My Sheep Hear My Voice

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” When was the last time you experienced real silence? Not recently, I’ll bet. It’s a noisy world out there. Many of us turn on our TVs and radios when we wake up and don’t turn them off until we go to bed. Programmed music accompanies every item that goes into our grocery carts. Advertisers shout at us as we pump our gasoline. Some restaurants are so noisy we can barely make conversation across the table. And then there is the self-inflicted noise from our cell phones and MP3 players. I confess that if it weren’t for my ipod, I probably wouldn’t make it here on Sunday mornings or be able to push myself out the door for my morning walk. It’s a noisy world out there! Is the voice of Jesus anywhere in all that din? Somehow, it’s hard to imagine him screaming our names at the top of his lungs trying to get our attention over all that noise. How will we hear him calling our names? Is it possible to find a quiet space in our lives so that we can hear Jesus’ voice? Not just on Sunday morning, but in the rest of our busy, noisy lives as well? Can we turn everything off and, like sheep, listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd, let him lead us beside the still waters, sit down with him, and truly listen to what he wants to tell us?

Today’s lessons invite us to see ourselves as sheep responding to the voice of a good shepherd. We know that over and over again Scripture uses this image of sheep and shepherd to describe our relationship with God. Psalm 23, in which we declare God to be our shepherd, is one of the most beloved in all the psalter. We sing in the Jubilate, one of the opening canticles in the service of Morning Prayer, “We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” Kings are compared to shepherds, both good and bad. Jesus uses the parable of the lost sheep to suggest how dear each of is to God. Throughout the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel, which we hear every fourth Sunday of Easter, Jesus uses the image of the Good Shepherd to describe his relationship to the faithful.

Now I have a problem. I’m not sure I want to be described as a sheep. Isn’t there some other animal that better describes me spiritually? Sheep may be wooly and cute, but there’re also stupid, easily led, and influenced by a herd instinct, especially if one of them gets panicked. I, of course, am intelligent, capable of individual action, and above the influence of the “herd.”

What’s important here, what Psalm 23 is talking about, what Jesus is talking about in this Gospel passage is not sheep as such. Jesus is talking about relationship, specifically our relationship with God and other believers. Sheep are domesticated animals. They aren’t able to defend or protect themselves the way wild animals are. Sheep cannot make it on their own. They need the protection of the shepherd who has cared for them since birth. They also need the protection and support of the flock. Sheep who imagine that they are self-sufficient and strike out on their own easily get disoriented and lost. They must be brought back by the shepherd and rejoin the flock or, ultimately, they will die. So what is our relationship to God and to others? It is one of dependency, love, and trust, trust especially that, if we are joined to Jesus, and part of his flock, we will be cared for and safe. Through baptism we are already incorporated into Jesus’ resurrected life. We too can live life on a new plane, grounded in the Holy Spirit, and joined to Christ forever. As part of Jesus’ flock, as a community of those committed to him, we listen to his voice, obey his teachings, and do our best to follow him by doing the works that he did.

On the northeast coast of Italy in Ravenna, behind the famous church of San Vitale, lies an austere brick mausoleum built about the year 430 in honor of a Byzantine empress named Gallia Placida. If you go to Gallia Placida’s mausoleum you must stoop to go through the plain sunken doorway. However, once inside your eye is immediately drawn upward. The entire vault of the mausoleum is covered with astonishingly beautiful mosaics. Surrounding figures of the four evangelists, eight hundred mosaic stars in the night sky cover much of the vault. Cole Porter was said to have been so mesmerized by these stars, when he visited here in the 1920s, that he was moved to compose his famous song “Night and Day.” But what really catches the visitor’s eye here is the mosaic affixed over the entrance on the north side. Here we see Christ as the Good Shepherd. Although shepherds were despised working class men in the ancient world, this Good Shepherd is clearly a king. He has a large golden halo, wears a royal purple mantle over a golden tunic, and holds a tall cross. On either side of him are two groups of three sheep. Here’s the important part: the sheep peacefully gaze up at their Shepherd as he tenderly touches the nose of one of them.

So how do we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice? Our faith is not a set of intellectual propositions. For the sheep who belong to the Good Shepherd, faith is an experience, it is an experience of God’s deep and abiding care for us, all of us. The ground of our faith is an intimate relationship with the Good Shepherd and with the rest of the flock. How do we begin to hear the Good Shepherd’s voice in our lives? Can we let the resurrected one get close enough to us so that he can touch our faces as he did the sheep in the mosaic in Ravenna? If we are attentive in Sunday worship, we can sense his presence with us in the Eucharist, and we may fleetingly hear his voice. However, many of us don’t hear Jesus’ voice in worship. We may come late and miss the quiet time before worship begins. Often, there’s just too much noise, even here, with the prayers, the readings, the sermon, and the hymns. Worse yet, our eyes are focused on the printed page, and we read instead of listen.

My sisters and brothers, I’d like to suggest two ways in which we may begin hearing the Good Shepherd’s voice. The first is in silence. Find that time in your day, even if it’s only five minutes, when you turn off the TV, silence your cell phone, and put the ipod away. Let the Good Shepherd lead you to some quiet spot. Sit with him. Center down, as the Quakers say, find that quiet core of yourself. Acknowledge your dependence on him. Be grateful for his love and care for you. Pray. For some people, a verse of Scripture leads to prayer. For others, gazing at an icon is a stimulus for prayer. For others saying the rosary leads to deeper prayer. For others, simply concentrating on a single word quiets the mind and turns us Godward. Finally, just sit in silence and listen. Don’t think you have to work at your faith, as if it were another chore to be crossed off the to-do list. Just listen. His word for you will be there in the silence.

Often we also hear the Good Shepherd’s voice in the voices of others. As sheep, we are members of a flock, members of each other. Often the Good Shepherd cares for his flock through the actions of others, as we see Peter doing in our first lesson. Often, too, we can hear Jesus’ voice in the prayers, exhortations, testimonies, and confessions of others. We can hear Jesus’ voice when someone else proclaims the good news of God in Christ, when someone else tells us of their own faith journey and of how God has cared for them. We can hear Jesus’ voice when someone else brings us back into the community. We can hear Jesus’ voice when someone urges us to undertake mission, to follow Jesus’ example in caring for the rest of God’s children. We hear Jesus’ voice when someone else comforts us in grief and sorrow, dries our tears, and reassures us of God’s deep and abiding love. What is most important, others can hear Jesus’ voice in our voices. Speak the comforting word. Help other sheep to remember that they too are members of the Good Shepherd’s flock, and that the Good Shepherd has laid down his life for them. Find those large and small ways to practice compassion and sacrifice for the rest of the sheep. And pray for others.

In the words of a fifth-century prayer, let us pray,
O Lord Jesus Christ, Good Shepherd of the sheep,
who came to seek the lost, and to gather them into your fold,
have compassion on those who have wandered from you,
feed those who hunger,
cause the weary to lie in your pastures,
bind up those who are broken-hearted,
and strengthen those who are weak,
that we, relying on your care
and being comforted by your love,
may abide in your guidance to our lives’ end. Amen.