4th Sunday of Easter – Year C
Acts 13:14, 43-52; Psalm 100,1-2, 3, 5; Revelation 7:9, 14b-17; John 10:27-30.
My dad had a very distinctive whistle.
Now, I am not speaking about the sort of whistle that one uses
to reproduce the melody of a song.
I mean the kind that he could conjure up
when he put two fingers in his mouth and let it rip.
It was deafening, and its meaning was absolutely clear to my siblings and me:
when we heard it, we were
to stop immediately what we were doing,
to begin running toward the source of the sound, and
to arrive there out of breath.
My dad’s whistle was so memorable that, to this day,
whenever I hear someone whistle like that,
I tense up for a split second and think that
I am definitely not where I am supposed to be.
Only in the last several years has it dawned on me that,
when people whistle in this manner,
they are almost always calling a dog, not a child.
I take this as a compliment: my dad loved dogs!
I have all of this in mind today on account of Jesus’ words
in the gospel reading we just heard:
“My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (Jn. 10:27).
Note that Jesus did not say,
“My sheep hear my words,” or “My sheep hear my teachings,”
and they follow me.
It was merely the sound of Jesus’ voice,
much like the sound of my father’s loud whistle,
that prompted Jesus’ hearers, his friends,
to run toward him, to follow him, to trust him.
In a way, this is what we do in the church when we come together
to celebrate the Eucharist, or even when we pray privately:
we listen for the voice of the Lord, we go to it, and we follow where it leads.
But how do we hear Jesus’ voice?
And when we think we hear it,
how do we know that it is really his voice that we are hearing?
When I find myself involved in conversations of a spiritual nature,
these two questions arise more than just about any others.
I probably have such a sharp ear for them because
they are quite often the questions I am asking myself.
So let us ask them together:
how do we hear Jesus’ voice; and,
when we hear it, how do we know that it is really
his voice we are hearing?
Today’s first reading, the reading from the Acts of the Apostles,
gives us one way to answer these questions.
Paul and Barnabas, we are told, expand their preaching
to address not only their Jewish brothers and sisters, but the Gentiles as well.
But they do this only after they
listen to the Scriptures in the synagogue (cf., Acts 13:14-15),
decide on a course of action (cf., Acts 13:46-47), and
evaluate the fruits of their decision (cf., Acts 13:52).
These three steps – listening, deciding, and evaluating the fruits of our decisions –
enable us to hear the voice of the Lord,
and to have confidence that, truly, it is his voice we hear.
First, listening.
In a way, it seems almost too simple to suggest that
the way to hear Jesus’ voice is by listening.
Must we not listen in order to hear any voice?
But hearing the voice of the Lord presents special, even unique difficulties.
For instance, we ought not to expect to hear Jesus’ voice in the same way that
you heard the voices of the people sitting near you tonight
when you greeted one another at the start of our liturgy.
Our listening needs to include our ears, mind you,
for what they hear becomes the stuff, the raw material, that we bring to our prayer.
But once we bring our petitions, our hopes, our fears before the Lord,
we listen interiorly for the voice of Jesus,
a voice that no recording device could ever capture.
That is simply not how it works.
Once we are silent, once we clear out the excess noise of our lives,
once we take even five minutes to wait for that small, still voice to come, come it will.
And when it comes, it inevitably invites us
into deeper friendship with God and with one another.
But, even when we listen, how do we know when we are hearing the voice of the Lord?
How do we know it is not simply our own voices telling us whatever we want to hear?
This is where the second step that Paul and Barnabas have modeled for us comes in handy.
Deciding.
Really, it should be two steps of conferring and then deciding,
but in this reading today, we hear only about decisions.
So much of the rest of Acts, however, sees the disciples conferring
with one another before making a decision –
conferring about whether there should be
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a replacement for Judas,
who it should be,
whether Gentiles would have to be circumcised to follow Christ,
and so forth.
When we think we hear the voice of the Lord inviting us into a deeper relationship,
we do well to confer with others before making a decision
about how to respond to that voice.
Friends, family members, spiritual directors, mentors –
these may all be people who help us reach some decision about our lives.
It need not be one huge, monumental decision, though it could be.
The interior prompting may well be to some small,
seemingly insignificant decision.
But pay attention to the act of deciding:
very often, we can know whether a voice we hear is the Lord’s
by seeing whether it prompts us to make a decision.
Third, evaluating the fruits of our decisions.
We could be convinced that we hear the Lord’s voice inviting us into deeper friendship,
we may make a decision about how to respond generously to that,
but how are we left feeling?
In our reading from Acts today, we heard that the disciples
“were filled with joy and the holy Spirit” (Acts 13:52).
How about us?
Do we feel sad, terrified, lonely, selfish, tepid, apathetic?
If so, there is a good chance that something went awry along the way.
On the other hand, if we are left feeling
upbeat, empowered, hopeful, selfless, desirous of still deeper relationship,
then this is almost always the sign that something has gone right,
that we have heard the voice of the Lord, that we have decided well,
and have arrived quickly at that voice, out of breath,
like when I was a kid.
Brother and sisters, the three steps modeled for us by Paul and Barnabas –
listening, deciding, and evaluating the fruits of our decisions –
enable us to hear the voice of the Lord,
and to have confidence that, truly, it is his voice we hear.
As we wander from the sheepfold, so to speak, that is this church,
and out into the fields of our lives,
let us ask the Lord for the grace of sharp hearing,
courageous decision-making,
and honest consideration about where our decisions leave us.
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