The
Voice of God
First
UMC Fort Dodge
April
13, 2008
Mark
Haverland
John
10:1‑10 "Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the
sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The
one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens
the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name
and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them,
and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a
stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of
strangers." Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not
understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, "Very
truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are
thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate.
Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find
pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they
may have life, and have it abundantly."
Psalm
23
The
Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He
makes me lie down in green pastures;
he
leads me beside the still waters; he restores my soul.
He
leads me in right paths for his name's sake.
Even
though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil;
for
you are with me; your rod and your staff ‑‑ they comfort me.
You
prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you
anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and
I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
If
we didn’t know better, we might think that Jesus has a identity problem. In
seemingly every chapter in John, Jesus claims a new identity: the bread of
life; the light of the world; the good shepherd; the resurrection and the life;
the way, the truth, and the life; the vine; and, now in this passage the Good
Shepherd and the gate which leads to the safety of the corral. Jesus tells us that we will recognize the
voice of the Good Shepherd just as sheep recognize their earthly shepherd. We will hear his voice and recognizing him
will follow him into the safe harbor. This
is a lovely metaphor which almost all Christians know best in the 23rd
Psalm, our traditions most familiar psalm.
Jesus
also tells us that he is the gate through which we pass on the way to
safety. I really like it that Jesus is
the gate. It’s an intriguing and complex
metaphor, just the sort of religious idea which gets me going. Gates are like walls. They seem at first to be a nice way to
demarcate our property from someone else’s.
But eventually, the gate becomes, well, like a wall, mostly designed to
keep people, the wrong people, that is, out.
Gates, like national borders, soon become instruments of exclusion.[i]
I
read this week about a church which had two posters on the wall near the
entrance to the sanctuary with pictures of certain clothing styles that were on
one poster unacceptable and on the other acceptable to wear. Inside was another
sign that said, "No food or drink beyond this point. This means YOU!” Just
beyond that sign was another one that read, "Those who truly honor Christ
kneel when they receive Communion.” The real kicker was the words printed in
their bulletin: "Everyone welcome!”
We do a lot better here at First United Methodist Church Fort
Dodge. We know here that when Jesus is
the gate, it doesn’t mean that certain people are shut out. It means that everyone gets in.
Jesus
mixes his metaphors in this passage telling us he is on the one hand the
shepherd who calls us through the gate and on the other hand the gate itself
through which we pass. Jesus may mix his
metaphors, but there is no confusion about who we are – we are the sheep. Sheep, Jesus tells us, always recognize the
voice of their shepherd.
I
imagine that you as I find that when talking on the phone, it is often not
necessary to announce who you are. We
recognize others who call us before they say who they are because we recognize
their voice. I recall many occasions
when talking to friends after a very long separation and discovering that the
voice always sounds familiar. I’m sure
there are people from my past that I haven’t heard from in decades that could
speak two words and I would know immediately who they were. In fact, the voice seems to change very
little even though most of us look quite different with the passing of the
years. Indeed, new security systems are
being developed to recognize a person’s voice to unlock a door, turn on a
computer or access secure files. Highly
sophisticated equipment can tell a lot from our voices, not only who we are,
but whether or not we are telling the truth.
Our voices are truly unique and revealing.
I’ve
entitled this sermon “The Voice of God” because Jesus tells us that we sheep
should recognize the voice of our shepherd.
But I must admit I struggle to separate God’s voice from the many voices
which speak to me. I really wish that
the voice of God were more apparent and clear.
I suppose on the one hand, we all know that God sounded a bit like Charleston
Heston thirty years ago, but more like James Earl Jones today. At least that is what the movies would have
us believe. But my experience is that
the voice of God is far less obvious and stentorian. In fact, I listen
attentively for the voice of God and seldom hear even a whisper. When people say that God told them to do something,
I wonder just exactly what they mean.
I’m afraid some think that God speaks through whatever happens to happen. A favorite story from my family illustrates
our hope that God speaks to us through the events of our lives. During the depression, my grandfather was
close to losing his business which was a grain elevator in southeastern
Nebraska. He sat on the steps of his
office one day, the story goes, and said a quiet prayer that if God would
rescue him somehow, he would dedicate his fine tenor singing voice to the
church for the rest of his life. Not
long after, a man drove up to the elevator from Kansas City. He was buying up these struggling rural
elevators and offered to buy my grandfather’s business and hire him back to
manage it. My grandfather dedicated his
life to singing for the churches in southeastern Nebraska and my mother grew up
playing the piano for him because God answered his prayer to save his depression
threatened grain elevator. I’ll bet that
all of you have had experiences from time to time that seem to be a similar communication
from God. I went home early this week to
attend a lecture at Drake University on Wednesday evening. I just happened to fall in step with an old
friend who runs a consulting business.
We ended up sitting together and talking about our mutual projects. At the end of the evening, he asked me for my
card so he could call me about some opportunities he might have for me. Coincidence or the hand of God helping me out
once again? Who knows?
Unfortunately,
God doesn’t always or even usually communicate quite so obviously. Wouldn’t it be nice if God had a more
emphatic voice, like, well, like a drill sergeant? I was in the Navy ROTC in college. Each summer I went to a six week equivalent
of boot camp. It was a great eye-opening
experience to be the ward of drill sergeants for a few weeks each summer. I remember one drill sergeant regaling us
with stories of conquest one morning as we stood waiting to file into the mess
hall for breakfast. He talked about how
much fun it was to be in charge of a boot camp for new recruits to the Marine
Corps. He described how often it
happened that young men just out of high school would show up out of shape,
with poor posture and even worse attitudes.
