Have you ever met a shepherd? My guess is that most of us don’t know any shepherds personally. Somehow the Biblical image of shepherd is one that we relate to instinctively. Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” is the favorite of many, used frequently at funerals, sung often at Mass – like today. This Fourth Sunday of Easter every year presents the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd from the tenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, hence, Good Shepherd Sunday. This particular passage from the end of the chapter seems more about the “good sheep” than about the “good shepherd.” “My sheep hear my voice,” says Jesus. Because we hear his voice we follow him. Since we as Church are part of the “good sheep” we must attune our ears to hear the voice of Jesus.
But there’s hearing and then there’s hearing. I’m thinking this Mothers’ Day of hearing my mother’s voice. “Johnny, clean up your room.” “Okay Mom, after the show.” “Johnny, take out the trash.” “Okay mom, in a minute.” “Johnny, go outside and cut me a three foot long switch off the bush.” “I’ll do that room and take the trash right now, mom.” The phrase translated into English as “my sheep hear my voice” would, perhaps, be better translated “my sheep heed my voice” or “my sheep pay attention to my voice.” The Greek word that translated as “hearing” carries an implication of “obeying.” We should understand the passage to say that good sheep hear and heed, listen to and obey the voice of Jesus.
What does the voice of Jesus say to us today that the good sheep should heed, pay attention to? Let’s go back to a mother. Imagine a child waking up in the middle of the night crying in terror from a nightmare. Mother comes rushing in and holds the child and rocks her and says over and over again, “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. Nothing is going to hurt you.” Eventually the child calms down, stops crying and lets herself be rocked back to sleep. But that raises the question: was the Mother lying? Is it really going to be all right? War is still there. Poverty is still there. Racism is still there. Crime and violence are still there. Despite all that, mother is telling the truth because her very presence makes it all right. Mother and child together can face down any boogeyman. All of which helps to hear the voice of Jesus say to us, “I give you eternal life. You shall never perish. You can’t be separated from me.” In a world that seems to veer between being a buzzing, booming confusion or else a jungle of talon and claw the voice of Jesus tells us that all will be well, all manner of things will be well because he is with us. We must calm our hearts enough to hear Jesus say, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.”
As the good sheep we must heed the voice of Jesus that names his flock a great multitude “from every nation, race, people and tongue,” as we heard read from the Book of Revelation. The word Catholic by which we designate ourselves is defined by one writer as “here comes everybody.” We at St. James celebrate our diversity, our richness, our inclusiveness. Small as we are we do have people from, maybe not every nation, race, people and tongue, but certainly a great many. When we say being Catholic means embracing everybody it really means everybody. You often hear the critique that the Church is full of hypocrites. Hypocrites are part of everybody so they belong too. Everybody includes the odd, eccentric, and difficult, the clueless, the awkward, the annoying, the frustrating and embarrassing. Hey, they took me in, even me. I used to have a poster in the seminary that read “if you find the perfect Church, join it. Just understand that the minute you join it, it ceases being a perfect Church.”
We as the good sheep should heed the voice of Jesus simply because it is Jesus calling us. We probably don’t know many sheep. “Oh hi, mutton face.” Popular culture thinks of sheep as dumb, mindless, uninteresting. We denounce a mob that follows a leader like sheep. Why don’t they think for themselves, we cry! But when good sheep hear the voice of Jesus we know it as the voice of love, compassion, forgiveness, healing so we follow gladly. One of my favorite stories is about the time the famous Shakespearean actor Alex McGowan was doing a one man show dramatizing St. Mark’s gospel. At the end of the performance for an encore he would take requests – people would ask for famous soliloquies, “to be or not to be,” favorite poems, “Whose woods these are I think I know.” One old parson asked McGowan if he would recite Psalm 23. The actor agreed but only on the condition that the parson would do so after him. After he gave his dramatic rendition it was the parson’s turn. The audience hushed as he prayed, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want…” After he finished McGowan said to the silent crowd, “I know the psalm. He knows the shepherd.” We are gathered here this Sunday because we know the shepherd. We heed his voice and know that we are loved just as we are, without any pre-conditions or exceptions. We heed his voice because he calls us to a genuinely human life where every tear will be wiped away and where heart-felt joy is there for the taking. We heed his voice because we know that the way out of the differences, divisions, fighting, arguing will be by living his way. We heed the voice of Jesus because like a shepherd, like a mother, he leads us home.
