| April 21, 2002 Adcts 2:14,36-41 + 1 Peter 2:20-25 + John 10:1 10 |
| Called by name and hears my voice are two features of this Gospel from which we cannot escape. Complex and complicated as John’s tenth Gospel may be, with powerful implications about the identity of Jesus and his place in Jewish tradition, the scene is set at the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple. We can go no deeper into its meaning until we recognize that it is spoken to us, not someone else. The temptation to listen to and study the Gospel as a piece of historical or ..ancient” writing from another age and about another age is dangerous. It robs the Word of it’s Life, and cheats us of our chance to have that Life. |
| There is an old-time description of Baptism that we still sometimes hear, probably because it isn’t all wrong. It calls the rite: “Christening” I am sure that at it origin, the word springs from the anointing part of the rite wherein the candidate is anointed with “Chrism” Yet I suspect that the term stuck because through that anointing the candidate became Christ’s own taking upon themselves the name and the identity of Christian. In other words, by those symbols and rites, a person could say, as Jesus so often says: ..I am. . .a Christian.” |
| A people called by that name are no longer outside of this Gospel. They do not read nor hear it as though it were about someone else at another time. They read and hear it as their own. Once called by name in this way, we are like the sheep John describes, able to hear the voice of the one who calls us; but not only hear it, we can recognize it above and among all other voices and calls. |
| The Pharisees of this Gospel are still among us because they are still within us. It is not that John points to some people, but that he points to some behavior that is common to all who do not understand what he is trying to tell them. This voice is replacing all other voices. This voice is the only one we follow. This voice is the only one that can lead us to salvation and the Kingdom of God. |
| From the moment we are called by name, we are no longer Americans or Mexicans; white or black; Democrats, Republicans, nor Independents, for that matter, -we not necessarily Jews, Baptists, Catholics, nor Muslims. If he has ..sheep of other flocks” as he says, we are His, and His alone. Our identity is first established by whose voice we hear, and we use that voice to critique and identify all the other voices that are calling to us at all times. The “prophet” in the Old Testament mind was not a figure of the past, but an ever present reality. Hearing the voice of Christ is not listening to the past. This is not “The History Channel.” It is timeless and present. |
| The Pharisee in us wants privilege without responsibility, wants to eat from the tree of knowledge and seize the authority to determine right and wrong, and set standards by political fashion and social values. The Pharisee in us listens not to the voice of Jesus but to one’s own inner desire for approval and identity granted by the greedy, “thieves and robbers”, as Jesus calls them. |
| The issues that confront those called by name, “Christian” are issues of this day that those who first heard these words could never have imagined, but the power of this Living Word still speaks with clarity and vision. By our very identity, our very name, we are a people who care for the poor and do justice. These two guides are always the foundation of decision making for us. Many would think that listening to the Scriptures is listening to the voice of Jesus who walked in Galilee two thousand years ago, but we proclaim this Gospel with purpose on Easter’s fourth Sunday because it is a living Jesus in this time and age that we proclaim and whose voice we hear He leads us into the issues and crises of this day, calling us to truth, holiness, and wisdom: a truth that is not relative and is accessible to all, a holiness resting upon integrity and wholeness, and wisdom that is not something we ourselves can claim, butsomething that embraces us from without. |
| Called and Claimed as God’s own, Open and Attentive, we are a people in this season who listen for the voice of our shepherd knowing a multitude of ways to hear that voice in scripture, in tradition, in study, in prayer, in dialogue, in silent reflection and in teaching, but always by listening, not talking, preaching, shouting, or demanding. Then we become a people who can follow that voice in unity and charity, joyfully moving into the new Jerusalem where all shall have life and have it abundantly. |