A Sermon Based Upon John 10: 22-30: , NRSV
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 17th 2016
For the last couple weeks we have been considering what it means to live Christ’s resurrection in our lives. In the first message we spoke about doubt as as normal part of a life of faith. Last week I spoke about the church’s mission, reminding us that at its center, the church’s mission is a loving relationship with Jesus Christ.
While there are several biblical images describing what means be in a living, loving, faithful relationship of ‘walking with the Lord’ on a daily basis, today’s text affirms, that in the ancient world there was no better way to imagine our spiritual relationship with God, than the relationship between sheep and their shepherd. As we all know, this ‘image’ goes all the way back to the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd….” What is more biblical, more pastoral, and more descriptive of the special bond between a Shepherd and his Sheep? But there’s only one problem: How many of us have ever had sheep? We know whole lot more about dogs and cats, cows and chickens than we do shepherds and sheep.
The good thing about the Bible, is that most of the time, we don’t have to be bible experts to understand it. We also don’t have to have lived in the ancient, agricultural, or pastoral old world in order to understand it. In fact, what Jesus does in today’s passage is explain in clear, unmistakable terms, what it means for him to be ‘our shepherd’---then, and today.
Believing is Belonging
As we approach our text from this 10th chapter, we notice that the whole chapter is concerned with Jesus describing what the ‘good shepherd’ is and who are his ‘own sheep’ (10:3). Everyone who claims to be a ‘good shepherd’ (10:11) isn’t, and everyone who claims to be God’s sheep, aren’t (10:5). The struggle behind this whole conversation of“Who’s Who?” comes down to how do we recognize the ‘good Shepherd’ and how do we recognize his ‘own sheep’?
Surprisingly, Jesus suggests that when it comes to determining who’s who, is not as hard as you first think it might be. The ‘good shepherd’ is the ‘one who lays down his life for the sheep’ (10:11). “I know my own sheep, and they know me” (10:14), he affirms. He knows, they know, but how do WE KNOW that we are his sheep and he is ‘our’ shepherd (10:26)? This problem of identity became critical in Jesus’ day because some said Jesus ‘has a demon’ (10:20), and claimed they did not need to ‘believe’ in Jesus as their shepherd (10:26).
It is right here, when people are pressing Jesus to tell them clearly, whether or not he is the Messiah, that Jesus makes his first strong point about what it means to be in a valid, living and loving relationship with him as Shepherd. Looking straight into the eyes of those who don’t believe, Jesus says plainly, “You don’t believe because you don’t belong to my sheep (10:26).”
I find it very interesting that Jesus makes ‘belonging’ as big a priority as believing. This is not to say that belief is unimportant; it is. But what shapes and sharpens our beliefs is not what we chose to believe, as much as, it is how our beliefs can choose us. Recently, when I was preparing some of our youth for baptism, I was going over instructions with them about what I would ask them, just before I baptized them. I described how I always asked two simple questions: “Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord?” and also, “Do you renounce the devil and all his ways?” I went on to tell them that these two questions had been asked of baptism candidates for generations, and I wanted them to affirm their answers by simply answering, “I do”. One of the girls realized how serious this sounded and she asked, “I do? It’s not like I’m getting married, isn’t it?”
Yes it is. She understood, perfectly. This is exactly what it means to be baptized. Believing in Jesus means that we ‘get married’ to Jesus and now, you ‘belong’ together. While it is helpful, but not always essential that you agree or believe what your partner believes, it is always most essential that you know that you ‘belong’ together.
Belonging to Jesus and to the community of faith is the relational key of what it means to ‘believe’ in Jesus. Especially when we think of baptizing young people, or anyone for that matter, none of us know what it fully means to believe in Jesus when we are first baptized. When we first come to believe in Jesus, we believe with our whole heart, but ‘how’ we believe in Jesus still changes with our own understanding of who Jesus is and who we are. But to say that we ‘belong’ to Jesus never changes. No matter how our understanding of faith grows, we know that we ‘belong’ to him.
HEARING IS FOLLOWING
But Jesus wants to make his point even clearer. He not only tell us that believing and belonging go together, but he also reminds us in the very next verse, “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me” (v.27). Those who have a loving, living, growing, relationship with Jesus as their Shepherd, hear, listen, recognize and follow the Shepherd’s voice.
There is much we need to define, in a complicated and confusing world like ours, to discover exactly what it means to ‘hear’, ‘listen’ or ‘follow’ the ‘voice’ of the Good Shepherd. But again, Jesus says that it is not as complicated as we first might think, because, he has said, “My sheep know… or listen to my voice.” The point is that because these ‘sheep’ know this shepherd, they recognize and follow only his ‘voice’. As Jesus said earlier, “I know my own sheep and they know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. I give up my life for the sheep (10:14-15)” What ‘identifies’ them with each other is the ‘life-giving’ relationship that is present--- both between the Shepherd and the Sheep. While the sheep give the Shepherd his purpose, the shepherd gives up his life for the sheep. It this saving, sacrificial, life-giving care that causes the sheep to want to follow. As the Shepherd gives himself to them, they in turn will only ‘follow’ him.
