One of the trials of modern life is being asked to fill in Evaluation or Feedback forms. You go to the theatre, you buy plants at the garden centre, you catch the train to London or a flight to Spain, you ring the company that insures your car, you get someone in to service the washing machine … and, within minutes, an email cheerfully headed “How did we do?” plonks into your Inbox with the assurance that your view is important. Your heart sinks as you read the questions whose responses, you are promised, “will help us to improve our services” – you cynically wonder if they’re more about telling the company that they can now bombard you with advertising? Perhaps we should start asking all of you to fill in a questionnaire after every Sunday’s service – although I’d dread reading the answers on Monday morning!

I suppose those questionnaires can be useful if the questions are well crafted. But – in the light of the Coronation – I began to think, “What criteria would I use to evaluate or assess a King?”. And I came up with some silly answers: “How good is he at wearing crowns: do they sit securely on his head, or do they have a tendency to slide off?” and “What’s he like at cutting ribbons, unveiling plaques or launching things?” – as these seem to be a major part of the job. Then of course we must assess a monarch’s skill at smiling, shaking hands, making polite small-talk, and waving at adoring crowds. We might even ask, “Does he show symptoms of foot-in-mouth syndrome?” when he speaks – although, in the light of some recent comments, it might be more appropriate to ask that about President Biden!

Of course the responsibilities of monarchs (usually but not quite always male) in ancient times were more exacting then they are today. A good king had to be a clever and brave military leader, able to lead his army from the front. He had to be a wise diplomat and a generous host to foreign dignitaries. He needed wisdom to personally sort out disputes between his citizens, and his speeches and edicts had to inspire national pride and self-confidence. And, of course, while everyone expected a king to be both wealthy and powerful, they didn’t want him to have gained that wealth corruptly nor to connive in injustice – he had to be seen to be honest and fair. Finally, in the ancient Jewish set-up (but not, say, in Rome), the monarch had to present a good example in both morals and piety. Being a king might have implied privilege, but it can’t have been easy to keep all those plates successfully spinning at the same time.

A man named Jehoiakim was king of Israel – or, to be precise, Judah, which all that was left of it – when Jeremiah was busily writing his prophecy. And, not to put too fine a point on things, he was a total failure, as economic inequality and social injustice increased during his reign. To be fair, Jehoiakim was in an impossible situation, as he was living at a time (c.600 BC) when the power-centres in the Near East were rapidly shifting. The Assyrian dominance of the past hundred years was waning, while the Babylonian empire was on the rise. The former rivals of Assyria and Egypt had now joined forces in a tenuous alliance in an attempt to stop the Babylonians taking control. This upheaval left the kings of small nations like Judah as “piggies-in-the-middle” with very difficult decisions to make.

And Judah’s principal dilemma was this: should it pay taxes to the new empire in Babylon, or would it side with Egypt, a nation much closer to its own borders? Which of these alliances would yield the most benefit for its people? Or could the country even manage to remain independent of these empires, paying taxes to neither? As I say, this was a hard question; and Jehoiakim answered it badly by deciding to thumb his nose at Babylon. The long-term consequence of that decision was inevitable: shortly after his death the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem and took his successor into exile together with the city’s upper-class leaders such as Daniel. Things then went from bad to worse, with Jerusalem eventually being destroyed in 586 BC; but that (as they say) is a story for another day.

What’s interesting is the assessment that Jeremiah makes of the situation. I have no idea if he was aware of the political machinations that had led to the nation’s current crisis; but it’s clear that he holds Jehoiakim personally to blame for what is happening. Using a picture which is common throughout the Old Testament, Jeremiah regards the king as a shepherd who has failed in his duty to protect his flock, now scattered far and wide. Moreover, he sees things in spiritual terms as well: a poor “shepherd” like Jehoiakim, says Jeremiah, is accountable to God himself. However, all is not lost: human kings may fail but God declares, through the prophet, that he will step in to be the shepherd of the people himself.

Now this image of a “shepherd king” – widespread throughout the ancient Middle East – is quite intriguing, although we probably haven’t ever given it much thought. For a king is someone who belongs to the Establishment, who sits in a palace in the capital, who has power, authority and riches. A shepherd in Old Testament times, on the other hand, wasn’t just a poor man who lived out in the country; he was seen as an outsider, someone who was rather grubby and who generally had the smell of animals about him, an individual you’d sidle away from if he stood next to you at the bus-stop. Shepherds had no voting rights, they weren’t trusted, they were often accused of being smugglers or of trespassing on other people’s land, and they couldn’t hold judicial office or be witnesses in court. Stained glass pictures of shepherds wearing perfectly washed and ironed tunics and carrying a lamb under each arm just don’t reflect reality.

So you’d never confuse a shepherd with a king: as someone said, it’s the shepherds in nativity plays who wear tea towels on their heads while the kings wear crowns, and it would be ridiculous to have things the other way round. But, of course, we must remember that the second –arguably the greatest – king of Israel, David, started life as a shepherd boy. Possibly more important still, the thought of a shepherd’s task brings to mind qualities such as care, protection, perseverance, even a readiness to endure hardship and danger for the sake of the flock. Ambitions of pomp, prestige and power must have been far from a shepherd’s mind – yet, in many ways, his role in the fields offered a useful model for the nation’s ruler to follow.

