Recognizing the Voice John 10:1-10 April 17, 2005, Year Fourth Sunday of Easter The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Once again, we encounter a Gospel reference to sheep as a metaphor: a means to understanding who Jesus is and more importantly understanding the relationship with Jesus to which we are called. Once again, I venture to claim that with rare exceptions, those involved with the Vet School or a past experience with Future Farmers of America, the rest of us know very little about sheep. We have even less knowledge of the role of a shepherd, especially a first century shepherd. Therefore I offer you contrasting metaphors about knowing someone, having an intimate relationship with someone. First, as a parish priest, one of my joys is to visit a couple in the hospital very soon after the birth of their infant. Witnessing this gift from God, this new life of innocense and potential, what has always amazed me is to see one these infants who is not days but only hours old and watch this baby react to the sound of its mother's voice. Is it that this infant already associates the sound of that voice with being nourished, cuddled, comforted? Is it that this voice is the same voice this new child of God heard during the nine months of being shaped? I don't know how these infants already know the sound of the voice of the one who gave them life; I just know even with no knowledge about the person to whom this voice belongs, there is a bond, an intimacy that exists even within those few hours. Now the contrast. During World War II, my dad served in Patton's battalion in Europe. However, he was not sent oversees until the latter years of the war. When he shipped out, my mother did not know she was pregnant with my older brother. Being one of the latter ones to ship out, my dad was also one of the latter ones to return home. Thus, when he returned home, my brother was 18 months old. Both to assure he would know something about his father and to calm her fears about her husband's return, from the time of his birth until my father's return, my mother talked continually to my brother about his daddy. To help him envision his father, she kept an 8 x 10 photograph on the coffee table and would hold it as she talked about him. As my brother's cognition expanded, she would ask my brother to point to his daddy, and he would point or retrieve the picture. Finally the day arrived for my father's return. As he entered my grandmother's home where my mother and brother were living, with excitement she cried to my brother, "It's Daddy. Go give him a hug." With an expression of horror, my brother stared at this stranger in front of him, and screamed, "No!" , grabbed the familiar picture of his father, held it to his chest and cried, "Daddy!" As we journey through our 50 days of Easter, we explore what it means to be a resurrection people - to have an intimate relationship with a God who loved us enough to take on our humanity, to do more than walk in our shoes but to slip into our skin, to not only have breathed life into us in our creation and birth but to breathe the same breath we breathe; who allowed us to do our worst to him because we want control of our own lives and intimacy with him obstructs that control; who by overcoming the painful death we inflicted on him, offers the same freedom over death to us. Thus far, through our 50 day Easter journey, we, in our despair, have been invited to accompany Mary Magdalene in the dark, alone, to the empty tomb, and in our moment of greatest fear and desperation to hear that familiar voice who knows our name, call us by name. We have been invited to accompany Thomas and to bring all our doubts and disbeliefs and to name and claim them. But after we have done so, we must be ready to accept the Resurrected One's invitation to touch the wounds in his hands and place our hands in the gaping spear hole in his side. We have been invited to join with the stranger walking along the road to Emmaus to allow him to make known the unknowable, to reveal himself to us in the intimacy of sharing a meal. Today, as resurrected people, the Resurrected One says to us, if you are a resurrected people, I will call you by name, and you will know the sound of my voice. And, as does a new born infant, we will know that it is a voice that nourishes, cuddles and comforts us. However, to hear the voice of the Shepherd calling our names, there are a lot of voices we have to silence. There are so many voices of thieves who know our names and know our many hungers. They call to us, "Your life seems incomplete. Don't you need this particular car, access to all these extra TV channels, a larger home, a few more new clothes to put in your overfilled closet?" They recognize our fears, "It's too bad that children are starving to death, that far too many have no medical care, that's not your problem, they should take better care of themselves. You don't want to help them; you don't want to give more to your church. If you do, you may not have enough. You may not be able to buy that new TV you need. You may not have that financial security you need." They feed our desire for power and control: "Forget all that love your neighbor and reconciliation stuff. The good life is found in power - financial, political, military. It's okay to step on others if it gets you higher in the organization. Peace is only possible when we annihilate our enemy." Voices abound and we listen. After all, that one who wants to hug me isn't Daddy. This safe, predictable picture that doesn't ask anything of me - this is Daddy. This safe predictable Jesus image I pull out when needed is Jesus, not this Jesus who want to change everything about me. Thus, we must silence the other voices to hear the voice of the Shepherd. My brothers and sisters of resurrected people, we are not talking about knowledge of Jesus here. We are not talking about creeds or doctrines here. We are talking about intimacy. We are talking about standing at the empty tomb and hearing our name called. We are talking about putting our fingers into an open wound where a nail has been driven. We are talking about allowing our eyes to be opened by the one who feeds us in the Eucharist. In our times of darkness when we stand in front of the empty tomb, we are talking about no longer offering prayers that assume we know best how the world should be and telling God to get on with it, but offering ourselves up in prayer to hear our name called and to invite us in to a whole new sense of reality. We are talking about reading Scripture, not to find Bible verses with which we beat others over the head or affirm that we have all the right beliefs, but to allow the Holy Spirit to shape us so the voice of the Shepherd is heard over the deluge of voices. We are talking about saying only when I have touched the wounds in his hands will I believe and then as Jesus puts out his hands showing that his wounds are in the suffering of this world, to put your finger into those holes. If you do it, I promise you, you will not know about the Shepherd but will know the Shepherd. We are talking about coming to this altar not to receive a piece of bread so we can get home and be back among those other voices and to the safe and predictable. No, we are talking about having the one who is present in that bread open your eyes to know who he is and to transform who you are, to silence those other voices, and to redirect how you live every other day of the week. He calls the sheep by name, leads them out and goes ahead of them that they may have life, and have it abundantly. We can cling to that familiar picture and scream, "Daddy." Or, we can be taken into the arms of the One who will hold us, nourish us, transform us, show us the face of God, and with that One we will walk through that gate of death to self, that gate of reconciliation that move us beyond tolerance toward genuine respect, or even reverence, for others. And we will have life abundantly.