Tuesday April 16, 2013

Today’s text

John 10:27

The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me.

Reflection

To hear the voice of Jesus is to share the consciousness that is in him. It is to allow his words and deeds to penetrate one’s mind and heart so that you begin to see as he sees and hear as he hears.

This is not faith in the conventional sense that people normally think of it. Those who questioned and resisted Jesus--in the first century and now--tend to look at him from the outside and say, “Prove it. Prove you are special. Prove that you are the Son of God. Do something; maybe then I will believe.”

But ‘proof’ is not found by standing outside and looking in. We know Jesus the same way we know anyone else: By living with him closely enough so that who he is--his voice--begins to penetrate our consciousness, and we notice: What is he like? What is it like to be with him? How does he see me? How does he see the world?

Only then can we begin to know him. Only then can we know if he mediates a new kind of life--eternal life--to our hearts and minds. Only then can we feel what he awakens within us.

Jesus speaks of human beings as sheep, which is true, of course. There is no denigration in this. Sheep follow … something, someone. The idea of a wholly autonomous life is a fiction the strong-minded moderns like to tell themselves.

But they, too, are followers of ideas and commitments they often do not understand or even know about. Everyone follows something or someone.

The question we might all ask: Does the voice I follow, the voice within, make me more alive, more free, more loved and loving?

Does that voice lift me above the clatter of daily life into awareness of the Love who loves me and all things--and invites me to follow?

If so, the voice of Jesus has found a home in you, and you have found the home you always needed.

Pr. David L. Miller