John 10:22-30
In the movie Ghost, Patrick Swayze plays a man who is murdered. I’m not giving away the plot. That’s just the set up. The story is about how his spirit lingers on earth, because he needs to communicate a message to his wife, Demi Moore, who is in danger of being killed, too. He needs to figure out how to communicate with living people, so he goes to a psychic – Whoopi Goldberg. She’s actually a fake psychic. She has never communicated with the dead in her life; she just puts on a show and the people who pay for her services believe her.
So when the ghost of Patrick Swayze walks in the room she practically jumps out of her skin. Because she can see him and hear him. She never knew she really could communicate with spirits. Now that she does, she’s not at all sure she wants this gift.
But the ghost of Patrick Swayze convinces her to help him get a message to his wife. Which means they have to convince his wife, the grieving Demi Moore, that Whoopi Goldberg truly is speaking for her dear departed husband. As I’m sure you can imagine, this is not going to be easy.
The movies are full of plots like this, where some characters need to convince others that they really are who they say they are. It usually leads to all kinds of comic action and reaction. But something that never happens is for people to turn to the unrecognized one and ask, “Look, are you the one?” Demi Moore isn’t going to walk the streets of New York asking people, “Are you my husband?” She’s not going to walk up to Whoopi Goldberg and ask, “Are you my husband?” because that would seem crazy.
She is never going to know it’s him just because someone tells her it is him. She has to experience his presence with her, then she knows him.
Once she knows, she doesn’t have to ask. But if you don’t know, you are never going to know, no matter what anyone says.
At least, that seems to be the approach Jesus takes.
In this chapter of John’s gospel, he begins speaking of himself as the Good Shepherd. It’s worth looking at what comes before this chapter, because it matters. This begins in the aftermath of a long, involved interaction with a blind man, his parents, and some religious leaders. In that story, Jesus healed the man of his blindness, then nobody seems to recognize him because he is no longer blind. Which is a pretty cool example of irony, I think.
The religious leaders enter the fray laying out their circular arguments to deny that Jesus has the power to heal blindness. Because, evidently, they don’t want to believe. And Jesus says some words about how his presence in the world enables some who were blind to gain their sight, and others with sight to become blind. It confuses these religious leaders, mainly because they are among those who are spiritually blind to Jesus. They are unable, unwilling, to recognize who Jesus is.
As we begin chapter 10, Jesus starts to develop this metaphor of the shepherd and his sheep. His listeners fall right in with this; they know sheep and shepherding. They are people who live pretty close to the earth and are not unfamiliar with animal husbandry. So they know that sheep are exceptionally good, for some reason, at recognizing their own shepherd.
That seems to be the peculiar kind of intelligence sheep have. They’re not original thinkers; they’re not headstrong or independent. Sheep are followers. But they are not undiscerning in their following. They know their own shepherd.
I have heard it said that when flocks of sheep get mixed up together at the watering hole, each shepherd knows that when it is time to leave all he has to do is call his sheep. His sheep will follow his call, because they know him. Sheep know their shepherd and they trust him completely.
The shepherd doesn’t have to worry that any of his sheep will have a different idea about where to go. He doesn’t have to worry that some of his sheep will have doubts or skepticism. They trust their shepherd completely.
And we are not like sheep, are we? We have ideas, we have doubts and skepticism, we have independent thoughts of our own. We are not sheep. But we who call ourselves Christian also want to follow our Good Shepherd, the Christ. And we want to feel the assurance that we are, indeed, following him and not going astray.
All this means that it’s not as simple for us as it is for sheep. We have competing desires – we want to be independent and in charge; and we want to follow Jesus. Which means we are sometimes confused.
The people who were gathered around Jesus at the temple that winter day, in the portico of Solomon, were confused – about whether he was the one. And they simply wanted him to tell them. Just say it, yes or no.
As if this were a court of law and they are simply gathering facts to make a case; tell us, are you the messiah? It’s a simple yes or no question.
It reminds me of another episode that both Matthew and Luke tell us about. When John the Baptist, who has been imprisoned by Herod, sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one we have been waiting for?” Just tell us, is it you or should we continue searching?
But, if you don’t already know, you will never know.
I don’t mean to be snarky when I say that, no more than Jesus means to be snarky when he says, “I have told you, and you do not believe.” He refuses to give them a direct answer to their direct question, but it isn’t because he is shying away from the matter. It really is because, if they don’t know, they won’t know.
They won’t know because he tells them, “Yes, I am the Messiah.” They won’t know if he wears a Son of God identity badge. They won’t know him by his words, because they don’t know him by his work.
They are like the religious leaders in chapter nine who refused to believe the evidence right before their eyes that Jesus had healed a man of his blindness, because such a thing didn’t fit into their narrative. They had already decided Jesus was at best, a nuisance, at worst, a heretic. They said, “We don’t know where he came from.” As if that would settle the matter.
Perhaps it is this same crowd of people confronting him on the portico of Solomon saying, “Just tell us plainly. Are you the one?” Although this time betraying a degree of uncertainty about their convictions, they are still unwilling to trust their eyes when they see the acts he has done, the signs he has performed. They do not trust the voice of the Shepherd calling to them through his works.
They have not recognized him when he healed the blind and the lepers, when he fed the thousands, when he restored life to so many in so many ways.
So why should it matter what he tells them? If they don’t know, they won’t know simply because he tells them, “I am the Messiah.”
They won’t know because they are somehow unable or unwilling to see him, hear him, trust him. Jesus says, “you don’t know because you don’t belong to my sheep.” It seems like it’s out of their hands. Is it out of our hands?
The strange and paradoxical truth of it is that it is out of our hands, while it is also in our hands. In a way, it’s a matter of seeing him and hearing him because you trust him.
We might look back again at that story from Luke, involving John the Baptist’s disciples, who come to Jesus at John’s request, asking, “Are you the one? Or should we keep waiting?” His answer to them is sublime: Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news.
And this is what Jesus means when he says to the religious leaders, “I have already told you.” He means, I told you with my life, with every condition I healed, every hungry body I fed, every act of compassion, every work of justice. I told you. And you didn’t believe it. I told you with my thumbprint, my unique DNA, my body, my blood. I told you in a hundred different ways, different than what you were looking for. And you just could not see it; could not believe it.
Here, again, we have the competing desires at play: wanting to be in charge, to be in the know; and wanting to follow Jesus. Independence at war with radical trust.
The religious leaders of his day were at the forefront among those who could not recognize Jesus, because they were swimming in their sense of certainty and importance. And, the truth is whenever we fall into that place of feeling too certain, too secure, too important in the world, we also risk not being able to recognize Jesus. If we stop seeing as he sees.
If we stop seeing goodness, if we stop looking through eyes of compassion, if we stop believing he can make a way, somehow, when there seems to be no way. If we stop believing that his light leads us to eternity, we stop knowing him. Like a sheep without a shepherd, we are lost.
You know there are some things you can’t know just by someone telling you about those things. You need to experience these things for yourself.
Look, you don’t have to believe what you don’t see, because if you open the eyes of your heart you will see his work all around you. You don’t have to follow blindly and dumbly, because if you open your ears you will hear the sound of your shepherd’s voice calling you. It starts with radical trust.
You know God by God’s care for you, the ways God provides for you, and the way a relationship with God shapes you to grow in gratitude during times of blessing; and patience and trust will get you through the dark valleys. We know God by the ways God cares for us, so we need to let God care for us.
