A few weeks ago, I woke up with a painful ear infection. So I went to the doctor’s office to have it looked at. After I signed in at the desk, I sat down and waited for the nurse to call. And I waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, I looked at my watch and saw that it had been nearly 90 minutes. I went up and asked the nurse if I was going to be called. She had called me over an hour before. Only I didn’t hear, I couldn’t hear her voice.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. Today’s lessons are absolutely beautiful. The first lesson shows how the early Church heard the voice of Jesus and acted on it, in very practical ways. The Psalm tells what blessings there are in having God as your shepherd. In the epistle, Peter writes about the reality of suffering in our lives and that we must follow Christ’s example in our suffering. And in the Gospel lesson, Jesus tells us the importance of knowing who is the Shepherd and recognizing his voice. || We must know the voice of Jesus our Shepherd, because his calls us to follow Him, || especially in suffering.
Let’s look at today’s Gospel: John 10. What is the sheep pen? It is the Church. What is the Gate? It is Jesus. That is to say to say that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father—or into the Church—except through Him. Only those sanctified in Christ enter into the Church. Only those who hear Jesus and accept him and follow him can enter through him.
The thief and robber try to find another way in besides the gate. What are they trying to do? “Only to steal and kill and destroy.” There are thieves who come to steal us from God and to try to steal blessings from Him. Thieves, who try to kill us because our holiness to the Lord stands in contrast to the depravity of the world, and they try to kill God, like Nietzsche by making him irrelevant, a quaint bygone. There are thieves who try to destroy the sheep, maiming them with lies distractions from God, and they try to destroy God by corrupting our view of Him. Thieves who try to destroy the sheep pen by breaking down the walls and blurring the line between it and the world (even by having Christians themselves duped into tearing down the wall to attempt secular relevance—the Church cannot be relevant in the context of secularism, because it is supernatural and it is holy). There are thieves who try to ruin the pastures by filling our minds with vain secularisms and profanities. There are robbers who try to get the benefit of being one of Christ’s sheep without being part of the flock, like a goat that jumps the fence and hides in among the sheep. But God will separate them out and judge them accordingly—God, the just judge who discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
The Shepherd enters through the gate. And the shepherd brings sheep in and out according to the gate. The true shepherd enters by the gate. He knows how to take the sheep in and out of the gate. He knows its location. The shepherd must “play by the rules” and enter by the gate so that he can show the sheep how to do the same. Jesus is the Gate of the sheep. He is the only way to enter into the Kingdom of God. By rejection of Him, one is excluded from the sheepfold. Woe to those shepherds who try to hoist sheep over the fence instead of taking them through the gate! They are men trying to find a shortcut into heaven. They do not accept the responsibility of being a shepherd, or are seeking some unholy personal profit. These false shepherds may have heard Jesus’ voice (probably they have), but they could not accept suffering.
The sheep listen to the shepherd’s voice. They’ve grown to know it. They weren’t born knowing his voice, but grew to trust in the true shepherd who proved himself—he laid down his life. We, the sheep of his flock, know our shepherd’s voice. We hear it throughout our lives, calling sometimes loudly, sometimes softly, and (if you’re familiar with the Dark Night of the Soul) sometimes silently. We were not born knowing his voice. By our parents and godparents, pastors and Sunday school teachers, we become aware of the Shepherd’s voice. We learn to discern it first by learning what kinds of things the shepherd says, and then listening for that voice. Sometimes we hear another voice, that of the tempter, calling in similar words, but when we follow that voice we discover the error. When you read the Bible you’re listening to the shepherd’s voice. When you pray, you’re calling out (bleating?) to the shepherd, and listening for his reply.
