April 26, 2026

Sermon Transcript

Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.  I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.  (John 10:10)

Every evening when it’s time to shut down email, my routine includes checking the junk folder for any legitimate messages that may have been caught there.  Once in a while I’ll find something important, but the vast majority of emails in the spam filter are poorly worded, grammatically incorrect, transparently ridiculous scams.  With a superior laugh I delete them all and think, “How could anyone possibly fall for one of these things?”  Well, one day I discovered that I was not as fool-proof as I fancied myself to be.

A few summers ago we had been blessed with the opportunity to spend time on the beach at Fire Island.  For me it would be a working break with plenty of Zoom meetings to host and emails to send.  I would need to bring along a laptop and, of course, my phone.  The laptop is something I don’t often use because, with my office in the rectory, my desktop computer is always within reach.  Also my phone at the time was brand new, so I was still learning all its bells and whistles, demonstrating, I might add, infinite patience with the new technology.  I just love having to remember all of my passwords and re-enter them.  The point is, for the next few days I would be out of my element.  Every screen before me would be new and different from what I normally saw.

Shortly after we arrived I checked my email and noticed that I had a voice message on my office phone.  I tapped to retrieve it, only to be alerted that I would need to enter my password.  Thinking this had something to do with my phone’s being new, I typed in the four-digit code.  It didn’t work.  Perhaps it was my computer password that I needed to enter.  No?  How about my username to log in?  Why could I not access my own account at the church?  Suddenly, the terrible truth hit me like a punch in the gut.  The message that looked entirely legitimate was in fact a scam.  Someone out there in cyberspace was trying to hack into my accounts.  What is worse, I had followed the voice of a stranger.  Fortunately, I was able to change all my passwords immediately, and our IT person verified that everything was clean and secure.  He also gave me a bit of a scolding to be much more on guard against the bandits and thieves who come to steal and kill and destroy.  He didn’t use the language of John’s Gospel, but I took his point.  I responded contritely, with no superior laugh this time.

Today’s reading from the Gospel of John asks us to consider whose voice we are following.  You know, of course, that because we are in church, the correct answer is Jesus.  We would do well to hear and heed the voice of the risen Lord Jesus.  Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep, who speaks to us in triumph over the grave, so that we might have life and have it abundantly and eternally.  The whole point of this Easter season is that Jesus lives, and not only lives, but speaks to and leads those who listen for his voice.

In the very next verse beyond today’s reading, Jesus will refer to himself as the good shepherd (10:11).  In doing so he could not have made a more startling claim.  The image of a shepherd was a well-established way of speaking about the one true King of Israel, who is God.  “The Lord is my shepherd,” declares the Psalmist.  Thus, if Jesus claimed to be the good shepherd in the context and culture that John described, he wasn’t merely announcing that he was yet another earthly king, or even the Messiah.  Rather, what we have here is a claim to divinity.  He was claiming to be the Lord God Incarnate.  When you hear his voice, you hear God’s voice.  When you hear his word, you hear God’s word.  He is God’s Word.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, writes John at the in the opening lines of his Gospel.

Now, it’s one thing to make such claims about yourself, and indeed other historical figures have done just that: claimed to be divine.  What sets Jesus apart?  What saves the claims of Jesus from being merely an outrageous boast?  The answer is the resurrection: Easter.  Easter distinguishes Jesus above all others.  We understand Easter, which itself was an objective occurrence in history, as God’s validation of all that Jesus said and did.  Therefore, from earliest times Christians have set aside a Sunday in Eastertide to emphasize the connection between the risen Jesus, and Jesus our good shepherd.  The risen Jesus is the good shepherd of this flock we call the church.  He is the good shepherd of all the earth.  He is the good shepherd of all the vast times and spaces in the cosmos, because, as John (1:2) asserts, he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

The implications of the shepherd metaphor that Jesus used are staggering.  As the mind of the shepherd presides over the sheep, so does the will and the way of God prevail in the universe.  The universe is not a chance, mindless occurrence with no purpose, but rather the theater in which God enacts his will.  Behind the universe is the mind of God, and Jesus is the incarnation of God, the principal actor in the drama.  Indeed, in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:4-5).  All this light floods the stage when Jesus claims to be the good shepherd.

Unfortunately, the light that has come into the world casts shadows, and we choose too often to focus on the shadows instead of the light.  Yes, Good Shepherd Sunday also has a dark side – a shadow side.  You see, over the centuries, the more we have used the metaphor to proclaim the virtues of the Shepherd, the more we have slandered the sheep – the actual sheep themselves.  Good Shepherd Sunday is largely an ecumenical affair, so that every year on the 4^th Sunday of Easter, congregations across all denominations will be hearing the shepherd passages from the 10^th Chapter of John.  Preachers will be climbing into pulpits, and let me tell you what they are going to do.  With a superior laugh, they are going to tell jokes at the expense of sheep.  It’s true.  If a preacher today doesn’t include at least one story about how stupid sheep are, well, he or she just isn’t playing along.

