Year B / Eastertide / Fourth Sunday — Good Shepherd Sunday
Readings: Acts 4.8-12 / Psalm 118.1,8-9, 21-23, 26, 28, 29 (R/v 22) / 1 John 3.1-2 / John 10.11-18
“I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep, and mine know me” (John 10.14)
We know how true these words of Jesus are in our lives. This is why we celebrate Jesus our Good Shepherd today.
Before Jesus speaks these words in today's Gospel passage, he heals the man born blind. This man could only hear Jesus’ voice. Believing in Jesus’ voice was his way of ‘seeing’ and knowing Jesus as his healer. His example teaches us the importance of really listening to Jesus.
Each time Jesus says “I am” in the Gospel of John he is inviting all who listen to really know him. Then, we can say with confidence “I am” and “we are” his own.
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. So we confidently say, “We are yours who you feed daily.”
“I am the light of the world,” Jesus says. So we confidently say, “I am yours who can see again.”
“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says. So we confidently say, “We are yours who you save for God by your death and resurrection.”
Today Jesus is addressing us as listeners, not sheep. He tells us He is our shepherd. He explains that He shepherds by caring, watching over, and protecting us. Indeed He will smell of us when he intercedes for us before God. He will because He lives amongst us, even if our lives are soiled and stained by sin.
What kind of shepherd is this but the one who is ever-ready to lay down his life? This is how he embodies goodness. The hired man works only for earnings. He runs away when danger is near. He cares for himself, not the sheep he must watch over.
We hear this truth in the tenor and timbre of Jesus’s voice and message. We must however listen attentively to Jesus to really know this.
It can be difficult to do this. We struggle with many other voices within and around us competing for our attention. Worldly voices that attract. Tempting voices that invite. Comforting voices that console. Sometimes they seem like Jesus’ voice. How can we tell?
It takes us time to attune ourselves to Jesus’s voice to really listen, hear, know and follow him. Our experiences of Jesus in life and prayer can help us figure out the difference. Again, we must listen attentively to Jesus.
Christian discipleship is about learning to pay attention to Jesus meeting us in our life and prayer. This is how we will learn to know Jesus. Not with head knowledge but by the experience of the heart. I call this the experience of being known — known by Jesus as His own and His beloved.
This truth empowers us to live anew. We will learn to recognise our fears, not obsess about them. We can overcome our pride and selfishness, not indulge in them. We can see the world’s gifts and potential, not conform to its injustices and excesses.
Jesus shepherding us as his beloved. This truth deserves our attention. It frees us to live in God’s ways. Are we doing this enough? Do we have to focus better to listen to Jesus’ voice in our lives?
Today Jesus is telling us that He will keep on calling us, and when we begin to follow, He will keep speaking. His voice will be the same. Those other voices within ourselves and around us will persist. We need to keep looking out for Jesus’s voice. Then, by listening to Him attentively, we will know Jesus more intimately, love Him more dearly and follow Him more closely.
If we dare to do this, we will find ourselves listening to Jesus inviting us into the mystery of God's love. This is the resonance of Jesus's voice: God's love resounding through time and space. This love is never for ourselves alone. It is everyone.
This is why good shepherding always happens outside the fold — in the wide, open and sometimes wild spaces. It is moreover right shepherding when it is for everyone, especially, those scattered, lost and abandoned. Indeed, the Good Shepherd seems to be calling always to you and me, His own and His beloved, to follow Him into the unfamiliar, those pastures further afield, over there, where the others also are.
Out there is where we will especially know His faithfulness in our lives and the lives of all, and knowing this, every one of us will truly flourish. Jesus wants to lead us there. Will we let Him?
Inspired by the writings of Larry Gillick, SJ
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: stpaulsmonastery.org
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