Readings
Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
What does it mean to believe Jesus, or more specifically believe in Jesus? That might sound like an obvious question on the surface, but I would argue that we use this language without a lot of thought. In today’s gospel Jesus makes believing him a condition of being one of his sheep. He makes believing him be the key to eternal life. So what does it mean to believe Jesus? What does it mean to believe in him?
Does believing in Jesus mean that we intellectually accept certain ideas about him that we have been taught over the years? Does believing in Jesus mean that we take an evangelical approach and accept him as our Lord and Savior? Or does believing in Jesus mean that we hand our whole selves over to him and follow his lead?
Well today’s gospel offers us some insight into this question. Jesus tells the people gathered around him that they do not know whether or not he is the Messiah because they do not believe. He talks about his works and his words and the fact that they do not believe. But then he talks about his followers, who he refers to as his sheep, and he specifically says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
Sheep and shepherds have an interesting relationship. Rather than being a master and animal relationship it often becomes more like a parent-child relationship. Shepherds make huge investments of time and energy in the care of their flocks and in return the sheep bond to the shepherd and follow that person wherever they go. And while the use of a sheep dog can be helpful in herding a large flock, it is not uncommon for sheep to come running when they hear the voice of their beloved shepherd.
In the early Church, Christians referred to themselves as the people of “the way.” To be a follower of Jesus was in some very real aspects to be in relationship to him like a sheep to a shepherd. Wherever he went and whatever he did was the call for those who believed in him. In fact, belief in him was defined not by intellectual consent to some idea about Jesus as much as it was about behavioral consent to the pattern of Jesus’ own living.
This is what I believe Jesus is getting at in the passage we heard this morning. By using the metaphor of sheep and shepherd he was moving belief away from intellectual consent towards a pattern of living, a way of being if you will. To reiterate, to believe in Jesus is about living as he lived and doing as he did. This is the gate to eternal life. This is the path to eternity.
This is a huge challenge for us today. For more than a millennium the church has been obsessed with ideas about Jesus rather than about shaping our lives after his. We have substituted intellectual understanding and acceptance for a way of life. How many of us were taught about Jesus in terms of ideas about his divinity? How many of us were taught about salvation in terms of ideas about him being a substitution for our sins? How many of us were taught that accepting those and other ideas were essential to being a faithful Christian?
Now I am not suggesting that we weren’t also encouraged to be generous and loving people. But, at least in my experience, this was shaped as a moralism that was bound up in ideas of good and evil, of sin and righteousness. Rarely, if ever, was I encouraged to love as Jesus loves, or to live as Jesus lived. Rarely, if ever, was I asked to make being with the poor and the outcast my primary expression of faith. Rarely, if ever, was I asked to truly make loving my enemy an expression of believing in Jesus.
No, friends, throughout most of the history of the church, including our own lifetimes, we have been offered a religious understanding that makes Jesus someone to love not someone to emulate. We put Jesus on a pedestal and worship him, rather than doing what he asked us to do, which is follow him.
What would the world look like if Christians throughout the world began to actively follow Jesus rather than simply worship him as God? What would our own lives look like?
Such behavior would bring about a radical transformation of the Church and the world. We would be fearless advocates for those our society marginalizes. We would be agents of peace and reconciliation in places of war, violence, and oppression. We would actively work for the well-being of the poor and the dispossessed. And we would do all these things looking to not be superior or engage in acts of charity. Rather we would take the humble path and seek to honor and restore the dignity of every human being.
Make no mistake, such a way of behaving would make us a target of the powerful and the fearful, just as it made Jesus one. But such belief would lead to a sense of participating in eternity. It would lead us to move beyond our small selves and embrace a life transformed which has no end. It would instill in us the courage and the will to persevere even in the face of resistance. It would do nothing less than usher in the kingdom of God and make our world a better place.
This, beloved, is the kind of belief to which Jesus calls us. He calls us to be his sheep. He calls us to hear his voice and follow him. He does nothing less than invite us to be his transforming love in this world.