THE VOICE OF THE SHEPHERD
Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18,27-30
Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett: unmistakable voices whose sound, style and phrasing have the power to take us back to a time and to a place of first love . . . of romance . . . of heart break. Who can ever erase from their memory the commanding voice of FDR, the poetry and power in the voice of Martin Luther King, the trusted voice of Walter Cronkite on the evening news? There are just some voices you never forget.
Last year, I celebrated Christmas with my brother Bob and his family. After we had exchanged presents, my oldest niece, Kathleen, said, “Uncle Bruce, I have one more gift for you.” She then took out her laptop and sat next to me on the couch. She clicked on an audio file of an old cassette recording that she had transferred to her computer. It was a cassette that I made for her when she was ten years old to accompany a tape recorder I was giving her for Christmas. And so, as I listened, I was transported back thirty-three years to hear my youthful voice deejaying a selection of Christmas songs, narrating “The Night Before Christmas,” singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with a Norwegian accent, and basically making a complete fool of myself! And as I heard my younger self signing off and wishing her a Merry Christmas, my somewhat maturer self said, “Kathleen, I can’t believe you kept that all these year!” Kathleen said, “Wait Uncle Bruce. It’s not finished.” And then I immediately recognized a voice that I hadn’t remembered was on that tape. A voice I hadn’t heard in sixteen and a half years. The sweet, loving voice of my mother. And after that, a voice I hadn’t heard in four years: the kind and gentle voice of my father. There are just some voices you never forget.
If you noticed, this morning I extended the Gospel to include three lines also found in the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel (Please don’t tell the bishop!) But I wanted you to hear everything that Jesus had to say about himself when he calls himself the Good Shepherd. And I think those three lines are important to us.
Jesus says that his sheep hear his voice. “HEAR” not “heard.” Present tense not past. Christianity is a relationship, and every relationship is established and maintained through communication. And so we shouldn’t chalk up to fantasy, wishful thinking, or pious sentiment that God IS speaking to us, and we CAN hear His voice.
The fact is God is always speaking to us, but the problem is we aren’t always listening, or we aren’t quite sure how to listen. And the truth of the matter is, we can’t obey him or follow his lead unless we hear him—and we can’t hear him unless we understand how he speaks to us today. God is a pure spirit, and so we need to seek out, feel comfortable with, and accept the way that a spirit communicates: not with a human voice, but through some means outside of himself, adapted to our nature. He may use things we can see and hear in order to stir our imagination, or he may enter directly into our thoughts.
But we’re like the prophet Elijah. We seek God’s voice in lightning bolts and claps of thunder, in the loud and the dramatic. Yes, God can shout, but as Elijah learned, God more often whispers. He’s heard in the subtle and the ordinary. God nudges us, guides us, answers us, through the still small voice of intuitions that come while we pray, while we meditate, while we dream . . . in thoughts that persist . . . in a sense of peace that fills us when we consider one option over others . . . and in the circumstances of our lives. The voice of the Shepherd comes to us in the truth of the Scriptures, the teachings of the church, the insights of the saints, and the advice that comes from others who follow his way.
So if God is still speaking to us, why do we find it so difficult to hear his voice? There are many reasons. Sometimes we’re afraid to listen. We don’t want to hear what God has to say to us. We know that he may ask something of us that’s difficult to do or give. Instead of listening, we close our ears and pretend not to hear.
Sometimes we don’t hear God because we’re too busy putting our own needs ahead of everything else. Our desires to have more, and to be more, are often in direct conflict with what God desires for us. It’s difficult to hear his voice over own voices calling for more.
Most often, though, we simply don’t recognize God’s voice over the roar of life around us. Our world is noisy and demands so much of our time and energy. We're so focused on everything else that we fail to hear God’s gentle whispers in our lives. Often we're so busy and so consumed with everything around us that we miss him even when he's screaming our name, trying to get our attention.
And then there are many voices in our world, clamoring for our attention, making demands of us, extending promises to us. There are imitators, calling us down the wrong path. We’ve got to know how to tell the difference between the authentic voice of the Lord, and all of the other imitations out there. So, as you pray, as you listen, pay attention:
+ If the voice you hear encourages you to trust, then it’s probably our Lord. If the voice you hear leads you to cynicism, then it is not.
+ If the voice you hear calls you to be generous and self-transcending, then it’s from the God of Love. If it calls you to selfishness and self-centeredness, it’s an imposter.
+ If the voice you hear calls you to be faithful, to be true to your word, to keep your promises, it’s of God. If the voice invites you to break your promise and lie, it’s not of God.
+ If your hear an invitation to spend more of your life focused on others, to measure your success by the difference you make in someone else’s life, it’s probably from the one who said, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
+If the voice you hear calls you to be a peacemaker, a justice-doer, a hope-giver, it’s from the same one who once said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, they will be called “Children of God.”
+ If you hear an encouragement to treasure life, set aside angers, forgive and forgive some more, it’s from the one who said we need to forgive seventy times seven times and who, himself, looked down upon those that had just crucified him and forgave them.
+ If the voice you hear tells you that you are deeply loved by the eternal God, if the voice you hear tells you that you have a dignity that no one can take away from you, if you hear a reminder that Jesus loved you so much that he was willing to die for you, then that voice is from the God of All Goodness. But if the voice you hear tells you that you’re not worth it, that there is no hope for you, it’s a lie from the Evil One.
“I am the Good Shepherd. My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” This week, let’s quiet our minds and open our hearts to hear God’s voice speaking to us. He longs to have meaningful conversations with us. We must decide to listen for His voice; if we don’t, we may miss the comfort, the inspiration, the encouragement God bestows upon us when He speaks intimately with us. This week, listen to that still small voice speaking to your mind and heart. You know the voice. There are just some voices you never forget.
