Hearing Voices

A man elbows the one standing next to him in the Temple; when he looks over in surprise, the first one nods his head to show him where to look. A group of worshippers there for the festival are talking and fall silent, looking out of the corners of their eyes at the figure strolling by, then falling into furious whispers as soon as he passes. Others simply start following behind him at a short distance, eager to see where he will go, what he will do.

But eventually, the gathering crowd can’t hold back any longer and they come up to him. He stops, looking calmly around at them, waiting to see what they will say. Finally, a few say what is burning in all of their hearts: “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

That seems pretty aggressive, really. I mean, Jesus looks like he’s just minding his own business for once, strolling through the Temple after presumably having joined the worship services for the Feast of Dedication, or as we generally know it: Hanukkah. Hanukkah, as I mentioned in my Palm Sunday sermon about a month ago, originated in the context of a rebellion that liberated Jerusalem from foreign occupation and reclaimed the Temple for Jewish worship after it had been taken over for Greek polytheistic rites.

So, it is closely associated with the whole concept of the Messiah: the Anointed One who is understood to be promised in prophecy to come and liberate God’s people. There were, of course, different understandings of the nature of the promised liberation, but the most popular answer by far was a warrior-king who would drive out the foreign invaders and establish the kingdom of Israel once more, and even the kingdom of God on earth, with his throne in Jerusalem. In fact, the place where the crowd accosts Jesus, Solomon’s Portico, was also called the Porch of Judgment, where the king would sit and dispense justice for the people. And this is where Jesus just happened to decide to go for a stroll after Hanukkah services.

Jesus, of course, is not an unknown; that’s why the crowd is following him in the first place. This scene takes place not long before the end of his public ministry in John’s Gospel, which means that he’s been active for about three years at this point. And by active, I mean active: while his teaching is important, it’s the miracles that he performs that have really gotten people’s attention. John calls them “signs,” which I think is really helpful, because it reminds us what those miracles are really about.

We tend to think about the impact of miracles in terms of the acts themselves: someone who couldn’t walk or see or hear now can, for example, or someone driven mad by a demon is restored to health and wholeness and community. But that perspective makes some of Jesus’ miracles harder to understand. Feeding 5,000 people who had been listening to him all day without anything to eat is good; but, I mean, when you sign up for an all-day seminar, they usually do provide lunch, and even so, it’s hardly the same thing as healing something that could not otherwise be healed.

And his first miracle, changing water into wine at a wedding that apparently tried to cut corners on the open bar, is even more confusing. Impressive and helpful and very welcome, to be sure, but again, not the same thing as raising someone from the dead. As for walking on water, that just seems like some kind of weird flex; yes, his disciples were in trouble in a boat out on the sea during a storm, but if he knew that, why did he bother walking all the way out there to stop the storm and allow them to come safely ashore? Why didn’t he just take care of things from the shore?

The answer is that Jesus’ miracles are not really about what they accomplish; they are about what they signify, which is why it’s helpful that John calls them signs. A sign, any sign, is designed to communicate something, and often to point to something in that communication. What all Jesus’ miracles, his signs, have in common is that they are “revealing his glory,” as John puts it after he turns the water into wine, by which he means Jesus’ identity as the incarnation of the Son of God.

It is not a weird flex, a bizarre showing off of his abilities when it’s not necessary or even particularly relevant; it is a demonstration of who he is and what God is up to in the world through him. When we have that understanding, then all those seemingly unrelated signs start to make sense: the miraculous healings signify that in Jesus, God is overcoming the brokenness and limitations of this world; the shocking strangeness of walking on the water out to the foundering boat of disciples in the storm signifies that in Jesus, God does not simply care for us but stands with us no matter what dangers and challenges we face; the absurd extravagance of the vats of outstanding wine for the wedding and the massive leftovers from the bread and fish that fed the 5000 signify that Jesus has, in fact, come for exact reason he says just a few verses before our Scripture passage today: that his sheep, those who follow him and whom he cares for, “may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

The real problem is that despite all the signs, people aren’t sure what to make of them. More precisely, they’re not sure of what it means that Jesus can wield this kind of power. Earlier the same day as our Scripture passage, Jesus provoked a big controversy by giving sight to a man who had been born blind, which was something that was simply unheard of, barely imaginable, at the time, but he had done it on the Sabbath. That led to accusations that he could not be of God, because he did this miracle in violation of one of God’s most important commandments, to keep the Sabbath day holy and do no work that day.

