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The Shepherd’s Voice
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.”
As always, the Fourth Sunday of Easter brings us the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Jesus, as the good shepherd, calls us by name into a life of love and abundance with God. He calls us each by name with an invitation to enter the fold and be saved from all that would rob us of wholeness.
To accept his invitation, we are told, we have only to listen for his voice and follow. If we will but hear his voice, we will not be lost or left alone in those dangerous places that try the heart and test the human spirit.
In our familiarity with the “Good Shepherd” passages that we hear this time each year, we sometimes find the context of these passages easy to forget. Over time the image of Jesus as our shepherd has become such a warm and comforting one, and rightly so.
But we forget that even as Jesus is speaking these words, the plans to arrest and kill him are already in progress and in fact they attempt to stone him to death following this exchange in the portico of Solomon, but he escapes.
The confrontation we witness today has been brewing since Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath and restored his sight. Jesus knows that he is in an increasingly hostile environment, and he has already made several statements about his identity that have gone unheard by those who question him today.
Jesus says that he and the Father are one, they are united in purpose and that God knows us and wants us to know the fullness of God’s love. In his earlier statements Jesus has spoken quite clearly. He tells us I AM. I AM the bread of life; I AM the gate, and I AM the shepherd.
As we hear these words, we cannot fail to remember Moses standing barefoot before the burning bush on that trembling mountaintop. Moses asks, “WHO shall I say has sent me” and God tells him “I AM WHO I AM”. Through Jesus we know God, and in this deeper knowing we can hear and recognize his voice when he calls us by name.
In this passage that we’ll hear on Sunday we not only hear who Jesus is, but we hear who we are as well. We are individuals who are called by Jesus to form a community. We are all God’s own, called by name to gather together and create a place of compassion and welcome. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and we are those under his care.
As his beloved we are to actively listen for the sound of his voice. We are to listen for the sound of his voice as he calls to us amid the clamor and stampede of a world that fills our ears with messages that are often at odds with what God knows will give us true life.
We live in a world of loudly competing voices that stridently speak to us in turn of doom and hopelessness, greed and domination--- voices that call for violent retribution whenever we feel threatened. And we are all vulnerable to these voices. That’s what makes their call so insidious.
And what about the more-subtle but no less dangerous voices of our culture that tell us things like… Self-worth safety and happiness are found only in accumulating material wealth; we must horde our wealth to give ourselves the good life—let the poor take care of themselves.
This voice will tell us to avoid feeling pain at all costs even if it means abusing drugs, alcohol or sex—never mind that pain and grief are a natural part of the human condition—a very valuable part of us that grows our compassion and caring.
This dark voice also talks to us about our relationships. Have you ever heard the voice that tells you that it is the better part to cut and run when things get rocky in relationships? Upset with your spouse or partner---get a new one. Mad at your church or denomination, just leave and move on. After all, the hard work of forgiveness and unity is just too difficult.
We know these voices…these are voices of destruction and disintegration for there is nothing of hope, unity or reconciliation in them. And the real danger of listening to these voices is that they do not remain outside these church walls. We track them into our communal life like hidden time bombs.
We bring the poisonous chatter of these voices into our churches unaware and soon we appropriate them for God, and we decide that they contain religious wisdom. Much of the pain and suffering that we lay at God’s feet is and has always been manmade.
But there is another voice. The voice of the True Shepherd is steady, constant and eternal. The voice that calls to us to enter in through him to abundant life is a still, small voice that has great power and can penetrate the clamor of our world.
This voice calls us to justice, beauty and mercy. Jesus' voice comes into our midst, and it binds us in love to those around us. This voice calls us into the fold and tells us we do not stand-alone. Jesus’ voice penetrates our hearts with the knowledge and truth of God’s love.
Jesus comes to us, wherever we are and calls us by name. Jesus calls us into a life of love and abundance with God, and desires nothing more than that we may hear his voice and enter into that abundant life. Not a life free of peril, danger, or pain, but a life lived without fear and measured by endless grace.
Happy Easter,
Mother Stephanie
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