One Covenant: The Heart of the Shepherd

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, June 27th, 2025

The life of the shepherd was a significant fixture in the imagination of ancient Israel. Shepherds make their mark throughout Sacred Scripture, from Abel to Moses to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, to David, to Jesus, who refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd in John Chapter 10—you get the point; oh, don’t forget the shepherds who received the message from the angels to go and worship the infant Jesus!

The first reading in today’s mass is the passage from the Prophet Ezekiel, chapter 34. Anyone who follows my work on Covenant Theology is aware that I frequently reference this passage when discussing the specific claims made by Jesus regarding His identity and the claims of Christianity regarding Jesus.

I briefly discuss Ezekiel 34 in Missio Dei’s compendium, The Eucharistic Revival Project. Still, the manuscript for my chapter on “The Fullfillment of Covenant” does go into more detail on the chapter. What is interesting to me is that the Church pairs Ezekiel 34 with the parable of the lost sheep found in Luke 15, whereas most exegetes from the literature I have read pair it with John 10.

I write, “There is danger in Christian theologians attempting to convey a quasi-dual-covenant theory that waters down the radicalness of the question posed by Jesus Christ, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ The propositions that Jesus Christ is the true shepherd of Yaweh himself, prophesied in Ezekiel 34, and the Suffering Servant of the four servant songs found in Isaiah must either be affirmed or denied by free choice of each person—a choice essential to their human dignity and religious freedom.”¹

Naturally, the warning I pose in the book on theological dialogue is being brought to fruition in the geopolitics of the Middle East, particularly regarding Israel and dispensational covenant theology, which presents a dual-covenant idea into mainstream theology.

In 2022, I wrote the gospel reflection:

The Major Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah present a glorious restoration of the people of Israel which includes all nations—the Gentiles. St. Paul, a Jew, synthesizes this understanding from the Prophets in Romans 11. Ezekiel 34 claims the Lord Himself will come to shepherd His own people, which is represented in the Gospel of John Ch. 10—I am the Good Shepherd.

The NT does not present a dispensational covenant or dual covenant—it presents a grafting theology. St. Paul writes:

Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is so. They were broken off because of unbelief, but you are there because of faith. So do not become haughty, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, [perhaps] he will not spare you either.²

And

And they also, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. ²⁴ For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated one, how much more will they who belong to it by nature be grafted back into their own olive tree.³

The problem that arises with the many attempts at exegesis regarding chapter 11 in Romans is a hyperfocus on verses 29, “For the gifts and call of God are irrevocable,” and 26, “All Israel will be saved,” with, for some reason, a complete relunctance to interpret these passages within the understanding of a grafting theology.

A proposed two-covenant theory, whether it is the dual-covenant theory mentioned by Boston College Professor Philip Cunningham in America: The Jesuit Review, “Theology’s Sacred Obligation,” or 19th-century dispensationalism popular among evangelicals, contradicts first principles, with the identity claims being made by Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God, the Jewish Messiah, the Shepherd Yahweh in Ezekiel 34, the 2nd person of the Trinity—or He is not. Based on many of the teachings of Jesus: For example, “Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.”⁴ Jesus cannot be the Jewish Messiah for Christians and not the Jewish Messiah for the Jewish People—it simply breaks the law of non-contradiction; it’s not a reasonable position to hold.

The grafting-covenant theology position is proper for Christians to maintain because it doesn’t fall into contradiction against the words of St. Paul in Chapter 11 of Romans. Benjamin Merkle writes, “The identity of “Israel” in Paul’s phrase, “And in this way all Israel will be saved,” is understood to refer to (1) the church, (2) the elect among ethnic Israel throughout history, or (3) a future mass conversion of ethnic Israel.”⁵

Regardless of the position a Christian holds among the three mentioned by Merkle, every premise allows for the development of a theology of grafting in the notion that God’s covenant is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who continues to leave the 99 in search of the one missing from His flock, the Church. The option remains for those, as Paul writes, “do not remain in their unbelief,” to be grafted back again to the root.

One of the issues with this ongoing debate and dialogue regarding covenant theology is a misunderstanding of what the Vatican refers to as “the so-called ‘mission to the Jews’” in its document The Gifts of and the Calling of God are Irrevocable. The document explains:

The Church is therefore obliged to view evangelisation to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views. In concrete terms this means that the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews. While there is a principled rejection of an institutional Jewish mission, Christians are nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews, although they should do so in a humble and sensitive manner.”⁶

So, the Church’s position at the moment is a rejection of a corporate evangelization of the Church as an institution regarding the Jewish people, not a rejection of Jesus’ first mission regarding us as individuals in the Church to “make disciples of all nations.”

We are called to be missionaries for our Lord and His Church—to bring the hope of salvation of His Sacred Heart to all people. We, by our baptisms, have been baptized: priests, prophets, and kings to bring the Kingdom of God to those with ears who are willing to hear—every covenant and Sacred Scripture point to Jesus Christ. We are never called to minimize that truth in the world. Keep being Bold! Never waver that Jesus Christ is Lord! That Jesus Christ is King!

Jesus will bring all His sheep to His Sacred Heart, but you might be called to do your part, too.

1. Missio Dei, The Eucharistic Revival Project (St. Louis: En Route Books & Media, 2023), 7-8

2. Ro 11:19-21, NAB-RE

3. Ro 11:23-24, NAB-RE

4. Mt. 10:32-33, NAB-RE

5. Benjamin L. Merkle, Discontinuity to Continuity: A Survey of Dispensational & Covenantal Theologies (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020), 160.

6. The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable, 40.