Today, of course, we don’t often meet shepherds, in cities at any rate; and they are more likely to herd their sheep using a four-wheel-drive buggy than sit on a rock looking over the fields. Equally, our ideas of monarchy have changed: our King is largely a ceremonial figure and the real power in the land lies in the hands of the politicians (however Charles has exercised “soft power” for many years by writing so-called “spider letters” forcefully expressing his views to Government ministers and others – I believe he’s been told to stop now that he is King, but will he?) What I’m saying is that we probably have several images of leadership buzzing around in our minds, images which may clash with our ideas of democracy or “government by the people”. And we may well blame the Government for showing a lack of leadership even while we are unsure of what good leadership entails. However, most of us do recognise failing leaders when we see them, whether locally, nationally, in business or even in organisations such as churches.

So what sort of leaders do we want? Does the Bible give us a pattern? The answer must surely be “yes”. For here in Jeremiah God promises to raise up new shepherds for the flock. We are not told who these leaders will be nor where they will come from, although the promise of the “righteous Branch” has sometimes been linked to a man called Zerubbabel, a governor of Judah appointed by the Persians. However we definitely can see that these new shepherds will not be negligent and careless like their predecessors; they will look after their flocks properly, keeping them safe and dealing with them justly. The people will be able to flourish and prosper under this new regime.

Christians, of course, are quick to identify Christ as the “Good Shepherd” – it’s a picture which we find very appealing. Yet, even as we look at it, we realise that he is always the outsider rather than the Establishment pillar; that he makes the effort to reach the people on the margins of society while almost ignoring the respectable folk in the mainstream; that he goes off alone to find the person who has wandered from the straight and narrow while leaving the majority to fend for themselves; that he is the one who rejects status and riches, telling us that “the first shall be last” in his Kingdom; and that he, of course, is the one who shuns a comfortable existence in order to lay down his life for his subjects’ benefit. This is a very different model of leadership to the common one of liveried flunkeys, chauffeur-driven limousines, luxury hotels and the trappings of success. For Christ is so sure of his status before God that he is perfectly willing to be the servant who gets his hands dirty – or worse.

It strikes me that we generally accuse our leaders – both politicians and royalty – of two main failings. One is that they are dishonest or corrupt, fiddling their expenses, pushing lucrative contracts in the direction of their business cronies, failing to abide by the laws they themselves have passed, or flatly denying that they said something a year or two ago even though it’s a matter of public record – and that’s before we get into issues of bullying and sexual abuse. Now I know there have been scandals and sleaze in the past, ranging from the Christine Keeler affair to “cash for questions”; nevertheless I believed until recently that most British public figures and officials, although human beings with human failings, generally sought to maintain a certain degree of integrity. But now, although there must be many who do have a strong ethical code, I’m not so sure. The antics and shenanigans of the last few years have badly dented my confidence in our leaders – and I’m sure that’s true for many others.

The other criticism we often make of leaders is that they are out of touch with reality. They may come from a background of cossetted privilege, they may have been working in big business with high salaries and generous bonuses, they may have got caught up in the Westminster – or Cardiff Bay – ‘bubble’: and we feel that they just don’t understand the struggles faced by so many each day. They utter – we feel – platitudes about us “all having to tighten our belts” or of “trimming off the excess” of our lives, without realising that some people’s belts are already at the last hole and that others are barely surviving on the ‘bare bones’ of life. Indeed, it’s been said here in Wales that the Coronation was “grotesque” and that the money spent on it should have been used to fund education or the Health Service.

Well, you may or may not agree with that last point! Nor with the title of a pamphlet written in 1652 by Henry Haggar, a Baptist pastor from Stafford: “No King but Jesus, or, The Walls of tyrannie razed and the foundations of unjust monarchy discovered to the view of all that desire to see it” – I just had to quote you that but the author, writing just three years after Charles I was executed, was trying to make a serious point. But, returning to our Bible passage, we must ask how well our present-day “shepherds” are tending their flock. Our circumstances are clearly very different from Jeremiah’s, with king Jehoiakim on the throne, or indeed from Jesus’, with Israel smarting under Herod and his family. And modern Britain, unlike Old Testament Israel, does not regard itself as specially chosen and favoured by God.

Nevertheless Jeremiah’s comments make sense to us. Good leaders are still rare; they deserve our support, our respect and above all our prayers. For theirs is a task which is both demanding and spiced with the allures of wealth and power. As our King has been crowned, and as our politicians look towards a General Election next year, let us pray that he, they and indeed everyone in public positions will seek to be the servants of the people rather than their lords and masters; let us pray that they will properly recognise their responsibilities, human and – yes – divine. And, as Christians who should always live with an eye to eternity, let us look ahead to the day when, we believe, God’s Great Shepherd will appear to lovingly look after his flock for ever.