John 10:10-18

¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. ¹³ The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. ¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. ¹⁷ For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes^[a] it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

Sheep are interesting.  Several years ago, when our kids were real young, we went to the United Kingdom to visit dear friends of ours:  The Mathesons, Sextons, Gravelings, and the Kenny’s.  We were supposed to stay with Andy Matheson.  When he picked us up at the train stating in Tonbridge, UK, he informed us that his son’s family had decided at the last minute to come into town and that he made other arrangements for our family of four to stay at.  It was a friends’ house who was on vacation that week and agreed that we could stay there.  I was bummed, I was looking forward to late night conversations with Andy, but I said, that it sounded great.  What he did not share with us is that the house was not simply a house, but an English manor house with over 25 rooms, including like 7 bathrooms, overlooking the Penshurst Estate. The house overlooked fields of sheep.  The sheep would go from one field to the next throughout the day.  Our kids and our British friend’s kids made it a game to try and catch a sheep…they were unsuccessful.  

I tell you this because our passages this morning are about sheep and shepherds.  I read once that you cannot very easily approach sheep…they are sheepish if you will.  They aren’t easy to heard either, unless you are their shepherd.  Shepherds, especially in Jesus’ time, spent a lot of time with sheep.  Shepherds had a way of gathering sheep, by simply calling them out.  Sheep will follow the shepherd because they recognize the shepherd’s voice.  They trust that voice.

In this passage, we are sheep, you and I together.  It’s obviously a metaphor, but much like the beauty of the landscape at Penshurst, that English estate, we are live together in a beautiful world.  We also produce a lot of smelly and messiness.  Our relationships with each other are filled with craziness at times, we don’t always follow or lead each other well.  There are dangers around us, and sometimes there are other forces out there, thieves such as depression, loneliness, selfishness, pride, or addictions, or folks not being the best version of themselves, or fully understanding themselves or others that come in the middle of darkness as it says in John 10:10 that kill and destroy the lives that we were called to live.

There are also systems in this world that want to steal and destroy our lives…to make us less than human, to distrust, live in fear or anger.  These systems have voices, you hear them in media and from many so called leaders and persons who have power and/or wealth and want to protect their status.  That’s been true throughout history really.  But those voices of systems of the world diminish us.  

Yet, Jesus tells us that he has come to give us life.  When we slow down, or get caught up in recognition of good things around us and the origin of that goodness, we can recognize the voice of the true shepherd, the voice of Jesus who has entered in the fields of our lives, who walks with us and towards us…walking through the messiness to call us towards new fields, new adventures.  

We often recognize the voice of Jesus through others.  Maybe we literally hear words from Jesus through others such as a speaker, or maybe even a preacher.  Or maybe we recognize the voice of God through something we read, or a song we hear.  Maybe it’s listening to our neighbors as our church is doing.  Or, maybe it’s seeing someone else practice charity through actions or giving themselves away.

We know it when we see it and hear it though, especially as we train our eyes and ears to see and recognize the true shepherd.

Friends, we have said it before, we are living in a new place with church.  The old forms simply don’t work anymore.  The world is crying out for us, the church, to be an example of goodness, of the good shepherd, to be reflections of Jesus’ actions and to reflect and amplify the voice of the Shepherd who is calling us towards him, towards abundant life, towards being one flock.  This shepherd has laid down his life for us, yet in doing so, has overcome all of the messiness in our lives and is creating something new and beautiful as he leads us into new fields, filled with beauty and relationship.

So, let’s listen to the voice of the Shepherd, let’s love each other well, and let’s play in the fields of the neighborhood around this church, as well as the neighborhoods in which we live in Cincinnati, and the world.  Let’s work towards being the diverse, yet unified flock God’s marked us out to be…we can do this, we can believe in each other as my grandfather did with me and God does with us, trusting each other, loving each other, and growing in the ways that God intends in the process.