Easter 4 AJohn 10: 1-10 Psalm 23 A long time ago, someone gave me an icon of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. It is one that I have treasured, because, like many icons, it acts as both a picture and a mirror. In my case it has taught me a great deal about what it means to be a shepherd, to be pastoral under all circumstances, because those of us who have given our lives to this vocation do so under the guidance of the shepherd who is the guardian of our souls, who calls us to return when all of us go astray. I have been especially grateful for this icon since I heard a talk from Desmond Tutu about how we completely misunderstand this image of Jesus; in my icon, which is a copy of one many of you may have seen, the sheep lies across the shoulders of the shepherd, a beatific expression on his face, the whiteness of his wool immaculate. In truth, Tutu says, that sheep ought to be covered in mud, bloodied be the scrapes he has been through, which is how I feel on days when I have haven't been especially attentive to the voice I should have been hearing, calling me back to the life I know I need. And yet Jesus has a claim on this sheep, one he loves, one who knows his voice and simply has to decide whether it is more alluring than those of the bandits and thieves who are after his life. It is this claim on us that Jesus talks about as the gate for the sheep that we all are this day, and it is both about invitation and promise. All of us take comfort in the psalm we have said together this morning, about the God who sees us through our own darkest valleys, whose goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives. I would be willing to bet that many of us have it committed to memory, or at least the parts that speak most deeply to us, and I am quite sure that I have heard it in more hospital rooms than any other single piece of scripture. But to hear of Jesus as gate is about the abiding, protective love of God, especially when we are lying in bed, being eaten alive by worries or guilt about the messes we have made of our lives. It is an invitation to recognize the voice of the one who is calling us, asking us to make a decision about whose voice is the one we are going to follow, apart from the other voices that tear at us. It is, in the end, about relationship, the relationship we are willing to cultivate with each other and the living God instead of the whistling in the dark we often do when the world encroaches on us. After all, we know the thieves and bandits in our lives and their voices are legion. They are the voices we hear in answer to the despondency and fear we carry, the things to which we cling to buy us a sense of peace. We want to believe that the shareholder letter, the reassuring note about our pension plan, gives us the kind of security that keeps our lives from being taken away, little by little. But when we use language like “my family”, maybe “my spouse”, “my partner” or even “my sheep”, we are using the language of relationship, one for which we would give up anything else in our lives. It is about the God and people to whom we are bound to so tightly that we are a part of them and they are a part of us, a God who offers what saves us through the person of Jesus. It is not about the fluffy, immaculate people we often wish we were but about a relationship that defines who we are in proximity to the love of God. It is that relationship that means life to us, so much so that we would not recognize ourselves without it. It may be easier to see this relationship in others than it is in ourselves. When I was in my early twenties, another lifetime ago, I remember the experience of playing Bach's b-minor mass with Robert Shaw. I was young enough that I didn't really understand what it was in which I was participating, but I do remember what he looked like when we got to the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, almost at the end of the piece. I don't even remember who the alto soloist was. I simply remember Mr. Shaw, utterly spent, a man in his mid-eighties who had done this a thousand times before, but for whom there was only this moment, imbued by the love of God, this fusion of this most haunting music with everything that he was. Sitting there on that stage, watching the sweat pooling on his face and shirt, tears starting down his cheeks, it was impossible for any of us to know where he stopped and the

love of God began. It is the claim of that relationship that remains with us all our lives. Someone I know has described an experience of sitting with a friend when she was dying, someone who kept trying to give away what she owned but who kept receiving gifts from well-meaning friends. One day someone gave her a polished stone with a hole in it to wear around her neck, and she didn't know what to do with it. “' What is it?”, she breathed, turning it around and around in front of her face. Then she brought it close to one eye so that she could look straight through the middle of the stone. 'Ah,' she said, 'now I see. This is the way through.’ The promise of the Good Shepherd is nothing that any of us can quantify, put on a balance sheet or lock in a safety-deposit box. It is just that, a promise, and there is blessedly nothing we can do about it. It is made by someone who knows us better than we know ourselves, who is indeed a part of ourselves, and the invitation is simply to stop what we are doing, forget the things that are eating at us and to listen for a very faint voice, the voice we do our best to drown-out by agonizing over the messes and fears of our lives. It is then that we can count on the presence of the shepherd, the one whose goodness and mercy will follow us no matter what we do, so that all of us, wonderful and flawed as we are, will find a way through.