The Voice of the Good Shepherd

My friend Tom Rickenbacker grew up in Virginia. He loved to go down to the pond behind his house and fish or just mess around, daydreaming. His parents were constantly scolding him for going off alone. But he loved the outdoors.

It was winter one year when Tom was about six. He awoke on a Saturday and there was frost on the ground, not a normal occurrence in the south. He ate breakfast and horsed around with his brother until about eleven o’clock. His mother told him that he was not allowed to go down to the pond. “It might be dangerous!” she said. She was always overcautious and forbid him from going down to the water alone. But Tom’s brother was content to read and he was bored.

He went downstairs. Phew! No one was in the kitchen! Tom snuck out of the house on his way to the pond. “I wonder if there is ice!” he thought. And if there was ice, was it strong enough for him to walk on? He was excited by the glittering beauty of the frost and the iceickles hanging from the trees. It was a glorious day.When he reached the pond, he was pleased. There was ice and lots of it. He put his foot on it and pressed down…nothing. It appeared thick and strong. Tom stood on it, knowing that if the ice broke, he would do nothing but get his sneakers wet, since the water was so shallow. Then he shuffled a bit further out. The ice seemed to hold. It was incredibly beautiful. “What if I got cut a hole in the ice and tried to fish like an ice-fisherman that I saw on TV?” Tom got more and more excited with this idea. He went and collected a big rock.

Moving out further onto the ice, carrying the rock, Tom carefully eased his way to the center of the pond. Now, if he fell in, he would surely get really wet and have to pull himself out. He knew that he shouldn’t be doing this, but the thrill was so great. It was just like the movies! He was about ready to throw the stone on the ice to make a hole, when he heard a voice. It was very quiet for it was a long way off, but he heard it distinctly.

“HMM!!” It sounded a bit like his mother. He couldn’t make out her word, but it sounded like his name. Was she calling for him? She would be furious if she knew that he had come down to the pond again and gotten on the ice. Maybe he was hearing things. Maybe he hadn’t heard anything at all.

He waited. Nothing. Thank God, it was just his imagination. He got ready to throw the stone. “TMMM!” Oh, no, there it was again! The voice. It sounded much more familiar and it must be moving closer because it was louder. Could he pretend that he didn’t hear? Should he run and hide?

“TOMMM!” Now that was definitely his mother. She didn’t sound so happy. He inched his way off the pond with the stone, going the other way so that he could hide from her in the woods. Maybe if I run and hide, I can get back to the house the long way and pretend that I was there all the time.”THOMAS MICHELLE RICKENBACKER!!” Oh no. That name. She used his full name. She was mad. He stood on the side of the shore of the pond, put down the stone and waited for the worst to happen.

“THOMAS MICHELLE RICKENBACKER, you come home this minute!!” Oh, well. The gig was up. He began to run back towards the voice. On and on he ran, expecting a punishment any time. He got to the house. His mother stood on the porch, he hands on her hips. “Come Inside” she said.

So inside he went, into the large kitchen. And there were all his friends from first grade. Andy and Allen and Scott and Ricky. And there was a huge cake and presents. He had forgotten that it was his birthday. His dad, even his granddad and grandma were there. He had forgotten that it was his birthday.

In today’s gospel, Jesus is walking in the temple at the Feast of the Dedication, what we call Hannukah. The Jews are trying to get him to admit to being the Messiah so that they can arrest him. But Jesus tells them that they are not his sheep. So it doesn’t matter what he tells them. They will never believe.

My sheep hear my voice, he says. And I know them and they follow me.

There are only two things that you need to do to be a sheep in the flock of the Good Shepherd. You need to hear his voice and you need to follow. Notice that Jesus does not say that his sheep know him, rather he says that he knows them. “My sheep hear my voice and I know them, and they follow me.”

If we are really quiet, many of us can hear God’s voice. Now I’m not talking about a verbal voice, though some claim to have heard that. No, I am talking about the call of God. I like to call it the Pull, because it is not necessarily verbal. It an be a sense, a feeling, a knowledge. What is pulling on your heart? What gives you peace? What do you know God would take joy in? Where is the light in your life, the right, the courage, the life? Ask yourself these questions and you will experience the the pull. Something will urge you on in the direction that Christ would walk. And then you know that you have heard the voice of the Good Shepherd.

