4th Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday) - Year "C" - April 29, 2007

"Hear the Shepherd's Voice!

 

Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice!”

 

Do we hear the voice of Jesus?  Jesus says, “I know them!”  He says that he knows which of us are his sheep, which of us hear him – because we follow him.  When we hear his voice, we choose to follow him!

 

How do we hear God’s voice?  How do we follow him?  When we listen to his word – we hear his voice – when we listen to our pastors – we hear his voice!  God speaks to us today through those who have been ordained to be our shepherds!

 

A priest dropped in on the Sunday school class on a Good Shepherd Sunday, just like today, and he spoke to the children about how a shepherd watches over his sheep, he gets them food and water, he protects them from harm and he loves them as his own.  Then he stood there in front of the class and said, “Who is your good shepherd?”

 

A little girl sitting at the front piped up and said, “Jesus!  Jesus is our good shepherd!”  Now the priest was hoping for a slightly different answer but he said, “Well yes, Jesus is our shepherd, but who am I?”  A little boy in the back put up his hand and answered, “Since you help Jesus, you must be the sheep dog!”

 

Children don’t always appreciate the depth of the mystery of our church – the little boy was right, the priests do help Jesus, but more than that our priests become Jesus for us. 

 

They are Jesus when they offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist and give us Christ’s real body and blood as Christ did himself.  They are Jesus when they forgive our sins just as Christ did himself, and they are Jesus when they proclaim his word and teach us with love, just as Jesus did himself!

 

Today on Good Shepherd Sunday, we also dedicate ourselves as the church of God to pray in a special way for vocations.  We pray that those who hear God’s voice in a special way will recognize his voice and follow him into the priesthood.  Each of us is called to listen to Jesus’ voice and follow him, to be both a servant of the Lord for others but also to be Jesus for others in our own lives.

 

When we were baptized, we were consecrated with the Sacred Oil of Chrism and the prayer was said, “You are a priest, prophet and King!”  We are all called to the priesthood of Jesus, to be ready to offer sacrifice – and that may mean that we have to be ready to sacrifice for others who are called to holy orders and religious life!

 

We know from the statistics, that there are still many young people today who consider a vocation, we know that they have heard Jesus’ voice and want to follow in their hearts – but sadly we know that many turn away!

 

Why? Many reasons!  Many reason which are found in the culture we live in today!  Jesus calls us to follow him, but we do not choose to follow.  Our culture looks on followers with disdain – our motto is “be a leader, not a follower!”  Our movie heroes are stoic loners who battle against all the odds and all the rules to come out on top. 

 

But that’s only the movies.  The real truth about the loners who fight against everyone is that they are mostly sad, hurt people, who often lash out against those around them as we saw in Virginia not too long ago.

 

One of the worst insults we have today is to call some a “sheep” – for us it means a mindless follower, like the war criminal who says he was only following orders.  But there’s a big difference between us and sheep.  The sheep follow from instinct, they do it without thinking.  We listen to the Lord’s voice, we hear his call, we feel his love in our hearts, and recognize the gift of faith he has laid before us and we willingly choose to follow. 

 

Jesus wants our choice, our readiness to give up things that may call us away from him in order to decide what is right and then to fall in on the path behind Jesus.  Jesus calls on all of us to pray for those young men and women considering a vocation to make the right choice – God’s choice, not our choices. 

 

This may be especially hard for their parents, when a mother’s choice for her daughter is to have grandchildren instead of becoming a sister, or a father’s choice who wants a son to carry on the business or the family name instead of becoming a priest, but we strive to remember that God’s choice is for the good of us all – not just for the few.

 

 

We use the image of the dumb sheep when it suits us to go our own way.  It always feels more powerful to rebel, to say “No” – it makes us stand out as individuals when our need to be somebody takes us down a selfish road instead of the right road.  Jesus is not taking away our right to say “No”, he is not forcing us to follow – he calls and he waits for us to recognize what hearing that voice means – eternal salvation!  When we choose him, it is a powerful choice and a difficult one, not the action of a weal-minded sheep!

 

It is our individualistic, selfish culture that is choking vocations because we push the spirit of sacrifice back behind our own desires.  The wealth of the first world has made us into a pagan culture, we are the “third world” spiritually. 

 

That is why we are seeing so many vocations from these faraway lands where sacrifice is still part of daily life, they still accept and understand the need to serve, and soon they will be the main source of our pastors if we, here in North America, do not listen again to Jesus voice as we once did!

 

Notice in today’s reading from the Act’s of the apostles, it was the Jew of High standing who rejected Jesus, all the while claiming to be his chosen people, not the Gentiles on the outside.  Today, it is the comfortable and rich Christians who are rejecting Jesus, and to whom Paul says, “We will turn now elsewhere!”

 

 

We are called to hear and choose to follow the shepherd, the shepherd who feed us with his own body and blood, to hear and choose to follow the shepherd who calls us his friends because we know his business, not because we are weak-minded followers. We are called to carve out some quiet time in our lives, to step away from the noise so that we have a chance to hear Jesus when he calls, to just listen, to hear his voice, and then to make our choice, the only choice that makes sense for eternity, to follow Him.

 

- Deacon Steve