John 10:22-30
22 At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”
25 Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; 26 but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.
28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. 30 The Father and I are one.”
Psalm 23:1 6 King James Version
1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
The National Geographic once ran a story about the Rabari people of India. The Rabari are pastoral nomads, a sheepherding people. When the shepherds take their flocks out into the fields, they all come together for the night. As many as five thousand sheep of several different flocks will be crowded together. The shepherds will take turns keeping watch. Some sleep while others patrol the perimeter of the great flock. The patrolling shepherds bang their staffs and rattle things in the dark so that predators or thieves will be scared away and so the sheep will know they are being protected.
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| A Rabari shepherd |
But at daybreak, things change. Each shepherd calls his own sheep. Each shepherd has different calls, handed down through generations. They give a certain morning call to move out and there are other calls throughout the day, for water, for instance. Each shepherd knows his own sheep and each sheep knows the calls of its own shepherd. The sheep disentangle themselves from the huge flock and follow their shepherd.
Just think of the all the different voices we hear each day. By voices, I do not mean only spoken words, but things that demand our attention. Just this week, Reuters news service reported that two-thirds of American adults play computer games, and most of them play on their smart phones as well as consoles of personal computers. The number of players is higher at younger ages.
But of course, our phones do call us by ringing, by signaling we have messages or emails or alarms or alerts. We hear them as so demanding that someone apologized to me not long ago for answering an email after a few hours rather than immediately.
Studies say that each one of us is bombarded by about three thousand advertising messages every day. New and improved! Special today only! But wait, there’s more! Add to them the constant noises of other voices, some we like to hear, some we don’t: our children’s laughter, our spouse’s whispers, our boss’s grouches, the eye-in-the-sky traffic reporter with more bad news about the commute. Don’t forget the callers on the phone, the curses of office workers at their computers viewing the infamous Windows blue screen of death, the background wails of country or rock or rap. . . it’s a wonder we don’t just go insane from all the racket!
In 1989 Manuel Noriega holed up inside the Papal Nuncio in Panama City, hotly pursued by the US Army. The Papal Nuncio was a diplomatic mission of the Vatican. American forces could not enter, so they surrounded the place. The day after Christmas, Army psychological warfare troops decided to blast Noriega out – with noise. They brought in amplifiers huge and loudspeakers, pointing them toward the mission. They played rock music at unbelievably high volume hoping to drive Noriega out. Their repertoire was heavy and intended to reinforce Noriega’s futile position. They played songs like, “I Fought the Law and the Law Won,” “Born to Run,” “Judgement Day,” “Nowhere Man,” and “Just Like Jesse James.” On January 3 Noriega surrendered, perhaps thinking of the title of the Tremeloes’ 1967 hit, “Silence is Golden.”
But prolonged silence is not golden, as it turns out. In the late 1950s, the Air Force conducted isolation experiments as part of space flight research. They immersed volunteer pilots in airtight, soundproof breathing gear underwater in total darkness. They discovered that total isolation and silence causes hallucinations and was deeply disturbing to the pilots.
Inmates in prison find that true solitary confinement, separated from all the others, is unbearable. When I visited death row at River Bend prison, I discovered that none of the condemned share cells. At the most they each get one hour per day out of the cell, and not at the same time. They call to each other almost constantly through the narrow slits in the cell doors. Any voice coming back is treasured.
Neither constant noise nor unbroken silence can be long endured. Yet the image of the Rabari shepherds calling their flocks in the morning offers a paradigm for us ultra-technical folks in the USA. We all experience that time between night’s silence and day’s brassy noisiness. There is a seam of quietude for most of us that is neither day nor night, neither silence nor noise. So many persons take their daily prayers and devotions then, perhaps because the still, small voice of God can be best heard in such times. But to hear, we have to listen.
The King James version of Luke relates that when Pontius Pilate brought Jesus to face the crowd, Pilate told the crowd that he would have Jesus flogged and then released. But the crowd shouted for Jesus to be crucified. “And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed” (Luke 23:23b).
Daily we must choose whose voice will prevail. Amid the clamor and noise, or in times of quiet and still, let us hear our Lord’s voice most persistently, and let it prevail.
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I want to say a word about the 23d Psalm. Certainly it must be the best-known Psalm and may be the best-known passage in the whole Bible. It may even have become a cliche. One of my correspondents reported seeing a tee-shirt for sale at the Mall of America that said:
Though I walk through
The Mall of America
I shall Fear No Evil
For with Time and Plastic in
my Pocket
There’s Nothing to Fear Anyway.
Something in the Psalm speaks a special assurance of Christ’s abiding care and presence, and Christ’s sure love. Here are a couple of snapshots.
Texas media mogul Bob Buford, in his book The Second Half tells of losing his son in the Rio Grande River. Forty-one trackers searched for him, and Buford himself hired airplanes, helicopters, boats, trackers with dogs (“everything that money could buy”), and then Buford walked along a limestone bluff 200 feet above the river, “as frightened as I’ve ever felt,” he wrote.
“Here’s something you can’t dream your way out of,” I told myself. “Here’s something you can’t think your way out of. Here’s something you can’t buy your way out of. Here’s something you can’t work your way out of . . . .”
“This is,” Buford thought to himself while walking that river bluff, “something you can only trust your way out of.”
Ellen Bergh wrote an Upper Room devotional that reflected upon the 23rd Psalm. She related being on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight train as it rolled through some of Oregon’s most scenic countryside. Everyone craned their necks and talked excitedly with one another as the train rolled through green forests. A shining lake gleamed through the trees, and cheerful conversation filled the air.
Suddenly the train entered a tunnel. Instantly, the light, airy feeling was gone, like a candle blown out. Expecting the sun to reappear quickly, Ellen was uncomfortable as it became even darker. It was a long tunnel.
The passengers’ happy sounds stopped. Everyone sat silent in the inky darkness. The longer they traveled in the tunnel, the harder it was to remain calm without any visual cues to reassure them. Even the movement of the train seemed to fall away into pitch darkness. When they came out of the tunnel, laughter and relief filled the compartment.
“My life in Christ is like that train ride,” Ellen reflected. “Events may plunge me into darkness where I have no clues to sense the Lord’s presence. Yet I can trust God is with me even when I can’t see what lies ahead.”
There is probably no passage more requested for funerals than the 23d Psalm, perhaps because it makes clear that Christ’s grace and care extend through death or the threat of death. A man named Bob Timberlake was a member of the first church I served. He had had returned from sixteen missions as pilot of a B-17 bomber over Germany in World War Two. His plane was shot down on number seventeen and he spent ten months as a POW. He told me how he would read this Psalm before every mission and in the POW camp. It was a prayer, a plea, and an affirmation. I am convinced he read this Psalm not because he was fearful but because he was brave.
Yet we need to recognize that this is a Psalm of movement. It is a lesson to follow even when – or especially when – we don’t know where we are going. It is a Psalm teaching us to trust, not promising we will know. For it is in the gap between knowledge and trust wherein resides our faith.
Jesus leads. We follow. He knows us as his own. We know his voice and listen. Surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives, and we will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.