Most of us in this church and trying to follow that call from God. But most of us spend a lot of time stalling and questioning, doubting and hiding. Like my friend Tom, I think that we believe that if we truly follow the pull of the Good Shepherd, that we will be punished. We hear the voice but we are scared and so we pretend that we didn’t hear it. Or we make excuses saying that God was not clear enough, that we could not be sure it was God, when, deep down inside, we do know.

So may people have said to me, “Oh, I don’t hear voices!” Of course you don’t, but when you are quiet and when you pray, can’t you often identify the way that is most loving? And if you do identify it, what are you waiting for? Sometimes there are many directions in which God calls us, but I believe that most of you know what is best for you and hSo why do we run when we feel the pull to move closer to God? Or why do we pretend that we don’t hear? Why do we inch away or ignore? I think that we expect God to make us work and suffer for our faults. I think we find ourselves unworthy and we are scared of loosing our comfort. Like Tom, we want to run and hide from God’s voice when all God wants to do is throw a party for us.

There is an old folktale about a man who gets to heaven and St. Peter is standing at the gate. (I remind you that I don’t believe in this scenario, because I think that God will run to us like the Running Father in the story of the prodigal son.) The man goes up to St. Peter. St Peter asks him his name and occupation. “John Fowler” he says. “Engineer.”
“Oh, yes, Welcome Home John!” St Peter opens the gate wide and invites John into heaven.”Wait!” John says. “That’s it? What about the time that I lied and almost cheated on my wife? You’re just going to let me in??”

“Yes, John, that’s the way it works.” John could see streets of gold inside, more beautiful than anything he had seen before, but he backed up a step. “No, this isn’t right. I am not ready. You don’t mean me.”

“Oh, yes we do, John. We mean you.”

“No, that is too bright. I have too many faults. God must not be aware of my faults.”

“Oh, but he is, John and he welcomes you inside.”
With each word, John took another step back until finally he said, “I just can’t do this.” And he turned around and walked away from heaven.

I want to suggest to you that you do hear God’s voice. All of you! After all, you are here. Most of you, deep down inside, know right from wrong and what God would have you do. What we lack is the strength and courage to actually follow, because the way is unfamiliar and its bright and we would rather argue within ourselves about whether we can actually hear God. Or feel the pull. We would rather waste our time arguing about issues that are not central to our faith, complaining about our neighbors, worrying about our business. We do so many things to drown out the voice of the Good Shepherd! We stay so busy, with so much noise in our lives, that we can’t listen to anything! But deep in your hearts, no matther how busy you are, he continues to call.

Trust that you do hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. Trust that you have known all your life about God’s love for you and God’s will for you. And begin to move in the direction of that pull, of that voice.

The Easter joy awaits us all who have the courage to move closer to God. But sometimes we pretend that we don’t hear and we spend our lives waiting on the periphery of joy, taking a step back whenever we are invited to move inside. Have courage! God has something in mind for you which is so much greater than you can imagine if you would only trust and follow, trust and follow.

Unbearable Joy

When I was growing up, I lived down the street from Kelly Mayhan. Kelly was a bit overweight and it seemed like her pants were always about to fall down. She was a little slow-moving too and sometimes she said silly things.

One day I heard an argument in the front yard. I came outside to see Kelly arguing with my little brother. “You do not live in the white house!” he was saying. Kelly was on the verge of tears. “Yes I do!” she cried. “I do live in the White House!”

“No! You Don’t!”
“Yes! I DO!”
And on and on it went. Finally, I interrupted them.

“Jon,” I explained. “Kelly doesn’t live in the President’s White House, but she means that she lives in the White House down the street…
“Yes, but that’s not The White House, that’s just A White House!”
“No! I live in THE WHITE HOUSE!” Kelly screamed. Now, tears were falling down her face.
My brother, in his five-year-old frustration, did something that got him in a LOT of trouble. He was so fed up with the argument that he ran up to Kelly and pulled down her pants. And there she stood, silly girl, crying her eyes out in her underwear, with her pants down at her feet. I came up to her and helped her pull her pants up but not before my parents had seen the incident and, boy, my brother was in big trouble.

