“Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!” declares the LORD. – Jeremiah 23:1

Today's Scripture Reading (May 22, 2020): Jeremiah 23

President Ronald Reagan argued that “the greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” In our partisan world, one that seems to be dominated by echo chambers that never allow us to hear an opposing point of view, it is actually the idea of leadership that becomes the casualty. Leadership becomes impossible when the only message we have to speak applies to only a part of the total constituency. Leadership also becomes unworkable when the potential audience will only listen to the voices with whom they already agree. I have been pleased over the past few weeks to have heard the voices of leaders, many of whom I have had severe policy differences, make positive steps in governing the nation. Over that same period, I have been disappointed by some leaders, with whom I agree on policy, decide to play only to their base. True leaders have an essential ability to build people up and to gather them together. Real leaders help us to focus on the things that unite us, and there is a lot on which most of us can agree, rather than highlighting the areas where we cannot find agreement. In our current culture, true leaders have become a rare breed.

Jeremiah speaks to the shepherds of Israel. In our contemporary understanding, a shepherd often takes on the meaning of a spiritual leader, but that context was absent in Jeremiah’s day. A shepherd was simply someone who has been given the mantle of leadership in some aspect of society. Shepherds were kings and political leaders, as well as priests and prophets.

And so, Jeremiah speaks a message of woe to these leaders. He complained that the leadership had abdicated from their responsibility to lead. These shepherds are busy tearing down the people who have been placed under their care. And rather than unifying the people, they were busy scattering them. And destroying people rather than building them up and scattering them rather than being a unifying force is the opposite of what a leader, or a shepherd, does.

The reality is that tearing down people is easy; building them up, even the ones who criticize you, is hard. In the same way, scattering people is easy; unifying people from different backgrounds and different belief systems is hard, which is why leaders are so rare. Often all we want to do is to take the easy road, but that is not what a leader does. But that was the path the shepherds of Jerusalem had chosen to take, and in the process, they had stopped being leaders.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 24