Listening for the Shepherd’s Voice
John 10:1-10
May 11, 2014[1]
Our Gospel Lesson presents us
with an interesting question: How can we
hear the voice of God? Easy enough question?
Hardly. Nothing in John’s Gospel is particularly
“easy”—John is filled with some heavy theology.
We find fewer stories that we find in the other Gospels, and the stories
that we do find are the set-up for long discourses about who Jesus is. If you examine the Synoptic Gospels of
Matthew, Mark and Luke, you will find extensive use of parables proclaiming the
coming Kingdom of God. When you place
John next to Matthew, Mark and Luke, you will find a much more extensive
proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth as the One who is ushering in that Kingdom of
God.
What is the proclamation we find
in our reading this morning?
We find Jesus as the gate
through which the sheep pass to enter into the sheepfold (John 10:1). He is a living
gate—not just a passive one that can open or close with the wind. He is a living gate who knows his sheep. This living Gate is one who uses His own body
to guard the narrow way that provides entry into the sheepfold. An intruder who would steal away one of
Jesus’ flock has to contend with Him first.
A sheep who wants to wander away has to find a way to first get through
the Gate—this Gate doesn’t act as a prison door, denying freedom to those who
follow Him—this Gate respects the free will and choice of the Sheep to choose
whether they will remain in the fold.
But even in giving the sheep their freedom, this Gate always is calling,
beckoning, inviting the Sheep to remain with Him.
But Jesus is more than the
Gate. Jesus is both the Gate and
the Shepherd himself. He is the One who
leads us—whether our path takes us beside streams of living water or through
the valley of the shadow of death, our Shepherd leads us. He knows that sheep tend to be followers, not
leaders. That is why it is so important
that they follow the true Shepherd and not an imposter.
How do we tell the real from the
imposter? Jesus gives us a couple test
questions that we can use.
The first test question is “how
does a would-be leader enter into the sheepfold?” Does the would-be shepherd try to sneak in,
disguised, trying to gain entry by climbing over the wall or waiting for a
moment when the Shepherd is occupied with someone or something else? Jesus says that those who do not “enter the
sheepfold by the gate but climb in by another way” are bandits and thieves (John 10:1). Jesus proclaims himself to be the gate
through which one must enter to gain access into the sheepfold.
There is a second test
question: “do the sheep know the voice
of the Shepherd?” Jesus says “the sheep
follow Him [the true shepherd] because they know his voice” (John 10:4). Sheep are led, they are not herded, and they
are led by the voice of the Shepherd. There
are lots of voices calling us. How can
we distinguish which voice belongs to the true Shepherd?
First, we have to listen. This is part of the reason that I have been
emphasizing this year the listening part of prayer. So often, we fill up our prayer time with our
own voice that we don’t give the Shepherd a chance to speak to us. We are so busy hearing the sound of our own
voices that we don’t listen to His voice.
Did you notice the words in our Call to Worship this morning saying,
pleading, “Oh, that today you would hearken to His voice!” (Psalm 95:7). That word “harken” is not one that we often use
today. It means to “listen to” or “to
hear,” but in a very special sense. It
means that we pay attention to and heed the voice to which we are
listening. It means obedience. If we wish to follow Jesus as our Shepherd,
we need to pay attention to and we need to obey His words.
Do you remember the saying of
Jesus, quoted by Matthew: “by their fruits you shall know them” (Matthew 7:16-20)? John gives us a similar litmus test
here. False shepherds come to “steal and
kill and destroy;” Jesus, the true Shepherd, has come that they sheep might
have life and have it abundantly” (John
10:10). The word used here for
“life” doesn’t mean biological life; it means eternal life—life of a different
sort. Life here refers to the “absolute
fullness of life, both essential and ethical, which belongs to God.” It means “real and genuine life, a life active
and vigorous, devoted to God, blessed, in the portion even in this world of
those who put their trust in Christ.”[2]
And yet, this life is not so
much a possession as it is a way of living.
I have so often conflated the words of verse 10 to refer to the
“abundant life;” but, in a way, that is redundant. Life, by definition, (at least the sort of
life that Jesus is describing) is always abundant. But it is distinguished here by the manner in
which we hold it. We hold it abundantly. I think of a cold mountain spring in
Emlenton, Pennsylvania that we used to pass by when we were kids. My dad would tell us to remember to turn off
the water when we were finished. Of
course, there was no way for us to do that.
The water from that spring was abundant.
It just kept bubbling from the side of the mountain.
Do you want to know which voice
is the voice of the true Shepherd?
Follow the voice that leads to life.
This voice is the voice that Mary heard in the resurrection story that we
read just a few weeks ago—a voice that Mary didn’t recognize until Jesus called
her by name (John 20:16). This is the voice that calls you to life, to
reconciliation, to love.
There is one further irony that
occurred to me in this lesson. Jesus is more
than the Gate, and Jesus is more than a shepherd. I may be mixing metaphors here a little bit,
but Jesus also becomes one of the sheep.
He becomes the Lamb of God. This is the message of the incarnation—that
God, the “Word,” became flesh and lived among us. (John
1:14). He lived among us and in
doing so He showed us how to live and how to love. But He also showed to us how to walk through
that valley of the shadow of death that we mentioned earlier. As the lamb, Jesus Christ became the Lamb of
God who takes away the sins of the world.
John the Baptist proclaimed this message about Jesus when Jesus came to
be baptized (John 1:29).
This same Jesus beckons to us as
the Shepherd to follow Him. As the Gate,
Jesus provides us the way. And as the
Lamb, Jesus becomes one of us, offering up himself for us all.
And this morning, he calls us by
name. O that today you would hearken to
his voice. May it be so!
Copyright © 2014 by Thomas E.
Frost. All rights reserved.
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