And I told Kelly that she really did live in The White House. I believed her.

I could see my brother’s reasoning. How could silly little Kelly claim to live in The White House? It was preposterous. No one could believe it. He certainly wouldn’t swallow it, so he just got mad. And then he did something really stupid.

The Easter Season has begun. It is the most radical, incredible seasons of the Church Year. But we don’t get Easter at all. We think that Easter is a Sunday, one celebration, one day. We party it up, find eggs, pull out all the stops at worship, and then get back to life as usual. But celebrating Easter for just one day just doesn’t cut it. It is like living in the little white house down the street when you had a chance to move into the President’s White House. But the problem is that most of us can only contemplate the Resurrection for a short period of time. You could say that we just can’t tolerate the joy.

When Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene by the tomb, she couldn’t even recognize him. She couldn’t even recognize the love of her life. Why? Was it that she could not see clearly through all those tears? Was she so despairing that she could not function? No, I think Mary did not recognize Jesus because she had NO IDEA that it could be this good. Because she could not wrap her mind around the event of his return. It literally blew her mind, like too much electricity shorts a breaker. She couldn’t take it all in.

Jesus had to say her name to get her to wake up to his presence. Mary, he says. And with his words, her eyes open and she takes it in, the event of the resurrection. She is so overcome with joy that she tries to run to him, but he tells her that she cannot hold him. Then he tells her to preach, to go and tell the disciples The Good News, that He is alive.

When Mary tells the other disciples, they cannot believe either. They rush to the tomb to see for themselves. And so many of the resurrection appearances are the same. People are literally blown away.

Why do you think that Jesus had to appear so many times? He appears at the tomb, in the Upper Room twice, on the Road to Emmaus, in the Galilee, by the Sea and many more times? Why so many? Because God knew that we would need the resurrection BANGED into our heads! Because it was, quite literally, too good to be true.

When Jesus appeared in the Upper Room to his disciples and friends, they are so overjoyed that they cannot contain themselves. They touch him and eat with him, stare at him and talk to him. They feast their eyes on him. And after he leaves, they can talk of nothing else. They cannot seem to contain their joy, for true joy is like that, it is infectious.

They tell the one friend who was not there, Thomas. And even though Thomas has a room full of his trusted confidants telling him in no uncertain terms that Jesus is alive, that He has risen, Thomas cannot take it in. Even though he witnesses how his friends are literally transformed from grief into joy, even though their stories all match and they talk of him eating and drinking, laughing and talking, Thomas cannot bring himself to believe. He cannot trust his friends. More than that, Thomas refuses.

“I will not believe until I can put my fingers in the wounds in his hands and my hand in his side.” Thomas would rather grieve and be sad than risk trusting that Jesus might have come back. He was unwilling to face the fact that something could be that good. He would rather choose the sadness of bereavement than risk joy.

For belief is just that. It is nothing more than trust. When I say, I believe in you, I am really just saying, I trust you. And we find it hard to trust in God. Thomas found it hard to trust God, to trust that God might be THAT GOOD.

Joy is tough for us human beings. Believe it or not, we have a much easier time accepting sadness or loss than accepting true, radical joy. Oh, we say that we want to be happy. But what we really long for is comfort, not the kind of blazing love that Jesus displays to us in the resurrection. The Resurrection scares the living daylights out of us. It blows all our breakers. It is so bright that we cannot contemplate it for very long. It is like looking directly at the sun. It is simply too bright.

Lent is much more manageable for us. We are meticulous about those forty days. We count them, adhere to them. We discipline our bodies and minds and draw near to God, contemplating our own short-comings and our sin. We can get our minds around Lent. But when it comes to the 50 days of Easter, we jump ship. Who can handle 50 days of celebration? It is just too much, too much good news, too much joy. It is unbearable.

Why is it unbearable? Because God not only brought Jesus back from the dead, but God wants YOU. God wants to bring YOU TOO! You have an invitation to a banquet and it is like nothing you have ever seen before. But this news is so good that we tend to ignore it, and think about our dirty houses and our errands instead. We put out sunglasses on in the brightness of this light and resume our diets before the feasting has even begun.

