One
of the most popular television shows these days is “The Voice.” I have not
watched it many times, but I’ve enjoyed it when I have. “The Voice” is a music
competition that involves four stars from the music industry who serve as
judges for people who are trying to start a singing career. The premise is that
the judges begin by listening with their backs turned to the people performing
on stage. When they hear a voice that they like—one that’s got talent, one that
might be a winner—the music stars smack a button on their chair that makes it
immediately swivel around so that they can face the singer and, at that point,
see what the singer looks like.
The
idea is that the judges and the coaches respond to and judge only to the voice
of the singer, rather than their appearance or stage presence. It is the voice
that grabs their attention. One of the best parts of the show is when all four
judges realize they’re hearing a winner and they all smack their buttons right
away. That’s when the magic starts to happen. The excitement builds as all four
experts, the audience, and the millions of folks watching on their TVs across
the country realize they may be hearing the next voice.
There
is no music industry in Jerusalem, of course, and no one watches television
either, but Jesus wants his disciples to know that he is the voice. He sings
and speaks from the stage of a hectic and often dangerous life. His people hear
him and respond to him, smacking those buttons and swiveling their chairs to
face him no matter where they are because they know they’ve found a winner. “I know my own and my own know me,” he
explains, and then he reaches for the most familiar and easy-to-understand
image of the day. Hearing Jesus’ voice and following him will be like sheep who
respond and follow the voice of their shepherd.
As
it turns out, sheep are one of the few types of livestock that can actually be
led. Cattle, for example, have to be driven, as if you’re forcing them to go
where they need to go. Pigs are the same way. Could you imagine what Psalm 23
would sound like if this weren’t the case? “He drives me beside still waters (yee-haw!).
He whips me until I walk in the right paths for his name’s sake.” It just
doesn’t sounds quite the same, does it?
Sheep,
by contrast, can be led. In fact, in Jesus’ time flocks of sheep spent
considerable time mingling with other sheep at watering holes and wells. When the
time came to graze for the day, the shepherd would go off to a hill that looked
like it offered good grazing and would call out. The sheep that belonged to
that shepherd would respond and join him wherever he was.
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| a shepherd in Afghanistan (Wikipedia) |
This,
Jesus explains, is what life in his Father’s love is like. This is how he will
lead his disciples. He knows his own and his own knows him. We can trust, then,
that Jesus is not going to force us or drive us to get us to follow him. He is
never going to coerce us or scare us. The good shepherd does not work that way.
Jesus loves the sheep and tends for them by leading with his voice.
However,
disciples don’t just naturally follow that voice because it’s naturally so compelling
or beautiful or true (which it is, by the way). They follow because, like
sheep, they’ve been around the shepherd enough to know what his voice sounds
like. They’ve associated that voice with protection in times of danger. They’ve
learned to connect the voice of that shepherd with green pastures and safe
pathways. What have you come to associate with the voice of Jesus? How have you
spent time in relationship with the one who calls out and beckons you to
follow? To be sure, this is something that happens over time when we become
aware of the dangers that actually exist around us and how vulnerable we are. It
takes relationship and patience to be able to recognize that voice of the
shepherd.
This
point about relationship ties in to a crucial concept to understanding what
we’re praying for, for example, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. In his Large Catechism Martin Luther is sure to
point out that humans need more than material things for existence. In a time
where everyone tends to be so careful about the food they’re eating and the
quality of the environment around them—good things, for sure!—it is easy to
lose sight of this. Praying for daily bread covers those things—food and drink,
house and property, work and income, a devoted family, etc.—but human existence
is not just about things, even as you expand that definition of daily bread
ever outward. Human beings also need love to survive. We need trust. We need
comfort. We need to hear the voice of someone who says they love us so much
they’ll die for us. The petition in the Lord’s Prayer that follows daily bread,
the one about the forgiveness of sins, addresses these innermost needs of ours.
Through its appeal for forgiveness, it acknowledges our community with other
sheep and the fact that trust and love can be broken and needs to be mended.
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| a shepherd in Romania |
Learning
the ways of the Good Shepherd involves praying to the Father and learning more
about him, but it also therefore involves remaining in contact with the other
sheep, by recognizing that we are a species that flocks. The word congregation,
in fact, comes from the Latin words “con,” or “com” which means together, and
“gregare,” which means to gather into one. Jesus is reminding us this morning that
there is something fundamentally group-oriented about following him. Remember? The
magic happens when lots of people smack those buttons. That’s how God designs
it.
And
unlike the television show, we also can’t choose Jesus for our team and have
him for ourselves. He’s chosen us for his, and part of our salvation, part of our
deliverance in God’s kingdom, is the deliverance from loneliness and isolation.
It’s not just that we learn to respond to a savior shepherd, but that we learn
to respond to each other, and that we learn to respond along with each other. There
are those who say they don’t need the church in order to lead a life of faith, but
Jesus words about the flock seem to go against that. I know that many people
tell me that when they feel alone in the valley of the shadow of death it is
the nearby presence of other sheep who have embodied for them the presence of
the shepherd.
In
fact, it also sounds like Jesus isn’t finished calling his flock together. There
are more that will join him. They aren’t in this flock at the moment—not in
this congregation, not in this denomination, maybe not even in this faith—but
they are out there. Jesus promises that there are others who will eventually,
at some point realize how comforting this voice is, too, and turn to face him.
This
is all well and good, of course—the growth of our flock, the green pastures, hearing
the voice and staying nearby so we learn more about him and each other—but the
real fact of the matter, even with such a large flock, is that sheep don’t
always remain close. Sheep don’t always listen either, or know what’s good for
them. They wander and they get stuck in some pretty scary places. They run into
wolves and other predators who do them harm. Ultimately, the safety of the
sheep is not in the sheep’s hands, or hooves. Ultimately, the cohesion and
salvation of God’s flock does not lie in its ability to listen or keep up. The
safety of the flock is up to the shepherd, and the shepherd who calls you and
calls me, the Good Shepherd who has claimed you and has claimed me in Holy
Baptism has laid down his life for us. The salvation of any one of us is not
dependent on how close we draw to the shepherd, but how close he draws to us. We
know this because he is the only shepherd who has gone to stand on one
particularly dark hill in the distance called Golgotha. There he calls on our
behalf to the Father that loves him with a voice that punctures the darkest
valley, the deadliest death.
The
other evening a bunch of us were gathered for Wednesday night ministries. It
had been raining pretty hard all afternoon, but then, in the middle of dinner,
the sun came out. Knowing what often happens when it is raining and the sun is
shining at the same time, some folks went out to see what they could see. Pretty
soon there was a whole yard of children rejoicing in the sight of not one, not
two, but three clear rainbows arching over the church. By the time I got out
there, some of the spectacle had already faded, but there was still one portion
left.
One
end of the bow seemed to end right in the place in the sky that was over our
big cross outside. The other end disappeared into the horizon right where our
columbarium is. Behind it loomed a dark, foreboding cloud. It had been
vanquished and was receding into the east. On the green, wet pasture of grass
beneath were a whole bunch of kids and parents. We’ll call them a flock. Their
voices laughing, shouting, marveling, like cups overflowing. Little sheep that
they were, they had smacked that button and they were responding, I believe, at
this huge reminder above them. It was a gracious reminder that their Good
Shepherd calls us all, his promises leading from that cross of Golgotha where
the rod and the staff yet comfort us to the place where we rest in his eternal
embrace. As I watched them taking photos and jumping up and down, the words of
the shepherd came to my mind:
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow them all the days of their life.
And
they shall dwell in the house of the Lord their whole life long.
Thanks
be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W.
Martin, Jr.
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