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A mother walks into her infant child’s room and coos, “Good morning, dear one!”  Even though the baby can’t yet make word herself, her eyes look around for the familiar, comforting voice.

A second grader, at work at his desk, hears someone come into the classroom and call out “Wassup?”  He smiles, because he knows that his friend, Robert, has arrived.

After a long flight and a half-hour ride from the airport, Bill slips a key into the lock of the side door of his house.  He opens the door and yells up the stairs, where he hears the TV.  “I’m home!”  His wife responds, “Hi honey.  How was the trip?”

Sarah hears a knock at her door, but before she can answer, it opens and a voice calls out, “You look as great as ever!” Sarah knows at once that her sister Betty has arrived for a visit, even though Sarah has been blind for six years and Betty lives too in another state, so she doesn’t come that often.

How do they know?  How do they all know?  The child in the crib, the student at the desk, the wife upstairs, the blind woman in the nursing home – they all recognize someone they love.  The recognition, the knowledge, is there in the sound of the voices – the voices of the ones they love, who also love them. 

“My sheep hear my voice.  I know them,” John tells us that Jesus says to his detractors in today’s lesson.   And the clear implication is that they know him, too.  Jesus is responding to religious authorities, the defenders of orthodoxy, good but controlling people who confront him by questioning both his authority and his faith. Maybe they question even his sanity.  “How long will you keep us in suspense?” they ask.  “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”  (John 10:24, New Revised Standard Version) The sarcasm still feels painfully dismissive, even after two thousand years and two translations.

But John tells the story proudly. John, whoever he is, writes this story nearly two generations after Easter, when he and his church find themselves in hard times.  Roman politicians persecuted John’s community of Christians, as they did other Christians in that era.  Even family and friends in their synagogue had expelled them for their foolish belief that Jesus was the messiah.  They were alone in the world:  alone, afraid, and demoralized.  So John gives them words of encouragement:  Jesus listens to them, and calls to them.  They know his voice, and he knows them.  John, says Jesus, has a promise for them, and for us, as well:  “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.  No one will snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:28)  Think of that!  Jesus – the Christ, the Son of the living God, the crucified messiah, the light and life of the world, the risen Lord of all and king of kings – this Jesus knows us.  Loves us.  Calls us by name.  That’s John’s message to his church – and to us.

It’s a fantastic message, but it’s our message.  We are here today because we’ve heard that voice, each of us in our own ways.  Jesus has spoken to us, and called us here.  Our lives have crossed paths with other followers, and, well, here we are.  Sometimes life is difficult for us, too.  Not as difficult as it was for John’s church, perhaps, but difficult enough.  But here we are.

We come, but we doubt, like the disciple Thomas.  We sing, we pray.  Life isn’t always easy, but here we are.  We’ve listened to Jesus, calling us by name, in the voices of teachers and preachers, and coaches and friends and grandparents.  We know the story of Easter, even if it gets a little paler the further we walk away from the fanfare of the trumpets and the echoes of the Hallelujah Chorus.  As life gets back to normal it seems a bit of a stretch to put much faith in women’s story.

As life gets back to normal, I find I need a bit of encouragement in my faith.  And encouragement is what John gives the church in today’s lesson.  Today’s church is not threatened by Roman persecution, of course.  Our threats are internal and subtle.  We just grow tired, despondent. Aren’t there times when we, too, need words of encouragement?  Aren’t there times when we, too, feel emptiness in our faith, or maybe just a lack of joy, spirit, and a clear purpose?

Courage may be just what we need, in deepest, oldest meaning of the word.  The meaning may seem obsolete now, but “courage” once meant “heart” and “spirit.”  John the evangelist reaches forward from his first century to our twenty-first with a word of courage, a promise that Christ knows us, gives us life, and will not let us be snatched from his loving hands.  Never.

It’s a powerful promise for this Sunday three weeks after Easter, when the glitz and glory have faded and we’ve gotten back to the dull routine of everyday life.  An old tradition gives us readings today reminding us that the Lord is our shepherd, we are not alone, and we will never be forsaken.  The Psalm given us in today’s lectionary selections, which we didn’t read, is the 23^rd Psalm, one of the few passages of scripture many of us know by heart. 

And the epistle lesson is another bit of encouragement given by another early Christian saint named John.  John of Patmos, exiled to a rocky island prison wasteland, sees a vision of what God has in store for the people of Easter, followers of an Easter lamb who has become a shepherd of us all, the faithful sheep gathered into a fumbling band known as the church.  Listen again to the vision:  

“They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

The sun will not strike them,

            Nor any scorching heat;

For the Lamb at the center of the throne

            Will be their shepherd,

And he will guide them to springs

            Of the water of life,

And God will wipe away

            Every tear from their eyes.”  (Revelation 7:16-17)

I can see, and perhaps you can as well, why we often read those verses at funerals.  Whenever, wherever, courage runs low, that vision seems to lift our hearts and our spirits.

Because we do know the voice of the one who calls us.  It is the voice of Christ our Lord.  It is the voice of the great shepherd of the sheep.  We know that voice, because He has called us by name – in our baptisms; in our work together building homes or schools; in our study together; in our singing and praying together; in our friendships shared in backyard parties and outings where we’ve seen sunrises and dolphins and looked up to wonder at a sky full of stars.

Do you remember his voice?  Do you remember his promise?:  “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.”  So we have courage.  We know that voice. It’s the voice of the shepherd, a voice we’ve known since David wrote about it so long ago.

Will you stand with me and let’s affirm our faith in the words of the 23^rd psalm?  You’ll find the version we know on page 137 of the Hymnal.

Amen.

Mamaroneck United Methodist, April 25, 2010.

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