Today’s Gospel reading comes at the tail end of the Good Shepherd discourse in John’s Gospel. We read a section of the Good Shepherd story every year on the 4th Sunday of Easter, commonly called Good Shepherd Sunday. The image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is comforting and the story of how he will never let us stray too far is reassuring. I love the entire Good Shepherd discourse, but one of the most poignant statements in the whole story is in today’s excerpt:
“My sheep hear my voice I know them and they follow me.”
Jesus knows that we can hear His voice. He also knows that just because we can, doesn’t mean we will.
My sheep hear my voice. …but do they, do we recognize it as the voice of God? Do we listen?
Voices are a big part of our identity. When we’re ill, or feeling particularly blue, folks will say, “you don’t sound like yourself.” There is a sound—the tone and tenor of our voice---which is uniquely “ours.”
Several years ago, my voice changed. I had been taking a particular medication for my asthma that made me hoarse. My voice was raspy yet I kept waiting for it to clear up. I thought it was temporary.
It turned out it wasn’t temporary; the steroids in the inhaler had scarred my vocal cords. I was never going to regain my former voice; the raspy, hoarse voice was here to stay.
I don’t think about it much----that is until I speak to someone who hasn’t heard my voice for years and when they do, they don’t recognize me. That’s disconcerting, because we all like to be recognized.
It’s nice when you answer the phone and the person on the other end immediately recognizes that it’s you. Or that you have such a close relationship with a friend you can call them up and say “hi it’s me.”
“It’s me.” They hear us and they recognize us. They hear us AND they know that it’s us.
Our voices identify us.
But hearing and recognizing are two different things aren’t they? People often say, “I hear what you’re saying” to convey that we’re not only physically hearing what it being said, but we’re getting the meaning. Hearing what someone says connotes understanding of the message.
We know the Good Shepherd’s voice…but do we really hear it?
That’s the real issue for the modern Christian isn’t it? It’s recognizing Jesus’ voice amidst all the other voices clamoring for our attention. It’s distinguishing his voice from all the others.
My niece Alyssa has significant hearing loss and when she goes into a room with a lot of noise she can’t distinguish one sound from another. People often try to get her attention by calling out her name, trying to be heard over the din. But that doesn’t work. According to Alyssa when all the voices are blending into one cacophonous mess, she needs to step back and look around so she can SEE who is speaking to her. It isn’t just hearing the voice, it’s seeing who is doing the speaking which allows Alyssa to recognize the voice—to distinguish one voice from another. Calling her name out louder and faster doesn’t help. She needs to step back and look—only then can she fully hear.
When it comes to recognizing the voice of God in our lives, we’re all a little bit hearing impaired, aren’t we? We have many voices competing for our attention---voices telling us it’s a dog eat dog business world, voices telling us that if we are thin enough, stylish enough, hip enough we’ll be happy, voices telling us that the key to success is found in their product… We have the voices of our spouses, the voices of our parents, the voices of our children, the voices of our bosses, our neighbors…all competing with one another---it becomes next to impossible to distinguish one from another.
To really listen to really hear, we need to stop, step back and look around. By slowing everything down, by quieting everything down we are able to see and to hear and recognize the one who really knows us. The one who knows us---warts and all—and still brings us back into the fold. The one who knows each of us by name.
That’s what a Good Shepherd does. A good shepherd knows his sheep. He knows each sheep’s needs. A good shepherd knows the sheep who need gentle prodding, and the one who needs a more deliberate push. A good shepherd knows that some sheep need a stern and authoritative voice while others respond to a sweet beckoning call. A good shepherd knows that some of his sheep will wander off the beaten path getting lost or caught in the bramble, unable to break free.
The Good Shepherd knows that although we hear his voice, we don’t recognize it--we’re too caught up in the bramble of our lives to really hear .
The Good Shepherd understands this. He understands that we’re easily distracted and overwhelmed. The Good Shepherd knows that the bramble of our lives—the pressures of our work, the challenges of our relationships, the worries about money make so much noise we don’t recognize his voice. The Good Shepherd knows that deep down all of us want to hear and heed his voice. But he also knows that to do that-- to hear what he is saying, to recognize his presence in our lives we must stop, step back and look for him, the one who loves us and the one who’ll never let us down.
Because as Alyssa says, “it doesn’t work if [someone] just keep[s] calling out my name. I need to step back [to] see them. “
You see, it’s easy to lose our way, to follow the wrong voice and find ourselves far from home, lost and confused. But when we finally stop and look around, we’ll see the Good Shepherd, and suddenly all the other voices will quiet and we’ll recognize the one who will never let us stay lost, who will never let us wander too far off the path. We’ll hear, we’ll know and we’ll follow the one who sees us safely home, bringing us back into the fold. Amen.
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