Hearing the Voice John 10:22-30 May 2, 2004, Year C, the Fourth Sunday of Easter The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Each of our sons responded to our parenting in his unique way. Lee, our youngest, in some ways was the most compliant, however, he also was the one who most questioned our rules. While he seldom violated them, rules for which he desired exceptions, he repeatedly wanted them restated and explained. He always hoped if he asked enough or in a different way, we might give a different answer. He, however, had the disadvantage to having a dad trained in behavioral psychology and a mom who taught parenting classes based on consistency and logical consequences. Asking silly questions when we really know the response, but asking anyway, is a part of our humanity. We keep trying to trap folks by asking questions that really aren't questions. Although read in the Easter Season, today's Gospel brings us back to a day before the Crucifixion, as Jesus is walking in the temple. Some gather around him questioning, perhaps taunting him. "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." Frequently in counseling and spiritual direction, people say to me, "If only Jesus would be clear, if only he would show me how to respond here." For those who are patient and willing to admit it, they come to the recognition he already has. They just don't like the image. Did those gathered in the temple really want an answer? Or, were they struggling with the gap between their yearnings and his reality. He followed no one's script. He was too radical/not radical enough, a pacifist for those wanting a warrior or dangerous for those wanting continued peace. His teachings disappointed virtually everyone because they were too hard to hear, or not in line with tradition, or obscure, or different from expectation. His behavior - touching lepers, accepting women, embracing outcasts, criticizing their compromises with Rome and acceptance of easy answers - left them gasping, unwilling to rethink their expectations. Jesus' words often disturbed those who are convinced how the Messiah's voice would sound. Those who were followed were those who didn't think themselves worthy of having expectations. "But don't we need clarity?" we ask. No! We need love, not a truth we can apprehend with words. We need the Truth; we need Jesus, the Word. We don't need a map; we just need to follow. And this is why Jesus is accused of blasphemy. It's not just his words, but the meaning with which his life and his relationships infuse his teaching. In a way words alone cannot, Jesus' life testifies that the God of Israel acts as he does: asking to share a drink with the Samaritan woman, sharing a feast with five thousand strangers without asking who deserved the food, washing feet, dying on a cross. In understanding this clarity St. Francis of Assisi is quoted as saying: "Preach the Good News at all times. If necessary, use words." We can talk about truth until there are no words left. We can try to boil truth down to four spiritual laws or three easy-to remember points starting with 'C,' but to what do our lives testify? Truth is not a set of words or a good idea, but a person and a relationship. Truth is not to be apprehended and explained, but loved. We testify to our knowledge of Jesus' voice not by what statements we agree with, but by whom we love and how. In this context Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice, . . . and they follow me." I doubt many us know much about sheep. However, dog owners among us can testify to the endearing way their dogs collapse into a frenzy of delight when you come home, even if you have been gone only for an hour. The new heaven has arrived-you-and hysterics are the least they can do. So what kept the questioners from hearing Jesus' voice? The same thing that keeps us from hearing it. We still have the same problem with following. We find it much easier to stay, and argue about whose staying-place is most authoritative, whose backward glances are most ancient and most accurate, whose rituals are most assiduously grounded in yesterday. Only a few want to move on, and they have little credibility in a movement that values non-movement. It seems what we expect or at least most want is security. The word approaches us from every direction. We hear about national security, global security, social security. We want so much to feel secure we talk about secure borders, secure portfolios, secure homes. To feel more secure, we spend lots of time and money to insure our homes, our cars, our lives. And, yet, despite all our best efforts, though we invest, insure and insulate our lives, in a matter of seconds, it can all be stripped away. A young man goes out to play tennis, an activity to foster the security of health, and before the second set, he's lying on the court with a cerebral aneurysm. A woman works long and hard to secure a successful career only to find out that internal politics have cost her job. A family invests in their son's education to secure his future only to find him dead in bed - the victim of an accidental overdose. A young man invests almost every waking minute establishing his career to assure his family's security and arrives home late one evening and on his pillow he finds his wife's note telling him she and the kids have move on. We all know stories like these. We know people whose sense of security has suddenly been stripped away. Maybe their stories are our stories, and in living such stories, we know that life can be anything but secure. Life can be frighteningly fragile. Even living good and clean lives, doing all the right things, being fair and just and kind, not even these can protect us from harm. We're not immune to accidents or betrayal. Despite all our best efforts, we still remain vulnerable. We are not promised certainty but sure and certain hope in the face of uncertainty. Jesus' truth upsets the false sense of security we create. For this reason, those who know the chaos in their lives are the most accepting to his truth. Or, as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams noted in his enthronement sermon: "We must turn to the children; the exhausted; the ravaged, burdened and oppressed - they know the secret. Unless we know that we need life, we'll be baffled; but we hate admitting our lack, our poverty. It's the really hungry who can smell fresh bread a mile away. For those who know their need, God is immediate - not an idea, not a theory, but life, food, air for the stifled spirit and the beaten, despised, exploited body." It is for those Jesus becomes hope when there is no hope, freedom from burdens you know would crush you, peace from turmoil within and without. That voice of the one who has called you to trust him is the one of the Good Shepherd who the author of the Gospel of John tells us lived among us so that you and I might understand, gave up his life so we could have ours, and then he rose from death to tell us all he said was true: his words, his promises, his love for us and all people, his acceptance of people of every kind, his leading us and giving us eternal, never-ending living with him - all true. The security of God's embrace does not put us to sleep but frees and even empowers us for action in the world. We are freed and empowered to get on with the business of caring for others, of loving our neighbor and sharing the Gospel, of striving for justice, and caring for creation. The security that you and I have in God is the very thing that frees us to lean into the very insecurities of this world and to participate in the work of God to redeem the world. The assurance that nothing can snatch us from God's hand is that security which enables us to confront the powers which strive so desperately to snatch God's kingdom from the world. With that knowledge, we can take risks, we can tread into the unknown, we can become involved in the work of God in the world. If this is so, how does one get to be one of those sheep who knows the Shepherd's voice? The Gospel suggests that we have to act as though believing is a choice, the product of a free will, rather than the prize in a debate. The time comes when evaluating the evidence must end, that we recognize all the questions we ask only defend our own procrastination. We recognize that the deep chasm of uncertainty that stands between the known and the possible has no bridge except our own choice to believe. It is then that we understand that our job isn't to anticipate the future and make it fit the past or our preconceptions. Our job is to live fully into the surprises. What a voice to hear and to follow!