Sunday, April 30, 2023
/The Fourth Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10
The Rev. Clint Brown
Many of you will remember, I hope, me telling you about my friend Brenda who lives in Tennessee. Brenda is now 83 years old. She paints. She rides horses. She climbs mountains. She throws axes. She holds the award for oldest acolyte at St. John’s – Johnson City. Brenda is one of those people who puts to shame people who are half her age, and, as if that doesn’t make her interesting enough, you’ll recall that she once had a pet frog named Monsieur Jean-Claude de Fourchette who would perch on top of her head whenever she did housework.
On our way back from Philadelphia this week, Cavan and I stopped by Brenda’s for a visit, and, as any preacher with a sermon to write will appreciate, I was really counting on Brenda to give me some fresh material. Well, she did not disappoint, because today I have to tell you about Rocky. It turns out that, in addition to a pet frog, Brenda at another time had a pet quail, a pet quail named Rocky, a pet quail named Rocky that just happened to crow. Well, I should say, the story actually begins with a pet quail named Raquail Welch, except that one day Raquail started crowing, announcing that she was, in fact, not a “she” quail but a “he” quail, and so Raquail became Rocky – and, just in case you’re wondering, quails don’t crow, but this one did, and you’d just have to know Brenda to appreciate that a crowing quail named Rocky is the kind of thing of which you will just have to be prepared to accept.
Now it happened that Rocky loved no human being the way he loved Brenda’s dad, who, whenever he came for a visit, had only to sit down and Rocky would jump into his lap. Alone of all human beings, Rocky would let Brenda’s dad run his finger down his back and, as Brenda tells it, the longer Rocky was petted the longer Rocky’s neck became as he drooped his head in total relaxation. In fact, the bond of man and bird was so strong that at the mere sound of his voice Rocky would come running, and so, on entering the house, Brenda’s dad would have to be careful to communicate with hand gestures and help walk in the luggage silently before sitting down and finally saying hello, whereupon Rocky would emerge and leap into his lap.
The reason why this is the perfect story for today is that today we are reminded that Jesus is our Good Shepherd, the one whose voice his sheep know and love. He calls his own sheep by name, and, wherever we are in the pasture, when we hear his voice we know it and we run toward it to follow it. The Bible goes on to say that the sheep will not follow a stranger, because they do not know the voice of strangers (vv. 4-5). So my question for you today is a simple one: whose voice, of all the voices you hear day to day, are you listening to? Is it the Shepherd’s voice, or some other? Or to put it another way, whose voice is loudest? If it’s the voice of the media, you might believe that we are at total war with one another and there is no good thing to be found in the one who votes differently from you. If it’s the voice of the ads that bombard you, you might believe that you can’t live without the next greatest thing they are selling that you ought to be buying. If it’s the voice of your addictions, you might believe that you are powerless to gain control of your life and know inner peace again. If it’s the voice of culture, you might believe that you will never belong, never have enough, never be enough, never measure up. If it’s the voice of the evil one, you might even believe that God is dead and you’re on your own. But if it’s the voice of Jesus, you will know that God is not dead, but is risen. You will know that you are loved. You will know that there is nowhere you can wander where he will not go to find you, and that there is no vision so petty nor so small as the one limited to selfish gain alone. How different is the voice of the Good Shepherd from all those others we often hear so much louder!
Now you might wonder how to tell the difference between the voice of Jesus and those others, and the tell-tale sign is that the voices of deception never have your best interests in mind, but their own. The “thief” and “bandit” are those, we are told, who break in to the sheepfold to steal, kill, and destroy, who are interested in you only for what you can do for them. That is how those false voices – the false friends, the false narratives, the false Messiahs of our lives – betray themselves. They are the ones who haven’t entered through the gate to confront us directly with truth but have slipped over the fence while you weren’t looking with their half-truths and magic elixirs. But opposed to every false god and counterfeit Christ, like a hammer to smash every idol, is the Good Shepherd, the one who only has what’s best for you in mind. None of those imposters can or will suffer for you, but Christ Jesus has bought you with a price. God has proven his love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). If this be the benevolent disposition of the Good Shepherd towards us, what then, I ask, is our duty towards him?
I often think about how, on the question of suffering, it is not really a matter of “if” or “when,” but only a question of deciding what to suffer for – because we all have to suffer for the sake of something. What is it, then, that is really worth suffering for, of taking the world’s abuse for, of being crucified for? It should, of course, be for a vision large enough and meaningful enough to justify our suffering. For the Christian, this is nothing less than to follow the Good Shepherd wherever he leads: to care for what he cares for – to suffer for the weak against the strong and the poor against the rich. All we once thought gain we now count as loss in order to embrace the fuller, richer, truer life of the Gospel. I say that the loudest voice should ever be the one who calls us to this nobler vision, the voice of the one who bids us come and die, the voice of the Good Shepherd who has acknowledged you as a sheep of his own fold, a lamb of his own flock, a sinner of his own redeeming.