In the nine weeks of camp, he never failed to turn these young men into
proud, motivated and competent soldiers.
So much so that their mothers often didn’t recognize them. One mother asked him how he had done it. The
son she knew hadn’t made his bed in years much less stood up straight and said
please and thank you. “Well, ma’am,” he
told her, “I think it has something to do with my tone of voice.”
Jesus
chooses the image of the shepherd to tell us about the voice of God. It’s unlikely Jesus spent much time as a
shepherd, but he did seem to know how sheep herding worked. Sheep share with almost all domesticated
animals the need for a leader, the willingness to follow that leader and the
ability to select a human to be their leader.
So when Jesus refers to us as the sheep of his pasture, he knows that we
need him, want to follow him and that it is in our nature to choose him when
our hearts and minds are clear. Jesus
paints a picture here of the shepherd who leads rather than drives sheep from
one place to another. It’s a lesson in
leadership worthy of Stephen Covey. As
Jesus put it “...he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they
know his voice.”
Apparently,
Jesus is right about this: sheep recognize their leader’s voice and will
respond only to the one they know. And sheep
must be led, it seems, following their shepherd, rather than being pushed like
cows. And they will only follow their own shepherd. The shepherd can "walk
right through a sleeping flock without disturbing a single one of them, while a
stranger could not step foot in the fold without causing pandemonium."[ii] As Jesus claims, sheep know their master's
voice. When many small flocks are mixed together at a watering hole, a simple
call from one shepherd will extract his sheep from the rest. I read this week about a man in Australia who
was arrested and charged with stealing a sheep. But he claimed emphatically
that it was one of his own that had been missing for many days. When the case
went to court, the judge was puzzled, not knowing how to decide the matter. At
last he asked that the sheep be brought into the courtroom. Then he ordered the
plaintiff to step outside and call the animal. The sheep made no response
except to raise its head and look frightened. The judge then instructed the
defendant to go to the courtyard and call the sheep. When the accused man began
to make his distinctive call, the sheep bounded toward the door. It was obvious
that he recognized the familiar voice of his master.
This
is how God speaks to us. He doesn’t
drive us from behind, shouting insults and biting our heels. God leads from in front. God leads us to the abundant life primarily
by sending Jesus to show the way. And
Jesus leads mostly by example – come, follow me, live this way, the answer’s
over here… Walk this way, Jesus promises
and you will inherit the kingdom of God.
Some
people think that we have the voice of God in the Bible. But our United Methodist tradition teaches us
that the Bible is the Word of God, not the words of God. The Bible is not the voice of God speaking to
us. The Bible is the voice of a great
variety of people speaking to us about their experiences of God. Some of these people were inspired. Some were not. The Bible may be authoritive for us, but it
is not equally authoritive in all its parts. I would never start a book of the
Bible and preach it verse by verse, week after week, for instance; as many
fundamentalist preachers do. The Bible
is not equally valid in all its parts and some of it is even wrong. Bart Ehrman, who wrote the popular book,
Misquoting Jesus,” tells of the time he was in seminary trying hard to explain
how an episode in Mark might be true, despite clear evidence to the
contrary. A professor wrote in the
margin: “Perhaps Mark just made a
mistake.” Imagine That! We United Methodists read the Bible as only one
of the places where we hear the voice of God.
It is not the only place God speaks to us. John Wesley once said, “The Bible aside,”
slavery is a wrong which Christians must oppose. Wesley was convinced that God
abhorred slavery and so should Christians.
The problem was that the Bible did not seem to say this, at least not in
so many words. So… “The Bible aside!??” Such
a statement sends a shudder through many Christians. But we followers of John Wesley are called
sometimes to preach against the Bible, when God’s voice speaks more clearly to
us in some other way. I welcome the
variety of voices which God uses to express his will for us. In this regard, I have been thinking a lot
about the custom of standing for the reading of the Gospel which some of you
like so well. This tradition is not a
part of historic Methodism. It’s brought
to us by recent attempts to incorporate the practices of more orthodox
denominations, like Lutherans and Episcopalians into Methodist worship. Some
resist this innovation. Others welcome it. I’m for the most part indifferent. There’s a part of me that thinks it’s just a
bit too papist but I profit from a diversity of opinions in this and in many
others ways. I suggest that you receive
the Word of God in the words of the Bible according to your own
inclinations. We will all learn from
each other in this as in many other ways.
It is a grand Methodist tradition to say that the church is not a group
of like minded people. We do not have to
agree to be one in the Spirit!
None
of this means that hearing the voice of God is easy. We are all listening for the voice of God,
which always is easiest to hear when we are the quietest. But even then it is barely discernable. Often we have trouble hearing the voice of our
good shepherd. Martin Marty says that we
need to pray the same prayer in the same way for ten years before we will sense
and understand God’s response. And even
then we will be surprised by the gentle requests he makes, by the quiet example
he sends our way. The voice of God does
not often speak in words, much less complete sentences, but it can usually be
heard sometime between your getting up and your lying down each day, leading
you beside the still waters, restoring your soul.
Loving,
living God, accept our prayers and hear the sighs of our hearts as we listen
carefully for your voice in the midst of our lives and world. Amen.
Lord
Jesus, you lived your faith in total self- offering for the sake of love. We,
too, would embody our faith in offering ourselves to you and your loving,
life-saving purposes. May the world experience resurrection through both the
prayer and practical response, such as this, to human need and suffering. Amen