to our political ills. Again, too easy.

We could face squarely that we call Jesus the Good Shepherd, the Messiah, and we have 2000 years of poor shepherds in all facets of society, including religion. That promise remains unfulfilled as we close o another church year. Perhaps one could go with our desire to blame leaders for poor performance and neglect our role in that failure. Perhaps one could go with the virtue of learning to wait, yet work, toward the vision of Jeremiah here. Indeed, even if we have a righteous branch leader, they are enmeshed in a most difficult world.