Others, including the healed man himself, argued that if Jesus was not of God, he couldn’t have done such a thing in the first place, because confront Jesus directly, which takes place immediately before our passage, there’s a huge argument between the people listening to Jesus describe himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep in his care. Some say that his actions and words prove that he’s insane and possessed by a demon; others respond with, “these are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

So with all that in mind, we can understand the crowd’s exasperated questions to Jesus in Solomon’s Portico a lot better. They are not being aggressive out of the blue, and Jesus certainly has not been minding his own business. This whole day has been roiled with controversy and spectacle and conflict, and nobody can agree on how or why Jesus is doing it, and what any of that signifies. No wonder they are frustrated; no wonder they are saying, “how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Enough with the miraculous yet mysterious signs; enough with the spiraling metaphors and enigmatic sayings. What, exactly are you doing and why? Just tell us, already!

I’m willing to bet most of us here have asked God that question at some point in our lives, or have at least wanted to: “what, exactly, are you doing and why? Just tell me, already!” I know I have. Sure, sometimes it’s in response to the great and unnecessary tragedies of our day in this broken world. But more often and far more intensely, it has been when I’ve encountered something in my own life, or in the life of someone I know in some way, that challenges my idea of who I believe God to be and what I believe God to be capable and committed to doing in the world.

And in those times of confusion, of uncertainty, of anxiety, of anger, of fear, it’s a natural reaction to want the assurances of certainty, of clarity, of knowing that this somehow all makes sense even if I can’t see it. “How long will you keep me in suspense?” I ask; “if you are the Messiah, if you are God’s Anointed One at work to redeem the world in the midst of all this, just say so; tell us plainly!”

And to that, Jesus says: “I already have.” Literally, he says: “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me, but you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep.” What he’s basically saying is, the problem isn’t me, it’s you. The signs I’ve been accomplishing are not ambiguous about me being the Messiah. The problem is that you don’t believe that, and you don’t believe it because you don’t belong to me. “My sheep hear my voice,” he says; “I know them, and they follow me.”

That’s literally how shepherds guided their flocks in the Ancient Near East; the sheep knew the voice of their shepherd, who would go ahead of them and lead them by calling to them rather than driving them from behind with a stick. It’s still done that way in some places. A friend of mine whose family originated in Wales and who owned a home there for many years talks about seeing two Welsh shepherds arriving at a crossroads at the same time and seeing their flocks get all mixed up.

But instead of trying to sort them out one at a time by hand, the shepherds kept walking in their own separate directions and began calling out to the sheep. The sheep then sorted themselves out by simply following the voice of their own shepherd; they knew that is where they belonged, and pretty soon, each flock was able to go on its way.

That’s what Jesus is talking about when he says, “my sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” And in doing that, he’s saying something profoundly important that the Christian church has routinely and profoundly gotten wrong for most of 2000+ years: believing does not lead to belonging; belonging leads to believing. Let me say that again: believing does not lead to belonging; belonging leads to believing. That is unambiguously what Jesus says here about why the people are confused and doubting whether he’s the Messiah: “you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep.”

So much of the Christian Church for so much of its life has gotten this backwards: we assume and even require that people need to get their beliefs straightened out before they can belong to the church, either formally or even informally. And sometimes, like an unskilled shepherd, the Church has played the role of trying to sort out the sheep as to who belongs and who doesn’t, when the real issue and the right solution is simply to let the sheep follow the voice to which they belong, and trusting in that to be enough.

The challenge for the sheep, of course, is to recognize and follow the right voice. “Hearing voices” is almost a universal shorthand for being mentally ill or disturbed in some way, and yet the truth, at least metaphorically, is that we all hear voices that tell us all kinds of things about who we are, what we should do, how the world works, and what God is up to. And some of those voices can lead us very far astray: telling us that we aren’t worthy of love from God or anyone else; that “everything happens for a reason,” even horrible things than run counter to everything that God promises in Jesus Christ; that we (and everyone else) have to somehow earn our own acceptance or value from God or anyone else. And yes, those voices can lead us into some pretty unhealthy, even disturbed, places.

Which is why it’s so important to remember that belonging leads to believing, and not the other way around. Because I think what we truly crave, if we’re being really honest, is not so much certainty as reassurance: reassurance that God is who God says God is, in and through Jesus Christ, and that we can trust in that with our lives and being. But that kind of reassurance can never truly come from an idea, because all ideas are ultimately abstract, conceptual, theoretically, no matter how much we “believe” in them.

True reassurance, true belief, comes not from an abstract idea but from a cultivated, incarnated trust: it is given, received, nurtured and built in concrete ways through experiential relationship. It happens, in other words, through belonging: belonging to Jesus and with those who also belong; belonging to and with those who seek to recognize and follow his voice, and to help one another as we do. It is through that trust, that relational, incarnate trust, that true belief develops, not as an idea that is claimed or a commodity that is acquired or imposed, but as an experienced reality: that Christ as the Good Shepherd knows us, that we can hear and follow his voice amidst all the competing voices and noise, and that he will always, always lead us into safety, and peace, and abundant life.