Ezekiel's Call to Leaders

As I was doing my Bible study this Sunday morning, I came across a passage in Ezekiel 34 that really spoke to me about where we are at as a nation and a world. The leaders of this country in particular have consciously chosen a preference for the rich over the poor, violence over peace, and healthy over the meek. The prophet Ezekiel, does a lot of condemning, but this particular passage on leadership, I find particularly compelling.

Ezekiel 31: 1-4
The word of the Lord came to me: "son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the sheherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not bough back the strays or searched for the lost. You hve ruled them harshly and brutally.

We've heard a lot of talk about the common good without much definition. Ezekiel provides a good deal of guidance: caring for the entire flock, not just the select few, strengthen the weak, heal the sick and search for those that are lost in our society to bring them back into our communion with each other and with God.

If we were to evaluate the policies of our current leadership, the data show we are not caring for the entire flock, we are not ensuring health care to every citizen, we are not strengthened the weak economically. Rather we give tax cuts to people who don't need them and didn't ask for them. We choose to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on war, when that money could have provided health care to everyone on the planet, could have made a huge impact on the AIDS crisis. Like God tells Ezekiel, we must condemn, but we mustn't despair. God states in later in the passage that he will "search for my sheep and look after them" and theat he will "judge between one sheep and another." With God in our hearts we must act as his agents to search for the lost sheep and take care of them, both in our personal charitable efforts, and in our advocacy of government policy that looks after the least of these.