How can we know Him? This knowledge of Shepherd and his voice is intimate; it has to be, or else there could be no trust, no vulnerability on our part. This knowledge is one of love. Pope St. Gregory the Great wrote, “I assure you that it is not by faith that you will come to know him [i.e., God], but by love; not by mere conviction, but by action. John the Evangelist…tells us that ‘anyone who claims to know God without keeping his commandments is a liar”’ (1 John 2:4). Does that blow you out of the water? Think of it in this way. Bishop Weeks loves June. Do you have any doubt of that? No? Neither do I. He may say the words, “I love you.” She can have some faith in those words. But what if he gives her flowers? Ah, then her faith is confirmed. And if he, some years ago, asks for her hand in marriage, and he forsakes all others and gives her a ring as a token of this vow, her faith in his love is strengthened. And over years and years of doing acts of love—fulfilling the commandments of love, if you will—she knows him and his love for her.
That kind of knowledge is what our Shepherd offers us. He calls us, his sheep by name. He knows them and he leads them. He knows what they need and where they have been. He doesn’t overgraze them in one field (e.g., grass of evangelism), to the exclusion of another (e.g., clover of sacraments or the vineyard of Pentecostalism). They must eat from many places so as not to devastate the fields or to malnourish the sheep.
Sheep who know the shepherds voice Christ calls out from the sheep pen. One of the mysteries of Christianity is that the sheep become themselves shepherds. The sheep go out into the world and help bring back lost sheep. We follow the example of our shepherd. This involves more than just eating grass and producing milk for our own young.
We are called to suffer for doing good, just as Jesus did for us. We do this not for the sake of suffering along, but so that the world may die to sins and live to righteousness. This is how we reach out to the world.
Even as by Christ’s wounds we have been healed of our wound (sin), so by our faithful suffering, the world’s wounds (sin) can be healed. And this is not by our own powers, but through a sacramental representation of Christ’s sufferings; our lives become a witness of Christ’s life to the world, a means by which he is made present to them. We bear their sins in our body on our crosses (i.e., sufferings imposed by the world). This we do personally, and corporately in our body—the body of Christ, which is the Church.
We bear sins in our body by accepting suffering and consecrating it as a sacrifice to God. Did you know that you can do that? You, as a member of the royal priesthood, are in fact obliged to do this. A priest has three basic responsibilities: to pray, to bless, and to offer sacrifice. That is our ministry to the world: to pray for the world (to come to Christ, and also for the needs of the world), to bless the world (giving thanks to God for the goodness in the world and helping to consecrate it), and to offer our lives as sacrifices for the world. Christ suffered and died and offered the once-for all sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, but the world will refuse to believe this Good News unless it can see Christians, little Christs, who are also willing and prepared to suffer to this end. We bear sufferings in our body in verbal abuse, shunning and ostracizing, by being different and accepting that difference without shame.
We can bear sins by lifting up the world in prayer. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (Rom. 12:14). We have been given a ministry of reconciliation, not a ministry of irreconciliation! Our goal is not to “be overcome by evil, but [to] overcome evil by good” (Rom. 12:21). It is the Christian’s ministry to seek to bring men to God, to return them to Paradise. It is God’s to avenge. Jim, as a deacon, a Levite, you are called to help the people understand and fulfill these roles in their ministry to the world.
Jim, as a deacon, a Levite, you are called to assist the royal and priestly people of God to minster to the world. Christians will suffer for the sake of the cross, and you must help them do so gladly, devotedly, and with proper intent. By your example, you will teach the sheepfold of God to be the shepherds of the world. Help them learn to hear the Shepherd’s voice and to trust in him.
Do not forget that we were like sheep going astray. We were, but no longer! Now we have returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. We have a spiritual overseer, Christ, who is our supreme Shepherd (Pastor) and Overseer (Bishop). We have another overseer, our Bishop, who stands as “another Christ” for the faithful. And each priest stands vicariously in place of the bishop, as another Christ. Our bishops and priests help us hear the voice of the Jesus. They assist us to learn his voice, to discern it from others that would try to imitate it. They train us to pick our Shepherd’s voice out of noisy cacophony and focus on his words alone. As deacon, minister to them so that they may focus on the ministry of the word of God.
Finally, remember that it is God first whom you serve. Remember the scale of His vision. He is not about being “nice”, pleasant, or enjoyable. He is awesome, immeasurable and unconstrained, and He is polarizing. God is not in the business of giving people “warm fuzzies.” He comes to change lives…to make our toes curl.
