Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still
waters; he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths for his
name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the
darkest valley I fear no evil;
for you are with me; your rod and
your staff—they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in
the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil; my
cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of
my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
John 10:22-30
22 At that time the
festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was
walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered
around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are
the Messiah,[b] tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered,
“I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s
name testify to me; 26 but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my
sheep. 27 My sheep hear my
voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will
never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 What my Father
has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the
Father’s hand. 30 The Father and I are one.”
“The Shepherd’s
Voice”
Five of our UKirk students
and I spent last weekend in South Alabama, a lovely weekend on Mobile Bay
working with high school students, teaching them and encouraging them to be
leaders in their home churches. I was so proud watching our students play and lead
games with them, proud watching them help the teenagers plan a lovely worship
service to close the weekend. Our keynoter for the weekend, Ray Jones, works
with the Presbyterian Mission Agency in our General Assembly offices, and he
used much of the 10th chapter of John’s gospel to talk about how we,
as Christians, are called to follow the lead of our shepherd Jesus Christ into
the world, to carry Christ’s word and message and love to each other in all
that we do.
Ray talked to us about
shepherds and their flocks, about how the sheep respond to their leader.
Between his keynote to us and some research I’ve done about sheep and their
shepherds this week, this city girl has learned a lot. It turns out that sheep
and cattle are very different creatures. While cattle are rounded up from
behind with the sounds of yells and cracking whips, that doesn’t work with
sheep. Sheep need to be led by their shepherd who walks in front of them,
guiding them, encouraging them that everything ahead will be ok. The shepherds
learn the different noises of their sheep, as any good caretaker would—they
know the difference between the sheeps’ cries of pain, cries of hunger, cries
of fear. And the sheep learn the voice of their shepherd, responding to that
voice and that voice only, quickly able to distinguish between their shepherd’s
voice and the voice of a stranger who might walk through the flock talking. It
is not uncommon, at the end of the day, for many different flocks of sheep to
gather and get mixed up at the same watering and feeding hole. But the
shepherds don’t worry when they see this mass of mixed-up sheep. They simply
use their own distinct call, their own unique message, to call their sheep—and
they sheep are smart enough to hear their own shepherd’s voice, coming together
again in their own flock, responding to the voice of their Shepherd.
In his keynote at the
retreat, Ray asked us all a very important question: “How do you hear the voice
of the Good Shepherd, the voice of Christ in your life? And what keeps you from
hearing it? What other voices do you hear?” That question jumps out in our
Scripture passages today. During our passage, many folks are gathered in
Jerusalem for the feast of the dedication, and Jesus is walking beside them
through the temple. They see him there, but still don’t believe what they have
been hearing, what he has been telling them-that he is the Messiah. They want a
plain, clear answer from Jesus, to hear the news once again because they still,
for whatever reason, have a hard time believing it to be true. Growing
frustrated at their constant questioning and disbelief, he says to them, “’I
have told you, and you do not believe…you do not believe, because you do not
belong to my sheep.’” Get it together, he is telling them-I have led you, I
have helped you, I have loved you, but you still refuse to believe that my
voice is the true one and what I’m saying is true. “My sheep hear my voice. I
know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never
perish.” My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me.
I think this passage and its
message have been sadly, sorely misinterpreted over time to say that, once we
dare to express doubt in our faith or disbelief in Christ’s word to us, that
once we listen to other voices other than Christ’s, that even in those times
when we really can’t hear Christ’s voice, that we are kicked out of the flock,
not loved or saved by Christ. We are done. There is no hope for life. That we
will perish. That is a common conception, but that is not what Jesus says here.
I love how Barbara Brown Taylor helps us understand this passage:
…listen
to what [Jesus] says. He does not say that we are in or out of the flock
depending on our ability to believe, but the exact opposite, in fact. He says
that our ability to believe depends on whether we are in out of the flock, and
there is every reason to believe that we are in, my woolly friends, if only
because we are sitting right here with the flock this morning. If that is the
case, then chances are that the way true believers believe is the way most of
us believe: valiantly on some days and pitifully on others, with faith enough
to move mountains on some occasions and not enough to get out of bed on
others…Some days we are as firm in our faith as apostles and some days we are
like lost sheep, which means that we belong to the flock not because we are
certain of God but because God is certain of us, and no one is able to snatch
us out of God’s hand.
Just the fact that we are all
here this morning, trying to believe, trying to understand, trying to hear
Christ’s message, means that we are part of the flock. It means that we do
belong to the Good Shepherd. It means that, although things are not often easy
and oftentimes brutal, that we are still being led by Christ, called to make
out his voice in the midst of so many other voices in our world. As frustrated
as he is with all of those asking questions during that dedication day, Jesus
doesn’t say, “Forget this. I’m tired of these persistent questions. I’m done with
you.” Instead, he challenges them to listen, to hear his voice in the midst of
so many other voices fighting for attention. He challenges them to believe. To
be led. And to follow. Just the fact that we are hear this morning means that
God’s voice has led us here, that God is certain of us, even when we have no
certainty to be found.
