Listen carefully—listen very carefully today. A sermon is always a lot of words but today especially I urge you to listen carefully. The images we encounter through out our worship this morning are filled with references to sheep and shepherds—the assigned Psalm for today is the 23rd Psalm—some have suggested this Sunday should be known as Good Shepherd Sunday—but listen carefully to the Gospel lesson and what you find is that one moment Jesus is suggesting he is the good shepherd and the next he is suggesting he is the gate through which his sheep move. I am tempted to call this day “Mixed Metaphor Sunday”. You all know what a mixed metaphor is—two images that are forced together in ways that make little sense but are curiously tantalizing to the imagination. The Calvin College English Department has a web site dedicated to mixed metaphors (http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engl/mixmet.htm) collected from student’s papers and other sources Mixed metaphors like—It was so cold last night I had to throw another blanket on the fire—or, You’ve got to walk before you can swim—or It’s as easy as falling off a piece of cake—or He’s got too many oars in the fire. We do it with our faith language all the time too—Jesus is the Light on which our faith is built—God’s promises are the sure seeds of our faith—The Holy Spirit gives us good gifts to make us one body in Christ.
Our faith and the proclamation of that faith depends on words and images that help us give shape to the truths that we know and feel and yet have difficulty expressing. We use picture language—metaphors—to help us better express and understand that which is often more than words can describe. There are some things about faith that simply cannot be captured by words—the Christian faith more than probably any other religion in the world has recognized this truth—As a result, the Christian faith and the cultures that have been most influenced by that faith --has produced more great music, art, dance, theatre and certain forms of literature, poetry and philosophy—than any other faith expression on our planet. There has also been a lot of poor excuses for art produced—but that is the richness and confusion of the metaphors of faith in our lives. Jesus speaks to us again today—in images and forms foreign to most of our life experience.—He speaks of sheep and shepherds—gates and pastures—images that we can identify—define—but few if any of us really know such things from real life experience. Maybe in our past we had that farm encounter with a pasture—maybe even once you were up close and personal with some sheep—but probably not as a shepherd. The shepherd image in our lives is most familiar from the church—a picture of the caring and yet strong leader of the flock—what we know from the 23rd Psalm. “The Lord is my Shepherd…”
But in our gospel lesson Jesus moves the image in a direction that is a very real part of our world—the voice—the voice of the good shepherd known by the sheep—and the voices of strangers from which the sheep should flee. We live in an audible age unlike any other—the sounds of our world are constant—and if you don’t like the sound you hear—you simply put on your head set and surround yourself with your own sounds. Every teenager knows that the first thing you do when you get in the car is turn on the sound system—If it is the radio—you hit the seek buttons until you find the sound—that means no commercials—the sound-music is what matters—or you put in your favorite CD mix—the sounds you have created for yourself on your burner or the ones your friend gave you because they are “so your sound”. The Alley McBeal Show may have been more true then most of us like to admit when it suggested that everyone has a song and what makes you truly happy is being able to live a life that fits the music you hear in your head. (And if you don’t hear any music in your head it may mean you need to listen more closely—or find yourself a good d.j.) There have always been voices that we recognize in our lives—and voices we are wise to flee. Each Saturday morning on NPR (National Public Radio)—after the “car guys”—there is the program “Wait, wait, Don’t tell me” which is a quiz of the week’s current events—One segment features the challenge “Who said it” in which quotes from the previous week’s news are read and the challenge is to identify the speaker. Sometimes the voice is too easy—a politician—movie star—or sports figure. But other times the voice is that of someone who simply had their ten seconds of fame. There are historic voices that have become immortalized like— “ I regret that I have but one life to give for my country” and there are voices that capture a moment’s feeling or mood—“All you need is love”
If one of the images that dominates our lessons today is that of discerning the voice of Jesus from the many other voices that fill our world and our lives—Then it is fitting that we consider the question, how well do we know the voice of Jesus? There are few moments as uncomfortable as calling someone on the telephone and mistaking the voice on the other end.—We have all done it at one time or another—Started into a conversation only to discover that we have just provided all the details to the wrong person—and hopefully none of the information was damaging or inappropriate. Of course, such encounters are less common today—Our modern society has changed the way we encounter voices—We have Caller ID—We know even before we say hello who it is and often times what they want—Why else would they call? And so we now let our voice mail pick up the calls we don’t want to deal with directly—or maybe we don’t answer at all. Imagine what it would be like to have a Caller ID for God—to be able to know when God is calling and why God is calling and what Jesus wants to tell us. There are moments when we might prefer to have voicemail to receive God’s word. I explain to our confirmands that one of the purposes of confirmation is to help them begin to recognize God’s voice—to discern Christ’s presence in their lives—to recognize the moments when the Holy Spirit is leading them. This is no easy task with all the sounds and distractions of our modern age—And too many have too few opportunities to really come to recognize the voice that speaks for truth—justice—peace.
That’s why I think Jesus quickly mixed his metaphors in our lesson for today—turning himself from shepherd into a gate—the way to enter or the way to go. The voice of the shepherd calls us on—the gate opens to us the way to pasture—to life—as Jesus said—abundant life. Living an abundant life—now that is something our society has a lot to say about—Ours is the goal to achieve life—Life with all its richness and variety—triumphs and tragedies—as Annie Dillard notes in her little essay on “How to Live”—“Yours is the human struggle, or the elite one, to achieve…whatever your own culture tells you: to publish the paper that proves the point; to progress in the firm and gain high title and salary, stock options, benefits; to get the loan to store the beans till their price rises; to elude capture, to feed your children or educate them to a feather edge; or to count coup or perfect your calligraphy; to eat the king’s deer or catch the poacher; to spear the seal, intimidate the enemy, and be a big man or beloved woman and die respected for the pigs [you raised] or the title [you had] or the shoes [you wore].” To live the abundant life—abundant—we strive to take the measure of our lives. Everyone agrees “ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, necklaces, degree, murex shells, or ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract planes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain—and it’s all true. The Red Sox (or Cubs or Yankees). Or nothing at all is holy as everyone intelligent knows”—or do they? So many voices—a world so diverse that we can scarcely contain it in our minds—embrace it with our hearts. Jesus opened the gate for us to enter into the world—following the voice of the one who goes before us—mixed metaphors and all—We build our places of worship and study and fellowship and call them church—they are really Caller ID locations—reference points for young and old to help us recognize the voices around us. Annie Dillard continues— “The woman watching sheep over there, the man who carries embers in a pierced clay ball, the engineer, the girl who spins wool into yarn as she climbs, the smelter, the babies learning to recognize speech in their own languages, the man whipping a slave’s flayed back, the man digging roots, the woman digging roots, the child digging roots—Into the muddy river they go, into the trenches, into the caves, into the mines, into the granary, into the sea in boats…
People look at the sky and at the other animals. They make beautiful objects, beautiful sounds, beautiful motions of their bodies beating drums in lines. They pray; they toss people into peat bogs; they help the sick and injured, they pierce their lips, their noses, ears; they make the same mistakes despite religion, written language, philosophy, and science; they build, they kill, they preserve, they count and figure, they boil the pot, they keep the embers alive; they tell their stories and gird themselves.” We listen for the voice—We seek to enter the gate—We prayerfully consider what God would have us do. So many words—so many images—so many possibilities to be true and right and just. The week of Sundays of Easter continue by inviting us to mix the metaphors of our faith and life and hear the voice once more—the familiar voice that opens for us the way of life. Jesus said—I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Amen.
The quotes from Annie Dillard are taken from her article
in Image—A Journal of the Arts & Religion, Fall 2001 pp. 50-52