Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name,
and follow where he leads. AMEN
Our theme today is Jesus, the Good Shepherd; the one who calls us to follow him, the one who calls us into discernment about our own ministry. And the challenge that the scriptures present to us is one of knowing his voice and hearing his call. I don’t know about you, but this sort of reminds me of when I was a kid playing with my friends after school in the back yard. Come dinner time, I would hear my mother call me from the back porch telling me to stop playing and come in for dinner, and of course, I wanted to keep playing. I didn’t have any trouble knowing who was calling; I just didn’t like the message. The gospel raises the first question. Amid all the voices of our culture, can you hear the voice of Jesus?
The Easter season brings to our attention a variety of images that tantalize our spiritual senses. An earthquake and an angel descending, rolling back a stone from a tomb... guards fainting in fear... an empty tomb and angelic figures sitting where Jesus was lying... a group of apprehensive disciples locked in a room, visited by the risen Lord... a clear moment of recognition of Jesus in the breaking of the bread... And in today’s readings, the church in Joppa is weeping over the death of a sister named Tabitha, the call for Peter, who comes and prays over here, and Tabitha is raised to life from death and come to belief in Jesus. All along the way there are voices of doubt, and voices of fear, anguish and grief... but there are also voices of knowing and trusting and believing and incredible joy ... The images of the Easter Season are extreme and provocative, they are because they are about resurrection, and they are also the story of our lives. This is a season of contrasting voices, the events of our lives that compete for our attention. With such a clamor, sometimes it is hard to hear the shepherd’ voice.
Consider the week just passed. In one week we have heard voices crying “shame” as gun control legislation was defeated in the Senate, by a vote of 40 to 60, and we have heard voices of anguish, chaos, and grief crying out in the streets of Boston after bombs explode at a marathon race. Defeat seemed everywhere, and frankly, as I listened and watched, I began to feel depressed and overwhelmed. With other recent incidents of violence, at Sandy Hook Elementary, and other places, one tragedy inevitably calls to mind other events in the past, like one death reminds of other deaths. Of course, there is the pain of ongoing deaths in war. There are times, and this week was one of those times, when I give in to the voices of violence, and I am truly grasping for hope as I shake my head, and long to hear the voice of peace, and the belief that committing violent acts is not the answer. Finding a way to hear the voice of peace is the answer.
I watched and heard on TV Friday night the voices of jubilation in the streets of Watertown and Boston. To me they were real and understandable, people were safe, at least safer than not, but I couldn’t find much rest there. I wanted some perspective. I did some searching.
I remembered another April, the year was 1968, and the shock and loss of hope that I felt, with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. And I began to look further: April is also the month of the shooting of students at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Columbine in 1999, and the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. With those sad echoes of times past, the voices of grief and the voices of politics, lobbying, and the NRA push away the shepherds voice of love, hope, and peace in April’s Easter Season
We have to listen again to a different wisdom:
We have to go back to the gardener’s voice that called “Mary” and she knew it was the Lord;
we have to remember the voice of Jesus when surrounded by the soldiers in the garden, saying to Peter, “Put away your sword”;
we have to go back to the moment of recognition in the upper room when he breathed on them and said “Peace be with you”;
we have to remember how he had been known to the disciples in the breaking of bread;
our wounds are his wounds, and through these wounds, we hear his voice, the voice not of vengeance or violence, but the voice of peace.
This was Jesus point. From all the voices of culture that you hear, listen for my voice. Beyond all the words of commentary, sounds of confusion, and discordant lyrics trying to make sense of things, listen for my voice. The church to which the Gospel of John was addressed shared in the uncertainty of many voices. The church has always had to face this problem. Today’s gospel provides for us a compass to discern the right path for hearing the voice of Christ and doing authentic ministry in his name. And that can only be done in community.
Someone will say, “I believe I am called to be a priest, or a social worker; another will say “I am called to work for immigration, or for clean water in Guatemala, or to volunteer in the Julian Food Pantry on Saturdays.” Just like hearing the call to dinner in the midst of playing, you have to learn to hear who is calling you and what is being said. For that, I know the only way is through community. We can’t be Christians alone walking on a sand beach or on a journey through the woods, we need each other, and the food the Shepherd gives, so that we know our calling.
There is a well-known, unforgettable story about one of our leaders who through community found the call that strengthened him in his ministry. It is about Martin Luther King during the days of the Montgomery bus boycott. It comes from a time in his life, not unlike our own, when voices of fear, voices of doubt, and voices of despair were competing for his attention. Violence had been threatened repeatedly against King and his family and he was afraid. At home one night, about midnight, King heard the phone ring and he answered. It was another anonymous caller breathing threats of violence against him unless he got out of town. After the call, King sat at the kitchen table worrying about the threat, about his children, his wife, himself. Then he prayed, prayed to God admitting that he was losing his courage, and as he prayed, he heard a voice, a voice he knew. It was the voice of Jesus. “Martin Luther,” the voice said, “stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And, lo, I will be with you, even unto the end of the world.” Strengthened by the voice, he knew which path to take and gained courage in his ministry. “Almost at once,” he remembered, “my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared.”
Easter is not just an empty tomb, but a victory over the voices of darkness, and a presence, a person, a voice that calls us each by name into the light shines eternally. AMEN
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