I want you to work on something for me this Easter Season. I want you to try to bear JOY. I want you to step into the light of contemplating God’s immense salvation for just a short moment each day. When you are trying to adjust your eyes to the light, you try to expose them in short periods, then gradually increasing those moments until you can see more clearly.

Open your eyes to the fact that God has given you a gift of such magnitude and magnificence that you cannot even begin to understand it. For one brief moment, try to believe that everything will be OK, and that your life is just beginning. There is something ahead of you that is so good.

Sometimes, when I am visiting the dying, I can’t stop smiling. I have to be very careful, because people are in pain and they might think I have lost my mind. But I cannot stop smiling.

What God Had in Mind

I have been married for fifteen years. I am so blessed to have found my husband. I never could have imagined finding a man more suited to who I am and who I want to become. I thank God every day for him.

When I was younger, I spent a lot of useless time worrying about who I would marry. I was concerned that any man who would want to marry me would probably be a bore. I couldn’t imagine spending my entire adult life with a boring person. This thought really troubled me.

Well, JD is anything but boring. And what I have learned is that God had a love story in mind for me, one which I could not have chosen myself. I didn’t even have a clue about what love could be. But God had love in mind from the beginning, before I even knew what it really looked like.

The first fully documented liturgy of the early Christian Church took place on Easter.

For forty days, people who wanted to become Christian had to study and fast. All during Lent, they were separated from the body of the Church, they read and they prayed. Then on the Eve of Easter, they got ready for the biggest celebration of their lives.

The Catechumens, those about to become Christian, wore white, like brides. All through the night, the early church read to them from the Hebrew Scriptures, with only the light of the Pascal candle to see by. All through the night, they heard the history of the Hebrew people and how they waited, longing for a Messiah to save them. They heard about Adam and Eve, about how Abraham sacrificed his son Isaac, about how their people escaped from slavery in Egypt, about how Elijah had a vision of dry bones rising into bodies. And as they heard these ancient texts, the people realized once more how God had love in mind for them from the beginning. They had no idea what a true Messiah would look like, but God knew. And when they were ready, God showed them how this love had been woven into the fabric of their lives from the beginning of creation.

Once all the readings were over, just as the sun was about to rise, the early Christians baptized the Catechumens. And as the waters of baptism poured over the heads of the new believers, the sun rose. And with the coming of the dawn, the church celebrated the resurrection of Jesus, shouting and dancing for joy.

We had no idea what loved looked like until Jesus came. And once he came, everything else made sense. God had love in mind for us from the very beginning.

Washing Us Clean

I just finished reading a book called The Cay. My son Luke recommended it. It is a young adult book with a powerful message.

Young Philip is eleven. His mom is homesick in the Carribean and wants to return with him to Virginia during World War II. On board the boat, they are attacked by German submarines. Philip feels something hit his head and he goes unconscious.

When Philip wakes up, he can see a large old black man leaning over him. His vision is foggy. He is on board a raft. The man introduces himself as Timothy.

Within a day, Philip is blind. Timothy protects Philip, taking part of the raft to build a small shelter for them from the sun. They land on a tiny island which they call The Cay, where Timothy builds a better shelter, fishes and teaches Philip how to feel his way around the tiny island.

After about a month on the island, Timothy says that he senses a storm coming. He ties their water jug to the tree and makes sure that Philip eats a good meal. Then he holds Philip against a tree, tying his body over Philip with vines until they are both lashed to the tree.

The storm comes and Timothy holds the little boy to the tree, protecting him from the elements. Timothy’s back is cut to pieces. When the storm is over, Timothy is dead. But Philip is able to survive from all that Timothy has taught him . Eventually, Timothy is rescued.

Today we remember the last will and testament of Jesus. He did not create a written document. He did not have a durable power of attorney. But what he did, he did intentionally, with the knowledge that he was going to die.

What would you do if you had one day to live? What would you say?

Jesus did three things. He told us that he loved us and to love one another. He fed us. And he washed our feet.

