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Who’s That Talking John 10: 22 – 30 |
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Summary
Voice Recognition When I was about 10 years old I decided I wanted to show sheep at the county fair. The man that owned the place next to ours raised sheep. I devised away for the gentleman to allow me to help him show his sheep. I told my dad of my plans to ask Mr. Mac to allow me to show a lamb and my dad replied “sheep are nothing but a bag of wool looking for a place to die.” He was right. Sheep are stupid. I discovered that out in West Texas that same year. We were there on a hunting trip and I watched a heard of sheep. One of the sheep walked off into a gully and most of the rest of the heard just followed him right off the same little bluff into the gully. I also watched a heard as a coyote came in for some supper and all the sheep just stood there like “I hope you enjoy your meal.” Sheep really aren’t the brightest animals in the world. I also noticed something else. All the sheep looked alike to me. But the sheep could tell each other apart. Every yew in those herds new the voice of its own lamb and the lambs new the voice of its mother. Later on in the evening the man that owned the sheep came out to gather them up. To my surprise when he called to them all the sheep came right up to the man and followed him back to the pins for the night. The sheep recognized the voice of the shepherd and followed that voice. I asked the man how he could tell if all the sheep came in and he started to point out all the differences in the sheep. They still just looked like a bunch of sheep to me but he recognized each and every one of them just like they recognized him. The image of the shepherd is very positive. I like the idea of a faithful shepherd on a lonely vigil, guarding the flock against various dangers from bears to thieves. The shepherd stands for courage. Like King David or the shepherd Jesus described who went out looking for that lost lamb. The people of Israel believed the king should be a shepherd. Psalm 23 speaks of the ideal shepherd king who leads the sheep to safety. The New Testament describes Jesus as the Good Shepherd. The voice of the shepherd But if the shepherd recognizes his sheep, we struggle to recognize the flock we’re a part of. Technology today does a far better job than we do. There is voice –recognition software that can distinguish between voices. Digital cameras have software that can recognize faces in photographs and sort us into different files. In our passage today, Jesus makes it very clear that he is a shepherd, and that his sheep will recognize him, and that if we don’t, we must not belong the flock. Our story takes place during Hanukah, “the festival of the Dedication”. John puts a lot of importance in the synagogue’s calendar in his gospel and almost always tells which festival is taking place. Hanukah celebrates the liberation and rededication of the temple, which had been deliberately ruined by a foreign king. The feast is celebrated with the lighting of candles and a lot of rejoicing. And like in many cultures, at the time when the days are shortest there was the need for celebration and hope. Jesus is standing with his followers at the Solomon gate of the Temple. The gate faces east so it provides the most protection from the winter weather. So Jesus, like a good shepherd, has led his flock to the place with the most protection. There they are standing in the gate and the crowd asked to be told clearly if Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus told them that he had told them and they did not believe because they were not part of His flock. Jesus said that both his words and his works testify to Him being the Messiah. If they have not understood, it was because they were not part of his flock. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.” Challenged to recognize Jesus God is speaking to us through his shepherd Jesus. We don’t need any recognition software. We only need to listen to the words of Jesus and apply them to our lives. That is the main theme in the gospel of John. Over and over throughout John’s Gospel the people are tested to see if they recognize Jesus. They either get it or they don’t. Andrew and Philip, his first disciples, get it! The religious authorities don’t get it. The woman at the well, she gets it! Her Samaritan village, they all get it. The people who are there for the miracle of the loaves and fishes, ultimately, they don’t get it. Mary and Martha get it. Even Thomas, eventually, gets it. These people at the gate, they don’t get it. Do you get it? The next question is: If you get it — are you going to act like you get it? Will you act on what the shepherd says? Back in the 1980s, a 6.4 earthquake struck Los Angeles. A church nursery-school teacher had a classroom full of preschoolers. It was not time for class to start so they were all in the fellowship hall. Fearing that the building was going to fall, the teacher tried to herd all the children to the safest place in the room and that was under a table. Now she knew children tend to run if they get scared so she shepherded them to safety by acting like they were all playing a game. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled under a table. All the children followed her to safety. The children at the nursery school knew her and trusted her. They were willing to follow their teacher, their shepherd, to safety. They knew she loved them. How will they know the shepherd? Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He loves us. Jesus leads us to safety. Will we follow? The people of this world need to come to trust Jesus as a shepherd. But how are they going to do that if they do not know him? They must come to know him through us. How else? A 16th century author once wrote, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet, on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ looks with compassion on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” Then the question is, does the world trust us as shepherds? Does the world know us? Or are we strangers? It’s more than just saying the right words. They will know us by how we live. Do we, does our church, show the sacrificial love of a shepherd to a troubled world? Or do we condemn? Do we serve? Are we known as a sanctuary of trust, or just a building where folks gather together to make themselves feel good ? As John writes in his first letter, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Let’s go back to those sheep. We may be stupid sheep, but that makes God’s determination to save us all the more wonderful. Jesus is interested in all of us: faithful sheep, lost sheep, stubborn sheep, compliant sheep, lazy sheep, and even those sheep we have not up till now invited to join the flock. Jesus speaks of other sheep that do not belong to his fold just yet. He wants them to listen to his voice so they will be one of the flock, under one shepherd. If we are God’s faithful sheep, we will gladly invite all the new sheep in the flock — those who have never known Christ, those who have rarely heard of him, those who have strayed and are now returned, and those who simply need to find a new flock. With the love of a shepherd, we will make Christ known, so that others may feel like they are the most important sheep. That is the love God calls us to show to the world. |
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