The reality of the matter is
that we live in a broken and sinful world, one in which there are so many
competing voices fighting for our attention. There are the voices of the stress
and the stresses of school and work. There are voices telling us that if we
don’t make enough money, dress the right way, drive the right car, or have the
best house, then we aren’t worthy. There are the voices of events and games and
concerts and schoolwork telling us that they are the most important things,
that everything else must fall by the wayside. There are the voices constantly
found in our news and social media, the ones telling us that if we believe
differently, than we are unpatriotic or unchristian or stupid or thoughtless.
There are our inner voices, telling us that we aren’t good enough or beautiful
enough or worthy enough for love. Those voices are constantly there, telling us
that what we want for ourselves is more important than what God wants for us.
Jesus knows that there are so
many voices clamoring for our attention, and his message here is one of love,
of welcome, a message of a shepherd who wants to lead a flock, who yearns to be
heard. In the midst of so many voices in the world fighting for our attention,
it is vital that we discover and discern the way to hear Christ’s voice in the
world, to constantly challenge ourselves about how to hear the voice of Christ
in the clamoring. I asked our students Thursday night how they seek out and
hear and discern the voice of Christ in the messiness of the world, when asking
questions and making decisions about their lives. They said that they pray and
listen and read Scripture, and that they depend on their gut feeling when
searching for Christ’s voice. They said that they ask themselves who and what
Christ would really give his time and attention to in the world. They said that
they look for the work and guidance of the Holy Spirit. They said that they
spend a great time in discernment, discovering that they hear Christ’s voice
when they feel most at peace in their hearts. That’s something that we all have
to discern for ourselves, to discern as a community. We have to ask ourselves
every day—how do we hear the shepherding voice of Christ in the world, the
voice leading us to wholeness, the voice leading us to love like Christ did in
the world?
As I thought about our
students and their responses that night, I had a little self-revelation and
moment of discernment of my own. I’m about to get a bit personal here, which
makes me nervous—but, hey, whenever one of you lovely folks tells me you needed
to hear the sermon I just preached, I say, “Thanks. I don’t preach anything I
don’t need to hear for myself.” And I mean it, so hear goes. I was in an off
and on relationship for a couple of years with a man I deeply loved. For many
reasons, the relationship was hard—but I always thought that it would work.
I’ve never been more convinced of anything. I don’t think I’ve ever prayed more
for discernment in my life during those tough times, to hear the voice of
Christ helping me decide whether I should stay or go. But here’s the thing—I
only wanted to hear the voice of Christ telling me that it would work, telling
me what I wanted to hear, not the voice telling me to walk away even as much as
I loved. But I was so wrong, so wrong that the relationship finally ended after
I got sick last April. It has been a brutal year since of asking questions
about what happened and why. I prayed to hear God’s voice telling me that the
relationship would work, and in the year since, I’ve asked God and myself some
pretty tough questions.
As I thought about all of
this Thursday night, about how we truly hear the shepherd’s voice, I knew that what
I wanted—that my voice—was the one I was really hearing. I thought about our
reading from John’s gospel, and then I started reflecting on the 23rd
Psalm. As I went over and over it in my head, I finally accepted that the voice
telling me to stay in the relationship wasn’t the voice of Christ, as much as I
wanted it to be, but instead the voice of my heart, of my yearning, of my hope.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. But I did
want. And that want made me yearn for things that only ended up causing me
pain.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me
beside still waters. But the grass in the pastures I was walking through was
dead, and the waters were dark and stormy and certainly not still.
The Lord restores my soul. But my soul was dark and
damaged and broken.
I was discerning the wrong
voice. As we discern the voice of Christ in our lives, in our world, perhaps
it’s those questions we need to be asking. Is this voice we hear leading us to
wholeness, to the things we need instead of the things we want? Is the voice we
hear leading us to open, green spaces instead of dead ones, to still, calm
waters instead of stormy, turbulent ones? Is the voice we hear leading us to
wholeness, to restoration in our bodies, minds, and souls, instead of being
damaged and broken? Is the voice leading us away from fear and towards comfort
in God? Is the voice leading us to full, ample tables where we can sit
peacefully with all of God’s children—those with whom we might agree and those
with whom we might not? Is the voice leading us to create goodness and mercy
and justice for all of God’s children and following us through the days of our
lives?
Maybe, just maybe, if our
answer to those questions is “yes,” then we are discerning the Shepherd’s voice,
the voice of Christ in our lives. It is the voice of a God who will leave the
rest of the flock to find us, the voice of a God who is certain of us—in those
times when we can discern God’s voice in the midst of all the others, and most
importantly, especially in the times when we can’t. That is, after all, the
message of love found in the cross, found in the great news of Christ’s
resurrection. Thanks be to God.