We remember the food part every Sunday, how Jesus fed us. That’s what we do with the ones we love, we gather with them for a meal. It is like saying, I love you and I want you to survive, so eat. We are more comfortable with this part. It is familiar to us and it is beautiful.

The second thing that Jesus did is so intimate, so completely vulnerable that it is disarming. It makes us uncomfortable, even two thousand years later. Jesus bathed the disciples, as a mother bathes her helpless baby, as a daughter bathed her mother’s body after she died of cancer. Jesus washed our dirty, smelly feet. He loved even the ugliest, lowest part of us.

So when we reinact the foot-washing, look for God, see God. Use it as an icon. Picture how Jesus did it for the disciples and how he does it for you.

For Jesus knew that we are blind in comparison to God and we are all children to God. We need feeding and we need washing just like Philip. We cannot see what God is doing. We cannot see what is beyond this life. So Jesus lashed himself to us and took on the storm of death. He died for us so that we could live, so that we could see, so that we could believe.

About Judas

I can’t remember how old I was when I first saw the movie Star Wars. All I remember is the incredible special effects, the thought of the vastness of outer space, the beauty and truth of that thing that they called The Force and the ultimate evil of Darth Vader. For a kid, Darth Vader was as bad as it could get. In a time when computers were a little scary and unknown, he was a man who was machine. His breathing, do you remember it? I could hear that breathing in my sleep at night, it haunted my worst nightmares. And that black face, devoid of all expression. And let’s not forget the music. No bad guy would be quite so bad without his music. All I had to do was hear the first few notes and I knew exactly who was coming.

We love movies because they separate the light from the darkness so clearly. They take our complex and broken world, where there is so much beauty and so much pain and they make is simple. Bad guys and good guys. We all wish it were so easy. Just kill the bad guys off and live happily ever after. If we just wipe out the bad guys, we’ll be back in Eden, right? Unfortunately, in the real world, it is so much more complex, because part of the bad guy, part of the problem, lives inside our very selves.

Take Judas. He is the bad guy of the gospels, the guy everybody loves to hate. We love to write him off, the one who betrayed the Son of God. We never think of him as a person, as a disciple. As somebody who once loved Jesus. Thinking of this is too hard for us. It means that Judas might be like you or me. And we wouldn’t want to admit that we too could have betrayed Jesus, so we paint Judas as an evil person and move on.

But let’s go back to the beginning. All of Jesus’ disciples were called by him, singled out to become his closest followers. Judas would have been called, invited. And he answered that call! Not everyone who Jesus invited was willing to follow him. Remember the rich young man who turned Jesus’ invitation down and went away sad because he would not give away his money? Judas was willing to give up his life as he knew it. Who knows what he left behind to follow Jesus. Did he leave a family behind, a wife and children? Did he leave his parents, relatives, a job? Whatever life Judas lived before Jesus came, he was willing to leave it all behind for Jesus. And beneath all this is the clear indication that Judas loved Jesus.

Most human beings are only willing to sacrifice for those whom we truly love. Judas loved Jesus and he believed in him! He followed Jesus across the country, from the Galilee to Jerusalem. He listened as Jesus taught, ate with Jesus, sat at his feet. He was there when Jesus rode into Jerusalem. And then Judas started to go wrong.We will never know when the doubts and worries began in Judas’ mind, but this gospel reading is a clear indication that Judas was beginning to question his master. Listen to the gospel today as if you have never heard it before. It is six days before the Passover, six days before Jesus will be crucified. He is enjoying dinner at his friends’ home, the closest thing that he has to a home, in Bethany. Martha is doing her usual thing, remaining busy in the kitchen and probably holding a grudge about it. Lazarus, her brother, has been raised from the dead and is sitting at the table, eating. (I always imagined that Lazarus might have had some kind of a dazed expression on his face, like, huh? What in the heck happened to me?) And then there is Mary. Mary the devout one, who loved Jesus with such passion and zeal that she didn’t give a hoot what she looked like or what everyone thought of her. Mary reminds me of the great saints of old who ran around in rags praising Jesus with such love that people thought they were mad. I remember reading of one saint who loved to speak of Jesus, so people began to follow him in great numbers. But one day, someone said that he was like Jesus. This comment appalled him, for his Lord was so much greater than he was. So he shaved half his beard. I need to look like a fool, so that people will learn to love Jesus and not me, he said. For centuries, there have always been Mary’s, people who do abundant and passionate things for God, and gladly suffer the consequences of their actions.