My guess is that right about now, Bishop Heyd, where ever he happens to be on his Sunday visitation, is running through his litany of tried and true sheep jokes, even using his bishop’s crook as a shepherd’s staff.  Ask him when he’s here on May 31.  At St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the new American Pope – Pope Bob, as they affectionately call him – undoubtedly has the worshippers in stitches, all at the expense of lowly sheep, who aren’t even there to rebut the charges.  The Pope has no plans to visit Grace Church, so you’ll just have to trust me.  The point is, you don’t get to be the Pope or a Bishop without being able to tell good sheep jokes.  As for me, my Good Shepherd Sunday confession to you is that I, too, have been a gleeful, willing participant in the character assassination of sheep.  From this very pulpit I’ve told you every sheep joke I know, and oh, how smug and superior it’s made us feel to laugh at the foibles of these maligned, misunderstood animals.

Well, today I declare that enough is enough, and I rise in defense of the sheep.  Why?  Because Jesus rises in defense of the sheep.  If you read the 10^th Chapter of John, you will hear not a single discouraging word about sheep.  In fact, Jesus has nothing but good things to say about them.  The good shepherd knows, names, loves, and values each and every one of the sheep, and even would lay his life down for them.  What is more, rather than making jokes about how stupid the sheep are, the good shepherd even boasts about the sheer smarts of these creatures.  They know which voice to follow in order to live.  A stranger they will not follow.  The robbers and thieves who come to steal and kill and destroy they will not follow.  Can the same be said of us?  Just think of the pundits and politicians these days whose voices lead people astray.  These are the people we think are going to give us abundant life?  Really?  A good case could be made that sheep are more discerning than humans.  Therefore, to offset all the sheep jokes being told today, perhaps a human joke is in order.  Have you heard the one about the big city rector who almost went down the rabbit hole with a scammer?  Whoopsie daisy!

So how about you?  Do you know which voice to follow so that you might have life, and have it abundantly?  Here’s the amazing proposition of today that much of the so-called smart and sophisticated world rejects as utter nonsense.  Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who knows, loves, and values you is calling your name and is urging you to follow.  How do you hear his voice amidst the steady cacophony of sounds and influences that surround us today?  To be sure, you can listen for the voice of the Lord in nature, culture, tradition, and family.  But the real miracle occurs through Spirit.  God’s intervention, God’s pastoral care, God’s diligent oversight of the sheep happens when the Spirit of God calls out to and intermingles with our spirits.  God seeks to give you his indwelling Spirit.  God wants you to have the implanted Word that has the power to save your soul.

Perhaps it’s true that everyone, merely by virtue of creation, is a child of God and has the indwelling Spirit, or the implanted Word, call it what you will.  The sad fact is, sin still gets in the way and distorts our hearing and ability to grow into the people God created us to be.  Thus, to become truly a member of Christ’s flock we need adoption and grace.  Together we pray for an additional blessing of the Spirit through baptism and confirmation and the regular receiving of the Eucharist.  Together we read and study the Scriptures, trusting that God breathes the Holy Spirit through them.  Together we participate in the life of the Christian community.  We come to church because where even two or three gather in the name Jesus, there he is – here he is in the midst of us, helping us to discern between the voices that give life, and those that steal, kill, and destroy.  Today’s reading from Acts (2:42-47) is a powerful witness to the close, supportive fellowship that can happen between members of a church.

Last Friday was the Annual Spring Concert of the Grace Church choirs.  As I sat in a pew and listened to the amazing music they were making, I recalled my own years as a chorister.  I was remembering one of my fellow choristers, in particular, and how the supportive fellowship of the church gathered around him and his family.  My father was the rector of the church where I grew up.  It was an urban parish in New Jersey, and the young choristers consisted of many neighborhood kids that the choirmaster had scooped up off the street.  One of the initially reluctant children to join the choir was a boy named Val Howze.  Val was probably ten at the time.  He had never been to church before.  He wasn’t even baptized.  But he came along with his friends and discovered that he had a natural gift for music.  Through his participation in the choir his mother and sister started coming to church and connecting with other parishioners.

Then Val became seriously ill – so ill that he was unable to sing in the choir.  Somehow in his young body a cancer had begun to grow that would take his life within a year.  I’ll never forget one Thursday evening when, instead of our rehearsal at the church, all of the choristers, the choirmaster, and my father marched over to Val’s apartment.  There, my father led a simple service of baptism for Val.  Then he anointed Val’s head with oil, reminiscent of the words we recited today in Psalm 23.  Then he read the Communion service, and Val, for the first time, partook of the bread and wine of eternal life.

That evening in Val Howze’s apartment took place over 50 years ago, and he has been gone from this life for nearly as long.  But for me, in retrospect, it was an early, powerful witness of how the voice of the Good Shepherd speaks to us and reaches us.  Through the Word, the sacraments, and the fellowship of the church, Jesus claimed Val as his own, and went with him through death’s dark vale of shadows.  Jesus rose in defense of that little lost sheep.

The Great Shepherd of the sheep comes to us still today so that we may have life, and have it abundantly.  Then at our last awakening he will take us to his own, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.