Nothing is more picturesque than sheep following their Shepherd from one life-giving pasture to another. Once in Europe, while stopped on a major 4 lane road, all the traffic was stopped to allow 4 Shepherds to lead their ‘flock’ across the highway. As we waited in our cars, the sheep followed the Shepherd’s call, bouncing up against our cars, knocking them to and fro, until we thought they would turn us over. Nothing was going to stop these ‘sheep’ from following their Shepherds through a place of danger to a place of safety and sustenance. These sheep did not stop for us, neither did they notice us. That was exactly what me a little nervous, because a hundred or so Sheep, pushing against a car are strong, not paying attention to the fact that they are strong enough to push a car over. Fortunately that didn’t happen, but it was unmistakable how ‘determined’ those sheep were to go with their Shepherd, who was leading them. Nothing would stop them, not even a highway full of stopped cars they had to bump up against along the way.
When we follow Jesus, we will have to ‘bump up’ against a lot of strange things too, and we’ll also run into strangers. But no matter what or who we run into in this life, we still recognize the ‘voice’ of Jesus through his ‘life-giving story’, through ‘his teachings’, through his ‘sacrificial death’ and through his ‘validating resurrection’. It is not just through a couple of these that Jesus still calls his sheep by name, but it is by following this Shepherd, by ‘crucifying’ our lives with him (Gal 2:20) and being ‘raised with him into newness of life’ (Rom 6.4) that we know we are the ‘sheep of his pasture’.
FOLLOWING MEANS RECEIVING
When the sheep ‘follow’ this Shepherd, they receive a ‘gift’ no other Shepherd can give. As they believe, they belong; and because they recognize his voice, they follow. So now, as they follow him, he gives them ‘eternal life, so that they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand” (10:28).
As a child growing up, I always knew I was adopted. My parents always told me I was adopted, but at the same time, they always reminded me that I was their child just in no way different than if I had been their ‘natural child’. My mother even told me that ‘they choose me’, when I wondered what it meant to be adopted. While it was true that they ‘choose’ to adopt me, it wasn’t necessarily true that they ‘choose me’ out of some adoption ‘line up’---which is of course, what I often mistakenly pictured in my mind. I pictured ‘adoption’ that way, because that’s how their love felt. When I heard people asking, “Hey, your Fleta and Charlie’s boy, I never questioned it, because I felt it, lived it, and became it. My identity as their child, was not settled because it was on a piece of paper somewhere in a courthouse, but because it was written our hearts.
When Jesus says, ‘no one will snatch them out of my hand,’ we can feel the ‘firmness’ of his grip. How strong is Jesus’ grip? Jesus continues: “What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” Jesus’ grip or claim upon us is no less than the Father’s claim upon the Son. Just as the Son and the Father are one, so can become ‘one’ with Jesus.
A lot is in the news these days about whether or not people in this country should register their identity and whereabouts with the authorities. I find the whole discussion almost comical, because when I lived in Germany, to remain in Germany as a foreign citizen, I had to ‘register’ with the local authorities every two years. We called it getting a ‘work visa’, but it was much more. I always had to take an official letter, or someone with me, who could verify who I was, why I was there, and why someone in that country ‘needed’ me to be there. There was no staying in that country, even as an American, without having somebody to verify who I was. The first time I tried to re-register myself, all the paperwork somehow got messed up. There was just no way to convince the authorities I needed to be there, unless I brought someone with me to verify who I was. I brought “uncle tick-tock” with me. I know you don’t know who in the world that was, but I know, and it made all the difference. In that German office of authority, there was nothing trusted, and there was nothing left to chance. My only way to stay in that country was to ‘know’ someone and to be ‘verified’ by someone. I was verified by ‘uncle tick-tock’.
If you haven’t noticed, the strongest language in the Bible is not what some think it is. It is not mere ‘religious’ language, but it is ‘relational’ language. This is what being a ‘sheep’ means---that we are so much in the Shepherd’s grip that we always remain ‘his’. There is no stronger, clearer language of faith, just as there is no stronger reality: to be who you are is the one thing no one can take from you. While others may not recognize you, you always know who you are. And when you are with him---when you belong, listen, and follow this Shepherd who calls you ‘his sheep’---when you are with him, there can’t be any doubt about who you are. You are ‘with Him’ because he is ‘in you’. You always ‘know’ who you are, by knowing ‘to whom’ you belong. I’m ‘uncle tick-tock’s friend, I’m Teresa’s husband, I’m Fleta and Charlie’s boy. I’m one of Jesus’ sheep. This is who I am, do you know ‘who’ you are? “He” is how we know. Amen.
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