Mary was so in love with her Master that she got some oil. Now this was costly oil, made of pure nard. It might have been her most valuable possession and there was one pound of it. It was scented, as perfume. She poured the whole pound of it on Jesus’ feet. Picture a pound of oil! I tend to get the small pints of olive oil. This was a LOT of oil. It would have been running everywhere, over his feet, over the floor, onto her clothes and legs. I’m sure Martha thought about the mess that Mary was making, but she now knew enough to keep her mouth shut.

Usually oil was used to anoint the head. In the Old Testament, it was used to anoint kings and to signify their God-given appointment. The prophet Samuel anointed David to be King of all Israel when he was just a boy and it was believed that this anointing symbolized God’s hand in selecting him above all others to rule the land. Never had oil been used to anoint the feet. This was like saying, your feet are my King. Your dirty, callused feet are higher than those of the highest leader. The feet were considered the lowest part of the body, dirty and insignificant. Washing someone’s feet with water was a huge act of servitude.

And then she did something worse. She wiped them with her hair. A woman’s hair was precious and beautiful, something to be hidden. Women wore headdresses in those days, covering their hair with a cloth so as to be modest. But this woman not only showed her hair, she used it as a washcloth, covering it with oil and the dirt of his feet. She ignored her beauty in order to serve Him.

Judas was struggling. He sat at the table with his Master, having seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, and he stewed. Why was this woman making such a fool of herself? Wouldn’t it be far more cost-effective to sell that oil and give the money to the poor? It says, in the Gospel of John, that Judas was stealing from the common purse. When did he start doing that? Was he afraid that he would be caught? Had Jesus already reprimanded him? Whatever was happening between Judas and Jesus, Judas was becoming critical and no longer trusted Jesus. As the powerful scent of the perfumed oil fills the room, Judas criticizes Mary for her opulence and her careless adoration. And Jesus retorts with a sharp tone.

“Leave her alone,” he says. You will always have the poor but you will not always have me.”

Already Judas was criticizing, displeased. What was his true criticism? Was he waiting for Jesus to become the king, the Messiah that the Jews had expected? Was he disappointed that Jesus did not force a take over of the city and rule? Did he not want to be in that small house, eating dinner? What was he expecting?

Whatever it was, Judas’ criticisms grew, until he felt justified in taking money from the common purse. Until he felt justified in selling Jesus to his enemies. Something entered Judas’ mind, the mind of a man who once had been willing to drop everything for Jesus. Something had come into his mind that had made him feel superior, able to criticize and eventually to betray.

Judas gave up Jesus for money. He lost his love of Jesus amidst his greed, arrogance and criticisms. He lost his Lord and then he betrayed him.

To really see Judas is to see a man like us. A man who loved Jesus and then left him.

To really see Judas is to admit that we all have qualities of self-righteousness, of greed of disappointment that lead us to question God and sometimes even abandon God.
To really see Judas is to see how complex we are, human beings. How incredible it is that we could one day love Jesus and the next day kill him.

It is only when we acknowledge that life is not black and white and that the seeds of cruelty lie inside of us, it is only then that we can truly kneel at Jesus’ feet along with Mary and realize what he came to save us from.

Jesus loved Judas. And I believe that Jesus loved Judas even after the betrayal. He loved Judas as he loves all of us who mess up and hurt each other.

I believe that Jesus would have forgiven Judas, would have broke bread with Judas, if only Judas had said that he was sorry. But instead Judas ran, taking his own life. He failed to believe in the immense forgiveness and mercy of God.

For even now, Jesus waits to break bread with all of us, with Judas, with you and with me.

No matter what we have done. No matter what we have left undone.

He sees us for who we are: complex and beautiful, good and not so good, mean and kind, honest and tricky. He sees our complexity, our sins and our goodness. And he loves us. Oh, how he loves us still.