Hearing the Divine Voice

April 25, 2010

The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

When I was young my parents used to have great parties. My sisters and I were usually relegated to the upstairs, where we would sit at the top of the stairs with our feet dangling over the banister bars and listen to the din of happy voices. Lots of voices-- and light hearted but loud conversations punctuated by roars of laughter. What always amazed me was that out of the crowd I could always hear my mother’s voice. At the time, I thought she must have had the loudest voice but in retrospect I realize that she really wasn’t that loud- It was just that I was intimately connected to her and that familiarity was what made her voice stand out above the rest.

In today’s passage from the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.” Jesus is responding to the leaders of the Jewish religious establishment who have gathered around him to question him. These leaders are determined to stymie Jesus’ mission, determined to trap him, determined to have him killed. They have just asked Jesus, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” A literal translation of their question would be “How long are you taking away our life?” and in modern Greek the idiom means “How long will you continue to annoy us?” (NIB,O’Day, p.676) Just as Jesus has been gathering hundreds of followers, he has also annoyed and angered, no, not just angered, enraged, the Jewish religious establishment with his words, with his actions, with his very being, all of which point to his being one with God. These leaders claim to want to know if he is the Messiah. They say, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly” and Jesus responds, “I have told you and you do not believe.” (His response reminds me of a movie where Jack Nicholson’s character, screams at his opponent, “You can’t HANDLE the truth!”) It does seem that the Jewish leaders truly could not handle the truth and all that the truth would cost them. Jesus goes on to tell them that because they do not believe, they do not belong to his sheep. Jesus implies that belief is the distinguishing mark between sheep of his fold and sheep outside his fold. For this gospel writer, belief is critical in how the gospel story unfolds; toward the end of John’s gospel he says that this story has been written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah and that by believing you may have life in his name. (Jn. 20:31)

Now what about those who were Jesus’ sheep? Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish.” To be one of Jesus’ sheep certainly implies having life. Those keeping company with Jesus literally followed him through Galilee, Samaria, and into Jerusalem, and along the way they witnessed his teaching on forgiveness and humility and healing, his stilling storms and feeding thousands with a few scraps of food; they witnessed his generosity at the wedding at Cana where he turned water into wine; they witnessed his aggravating those in religious authority as he demanded justice and truth and congruency from those leaders; they would have witnessed the total surrender of his life as he was nailed to the cross, and finally they would have witnessed the total exhilaration of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.

Surely when Jesus’ followers set out with him, they had no earthly idea of what was to come, no sense of what this journey would entail, no way of knowing what would be around the corner. But his presence compelled his followers to go with him. His teaching forgiveness and justice, his restoring health to many, his reaching out to the poor and the disenfranchised, his imparting the divine truth compelled them to follow him; Jesus’ followers would have heard his voice not only through his words but also through his actions. As they watched, as they witnessed his love and power, as they became intimately connected to Jesus, his followers began to surrender their own agenda to his. They consented to lose sight of their old ways of living. They began to know his voice as their faithful shepherd. These first century Palestinians would have understood the image of the shepherd and his sheep’s ability to know the shepherd’s voice as indicative of a very intimate relationship between shepherd and sheep. The sheep hearing the shepherd’s voice would have implied a deep knowing, a deep trust and a deep dependence. A good shepherd can be trusted as he guides, searches for, protects and lovingly tends to his sheep.

So, can we see ourselves in this story? Can we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, the divine voice? God is constantly calling us to the intimate relationship that would allow us to hear and know his voice. His voice is one of deep, abiding love and acceptance, a voice that promises forgiveness and peace, and yet it is also a demanding voice-this love thy neighbor thing is no small task! God’s is a voice that demands justice and truth. God’ voice gives life, life that results in repentance from sin, life that results in gratitude and the ability to accept love and forgiveness:; God’s voice calls us to believe that Jesus Christ is the way of being in a right relationship with God., and to life in all its fullness.

We hear a cacophony of erroneous voices in our day to day experience:

Voices that tell us we will be happy if we just buy this name brand.

Voices that tell us if we just gain a few pounds or lose a few, we will be complete.

Voices that tell us that living unto ourselves, for ourselves, is the goal.

Voices that tell us we aren’t worth much if we don’t have the perfect job, the perfect spouse, the perfect bank balance.

Voices that push us to control, to strive for power, to gain the upper hand.

Voices that tell us that apologizing to someone is a sign of weakness.

Voices that tell us darkness reigns.

The good news is that God still speaks! God’s voice can still be heard this day and every day; the good shepherd still calls us all by name even in the din of voices that aim to wound or destroy God’s creatures . We still have this invitation to follow him, to be intimately connected to him. Hearing God’s voice begins by believing that he is indeed speaking to us and then by listening. To truly listen we must make room for silence, we must make room to be still.

Writer Martin Laird says, “Silence is an urgent necessity for us; silence is necessary if we are to hear God speaking in eternal silence; …We enter the land of silence by the silence of surrender, and there is no map of the silence of surrender.” (Into the Silent Land, p.3) To be silent before God signals a deep vulnerability and dependency and a deep trust. This silence of surrender means opening up oneself to new horizons. This weekend a friend of mine told me that she prayed about something that was really troubling her. She told God to choose between answer “A” or answer “B.” Well, as it turned out God chose answer “C!” When she truly opened herself up to listening to the divine voice, her horizon expanded. Sitting before God in silence offers a wonderful opportunity to know and be known by God. When we have made space within for silence and stillness we are able to go into the loudest and busiest of situations and still discern God’s voice, sometimes offered through a friend or stranger, in a loud party, in an important and stressful meeting or on a lonely bench at a bus station. The silence of surrender allows us to listen deeply for God’s call to believe, God’s word of love and acceptance, God’s word of forgiveness, God’s demands for justice and truth, God’s call to repentance that restores us to him. Like the first century Jewish leaders’ experience, sometimes we are rather deeply annoyed with God’s word, perhaps a word that would have us forgive the seemingly unforgivable because we cannot always understand the ways of God; but as Jesus’ followers discovered, when we hear his voice and are able to follow, we can be secure in knowing, even though we have no road map, that this Good Shepherd will always lead us into the way of life, full-blown life, the deepest experience of life, eternal life. Jesus promises his sheep, promises his followers who believe that they are safe with him, that he can be trusted, that those who follow him have been given the gift of eternal life and will never perish; they will have life and will have it abundantly.

Believe and listen for his voice. God is speaking.