Preached on Sunday, May 11th at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.
My home state of Tennessee is quite narrow, and very long. It’s as much as a 10-hour drive across it from the Mississippi River in the west to the Great Smokey Mountains in the east. If you were to traverse the whole state from the west to the east, along it’s southern edge, near where I’m from, you’d begin in the flat fields of West Tennessee -- that rich, dark alluvial soil of the upper Mississippi Delta. Cotton was long king in those fields; very productive farm land that Tennessee Williams dubbed the ‘richest acres this side of the Valley Nile.’
As you leave those flat fields and continue heading east, toward the Tennessee River and the mountains beyond, the land begins to rise and fall a bit, and undulate ever so slightly, and gentle rolling hills rise out of the ground. Those little hills are harder to plant; they’re no good for cotton, erosion being so much worse there than on the flat plains. Best to let the little hills run to woodland, and collect up enough flatter parts in and around those hills and turn it into pasture for livestock, as my father has done on his farm.
A significant part of my father’s working day involved driving from one pasture to another ‘checking on my cows,’ as he calls it. He’d load a sack of feed into the back of his second-best pick-up truck; an old, beat-up baby blue model that has bounced over many a rut in a dirt road. Once the feed is loaded, dogs and people pile into the cab of the truck and we’d drive sometimes a mile or two over gravel roads to get to one or the other of his pastures. After the gate to a portion of pastures is safely closed behind us, my father blows the horn of the pick-up three times. Now, after years of driving over rutted gravel roads, the horn on his second-best pick-up truck is woefully out of tune -- a wire has come loose from one of the claxons, I think. It gives off a very distinctive sound, more of a bleat, rather than a honk. But in a few minutes of that out-of-tune bleat, from over the hills and trotting through the woods, come my father’s cows.
My father would then take out his pocketknife and open the sack of feed. He tilts the sack over his shoulder and spreads the feed in a line -- about 20 feet long or so -- on the ground. The cows all gather along this makeshift manger on the ground, and begin to feed. My dad would then walk through the group of heifers and calves, counting, checking ears and eyes for infection. He notes the progress of those heifers that will bear calves in a few weeks or a month or two. And he looks to the health of the nursing mothers, and the development of their young, carefully tallying up the cows and calves, making sure each calf is in the care of a heifer, and that no one is missing. As he does so, the cows move gently aside to allow him to pass through their number. Some nuzzle his gloved hand, and he’ll scratch their suede-like foreheads were new horns sometimes sprout.
His cows were always shy of me, keeping well away, never allowing me to come within reach. They, of course, know my dad’s dog, and they are surprisingly tolerant of my dogs, sensing, I guess, that these fellow creatures mean them no harm. They’re not so sure of me, nor of any other human animal besides my dad. They are mistrustful of a stranger; they do not know my voice or my smell. But they know and trust my dad. They know his voice, and the off-pitch bleat of his truck horn. They are nervous of me, but under his hand they are calm, they are well tended and cared for, they are at peace.
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I’ve spent all this time talking about my father when it is Mother’s Day today. Recently in the news, there have been some interesting studies done on mothers and children -- and their voices. We recognize the sound of our mothers’ voice from before birth. In the final trimester of pregnancy, fetal heart rates jump when recordings of the mothers’ voices are played, verses the sound of other voices. That recognition lasts too. In older children, when they are stressed or upset, it’s been found that just the sound of a mother’s voice can calm older children, lowering their heart rates and anxiety, as much as a hug. Just the sound of a mother’s voice, a few sound waves striking the eardrum, calms and sooths as much as a full-on, arms-all-around-you bear hug. It’s, of course, well known that mother’s have a preternatural ability to distinguish the sound of their own child’s voice, and can often discern what is causing their child’s distress from the particular sound of the cry they make.
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In our gospel reading from John’s gospel this morning, Jesus refers to himself as, among other things, ‘the shepherd of the sheep’ and he describes the special bond between our shepherd-savior and we, his sheep. “The sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." (John 10:3b-5) Like my dad’s cows, we are meant to recognize the voice, the call, of the one who loves us and saves us.
Jesus gives us much credit, I believe, maybe too much. I wonder, do we really know God’s voice when we hear it? I don’t know that we always do. I’ve spoken to many a faithful Christian, good people who try to live good lives, who try to avoid temptation and Penn Station alike. And very often, these folks struggle to hear God’s voice, strain to hear the loving voice of God in times of trial and loss. These are people who long to hear God’s voice giving them direction in their lives; people who long to follow Jesus if only they could be sure that the voice they hear directing them is indeed God’s own voice, guiding their choices and their lives.
But it’s hard to hear God’s voice. It’s rarely as clear and discernable as three bleats on an out-of-tune pick-up truck horn heard through the quiet wood and over the calm pasture.
But there are lots of times and lots of cases when we hear each other’s voices, and the voices of those in our world, when we might also be hearing God’s call to us to follow him. We may hear our shepherd’s voice in the stories we share at coffee hour, in the hymns we sing, or in the voices of our children praying for the will and the strength to avoid Penn Station.
We may hear the shepherd’s voice in the cries of the Nigerian mothers whose daughters have been kidnapped, or the lament of those Syrians, Afghanis, Sudanese and so many others who long for the silence of peace to come down and drown out the ceaseless cacophony of violence in their lands; because he taught us about justice, mercy and peace.
We may hear the shepherd’s voice in the shouts of joy that greet the minister’s voice as she says, “I now pronounce you husband and husband” or “wife and wife.” Or in the happy tears that come when the doctor says,” You’re cancer-free.” Or when after a time of idleness and worry, we hear the longed for confirmation, “Congratulations. You got the job;” because he preached to us about the oppressed and the lonely, and those who struggle.
We may hear the shepherd’s voice in the sometimes cringing moments when our consciences remind us of a wrong done, a falsehood told, a promise not kept; and we remember that justice is an interpersonal value, as well as a political and a legal one; because he taught us to be at peace with one another.
Jesus tells us we’ll know it. We’ll know when it’s his voice we hear, calling us by name, leading us through the gate and out into the world. We’ll know it’s our Savior’s voice when it calls us to act with mercy and forgiveness, when it calls us to work for justice and for peace; because that’s what he told us to do. We’ll know it’s the Good Shepherd’s voice when we are urged to face the truth about ourselves we’ve so long denied; because he taught us that the truth would set us free. We’ll hear his voice calling us to be reconciled with those with whom we are at enmity; because he told us to live in peace with each other.
We’ll know it’s our shepherd’s voice when it calls us to live in love with one another; to forgive, to respect and to serve each other, and to celebrate the triumph of love over hate, and the victory of life lived more abundantly over the culture of consumption and materialism.
Listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd to call you by name, and to lead you where he would have you go. He will not lead you into temptation, and only occasionally, only when necessary into Penn Station. Hear his voice, heed his call. And he will lead you to green pastures beside still waters that will restore your soul. And into the risen life in him, a life more abundant than you can even imagine. +Amen.
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
© The
Rev. Mark R. Collins
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