FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR C

May 8, 2022

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

 

John 10:22-30

 

Strangely enough, today’s Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, takes us back from spring into the dark cold of winter: “It was the Feast of the Dedication at Jerusalem; it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the Temple, in the portico of Solomon.”

 

The Feast of the Dedication is what we commonly call Hanukkah: the Jewish winter festival. In our Lord’s time, it was one of the great pilgrimage festivals, like Passover, when Jews from all over the Holy Land and around the Diaspora would go up to Jerusalem to worship in the Temple.

 

The Feast of the Dedication was specifically associated with the Temple itself. And, unlike the other great pilgrimage festivals, it was of comparatively recent origin. Almost two centuries earlier, in 167 BC, the Hellenistic Greek rulers of Palestine desecrated the Temple, setting up a statue of Zeus in its precincts. After a two-year rebellion led by Judas Maccabeus, the Jews liberated Jerusalem and re-consecrated the Temple to the worship of Israel’s God. It was this restoration that was annually commemorated during the Feast of the Dedication.

To this day, the Hanukkah service includes a lengthy reading from Chapter 7 of the Book of Numbers, which describes Moses dedicating the Tent of Meeting – which housed the Ark of the Covenant before the Temple was built. At the conclusion of this elaborate ritual dedication, a miracle occurred:

 

And when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was upon the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him.

 

Some New Testament scholars conjecture that when Jesus declares during this Feast of the Dedication that “my sheep hear my voice,” he’s intentionally evoking this memory of God speaking to Moses in the Tent of Meeting. His voice as the Incarnate Word of God is the same divine voice that spoke to patriarchs and prophets throughout Old Testament history.

 

One of the distinguishing features of our Judeo-Christian tradition is that we worship a God who speaks, a God who has a voice. The biblical God is not just some sort of ineffable abyss of silence beyond all words and images. He’s much more than that: a personal, active, dynamic, and loving God who reveals himself and his saving purposes for creation through his Word. He has a voice that can be heard, and a Word that can be understood.

 

To take just two favorite Old Testament stories: when the boy Samuel is lying in bed at night in the Temple at Shiloh, he hears a voice calling his name, “Samuel, Samuel.” He thinks it’s his mentor the priest Eli calling him, so he goes to Eli and says, “Here I am, for you called me.” After this happens several times, Eli realizes that it’s the voice of the Lord, and instructs Samuel to respond, “Speak Lord, for thy servant hears.”

 

Centuries later, the prophet Elijah flees forty days into the wilderness to escape his enemies who are trying to kill him. He arrives at Mount Horeb and takes refuge in a cave. A series of spectacular natural phenomena shake and rend the mountain: earthquake, wind, and fire. But the Lord is not in any of these. Then, in the silence following, there comes a “still, small voice,” by which the Lord tells Elijah what he must do next.

 

Sometimes, God speaks not in a “still small voice” but much more dramatically. In the Acts of the Apostles, Saul is on the road to Damascus to arrest any Christians he finds and bring them in chains back to Jerusalem. Suddenly a light from heaven flashes around him; as he falls to the ground, he hears a voice asking, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” When he replies, “Who are you, Lord?” the voice answers, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” This moment marks the turning point in Saul’s life: the beginning of his conversion from persecutor of the Church to Apostle to the Gentiles.

 

When Jesus declares in today’s Gospel that his sheep know his voice and follow him, he’s most likely alluding to the shepherding practices of the time. Apparently, Middle Eastern shepherds each have a distinctive call. When their flocks intermingle, either in grazing pastures or in overnight enclosures, each shepherd gives his distinctive call when it’s time to move on, to which only the sheep belonging to his flock respond by following where he leads.

 

The question for us, then, is whether we’re listening for the voice of our shepherd: an especially appropriate question in Eastertide when we proclaim his resurrection from the dead. Because he lives, he still speaks, and we can still hear his voice.

 

The challenge for us is to cultivate attentiveness to God’s voice in our own daily lives. Down through the centuries, the Church has commended spiritual practices of prayer, meditation, and scripture reading with precisely this end in view. 

 

The popular misconception of prayer is that it’s all about talking to God. It does include that, but the most important moments occur when we finish telling God whatever’s on our minds, and then shut up and start listening. Sometimes we hear him saying something and sometimes we don’t. It’s okay either way. Sometimes he allows just to bask silently in his presence, and that’s fine. 

 

On other occasions, we may hear a word of comfort, reassurance, calling, or even warning. If we believe we’re hearing such a word, we do need to be careful. The Church’s tradition counsels us to test everything by the Scriptures—and, if it seems that God is giving some specific direction, to test it by talking it out with trusted spiritual friends and advisors. 

 

In other words, the task of discerning God’s Word is best done in community, among fellow members of the Body of Christ, and never individually on our own. Indeed, God often speaks to us not in the solitary silence of our hearts, but in the living voices of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

During this past year and a half of transition, we’ve all heard many voices saying many different things, and I know we’ve all done our best to exercise discernment. We’ve spent much time in prayer, and we’ve tested the words that we’ve heard in prayerful conversation with one another. I’ve done my best to be a good shepherd to this flock, just as Father Russ was before me and as I’m confident Fr. Jesse will be after he arrives.

 

Whatever the future holds, we take comfort in Our Lord’s promise: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no-one shall snatch them out of my hand.” Jesus the Good Shepherd will never forsake us. So, my word for today is simply this: Always listen for the voice of the Shepherd. Always listen to the voice of the Shepherd.