He is our discussion of the chapter in All Life Comes from Tenderness, “He Speaks also in Winter.”
And here is the sermon:
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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When Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd, his hearers knew exactly what he meant. This was his claim to David’s throne as Israel’s true and promised Messiah, a declaration that he would bring to fulfillment everything God had spoken through the prophets.
The apostles and early Christians took up that title as praise, celebrating him as the Great and Chief Shepherd, the ruler of the nations and protector of the people of God. In the catacombs, the earliest and most common Christian frescoes show him carrying a sheep on his shoulders—an image not of majesty but of tender mercy, marking him out as the Savior who bears each and every lost one back to God.
In the second century, Abercius, bishop of Hierapolis, had these words carved on his tomb as witness to his conversion: “I am a disciple of a holy shepherd who feeds the flocks of his sheep on mountains and pastures, and has great eyes that see all things.” For him, as for the first Christians, Jesus was the shepherd-king—the one who sees and sees to the needs of all, ruling with wisdom, leading without coercion or violence, suffering with and for the weak and poor—especially those who have little to nothing left, not even hope.
In our own time, Martin Heidegger, whom Robert Jenson once called “the greatest and most wicked philosopher of the twentieth century,” characterized the human not as lord of being but as its shepherd. But Karl Rahner, himself no stranger to Heidegger’s thought, saw clearly that this can be true only of Jesus.
We are not the shepherds of being; we are the ones being shepherded. We are tended and led into a future we could never make for ourselves, cared for and protected by the unfathomable mystery of his life.
And what kind of shepherd is he? Today’s readings show us. He is the one who lays down his life for his sheep, who does not evade responsibility as we are wont to do—“Am I my brother’s keeper?”—but embraces it wholly. He leads us by being with us, sharing our experiences, championing and companioning us until our thoughts, desires, and actions begin to sound like his. He stands always before the Father and every power on earth, including those that seek to harm us, and claims us as his own, taking full responsibility for everyone and everything, even to the point of death.
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John’s Gospel situates its scene during the Festival of Dedication, the celebration of the Temple’s rededication and the restoration of right worship. As Jesus walks in Solomon’s portico, some of the leaders confront him: “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus responds quickly and sharply: “I have already told you. My works speak for me. But you do not understand because you do not belong to my fold, and sheep know their shepherd’s voice.”
How do we learn to recognize his voice? Only by staying close, over long periods of time, listening carefully, learning the cadence of his mercy. Rowan Williams once put it this way in a sermon during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity:
A good shepherd echoes the voice of Jesus because a good shepherd has quite simply been listening to him, patiently and silently. Listen long enough to someone, and you begin to pick up their accent, their inflections… If we are going to transmit the voice of Jesus, we have to spend time in his company until his tone of voice becomes our own.
What is that tone? It is the sound of peace:
We listen to the Gospel and what is the accent that we hear, what is the tone that we pick up? It’s a voice which is devastatingly critical of the self-deceit of so many kinds of religion, devastatingly critical of self-righteousness and self-satisfaction. It’s a voice that is even capable of sounding with anger at the sight of the suffering of God’s children. It’s a voice that breaks through any number of barriers and obstacles, to speak a word of love to the guilty or the lost. It’s a voice that on the cross cries out in unimaginable suffering to God the Father and falls silent after a great cry. And it’s the voice that is instantly recognizable to the disciples on Easter Day when it utters the word, “Peace.” “Peace be with you,” the first greeting of the risen Christ.
This intimacy is made possible by the Incarnation. Only God can fully know God. But in becoming flesh, God has opened a way for us to share in that knowing. We encounter God now not only before us, demanding a response, or beside us, co-suffering with us, but within us, quietly orienting and reorienting our will to the good.
•••
This intimate knowing, this recognition of the Shepherd’s voice, is illustrated in the rest of today’s readings. In Revelation 7, a vast multitude stands before the throne, robed in white and waving palm branches. When John asks who they are, the answer comes: “These are those who have come out of the great ordeal.”
For this reason they are before the throne of God,
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat;for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
If we read closely, we see that the Lamb who earlier stood among the elders before the throne now stands at the center of the throne.
This movement reveals the destiny of all creation: the Lamb becomes the Shepherd, the source from which all life flows, and we are drawn by him into his intimacy with God, sharing in it so that we can say with him, “Abba, Father. Slowly, circuitously but nonetheless truly, we learn to live as he lives, to give as he gives, to recognize his mercy as the pulse of our own lives.
This is exactly what we see happening in the Acts reading and the story of Tabitha.
When Peter arrives, the widows welcome him into the upper room, grieving. They don’t ask for a miracle. They show him the garments their sister has made for them—perhaps the very ones they are wearing. Their mourning is a witness, just as the garments are.
Here we see what it means to recognize the Shepherd’s voice—not in spectacle or spiritual exploits, but in practical charity. Tabitha heard his voice in the needs of others. The widows heard it in her care. Peter hears it in their grief.
Yes, in this instance, Peter speaks a word that returns the dead woman to life. But that is not the deepest miracle. Tabitha will die again, exactly as Lazarus did. The greater wonder is the resurrected life of Christ flowing through this community—Tabitha’s tender labor, the widows’ remembering love, Peter’s simple prayer. No one is chasing signs and wonders. They are drawn into the movement of God simply by attending to love’s quiet calls.
••••
Many of us grew up expecting a more or less endless stream of dramatic, life-altering experiences and signs—as if every road were the road to Damascus, every inspired thought a word from God. We thought the Spirit’s guidance meant certainty and control. But over time, if we are teachable, we learn that what we are given is not the knowledge of every right decision or the power to guarantee desired outcomes but the mysterious reordering of our desires and redirecting of our will.
False shepherds promise success and make all kinds of noise in convincing us to follow them, to affirm their authority. The true Shepherd reshapes our longings subtly, secretively, so that we are suddenly surprised by what he has done, finding that we can recognize his works more and more often with growing delight. Somehow, we see his smile in the faces of those who suffer gracefully, and feel his touch in the unshowy graces that sustain us.
This is the truth of it: the Shepherd’s voice is heard most clearly not in spectacular signs but in those moments when mercy suddenly opens before us like a doorway into a deeper life, in the stirrings of wordless prayers, when we find ourselves touched by another’s need or moved to unexpected joy at some small kindness.
His voice is rarely thunder. Sometimes, it’s thread; sometimes, it’s tears—always it’s rooted in silence. And the difference it makes is decisive, altering our inmost intentions and capacity for attention, allowing us to notice what would once have been an unremarkable mercy, and to respond without pretension or expectation to the needs that only recently would not have moved us to compassion.
This is the wisdom of Psalm 23. We begin with a profession: “The Lord is my shepherd.” True—but spoken in the third person, as a statement about God. That is why the Good Shepherd does not keep us in the green pastures or lead us safely around the valley. He knows that the path—the only one that leads to the Father’s house—winds downward, into the valley of shadows, where we no longer speak about God, but to God: “You are with me.” Only after we have learned to pray as he prays can we find our place at the Table he has prepared for us, serving our enemies as he has served us, and hear ourselves speaking in his voice: “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Anyone can talk about God. And indeed everyone does—especially the hirelings. Only the Shepherd teaches us to pray by changing what and how we love. What marks his voice is not force, not brilliance, but kindness and mercy. It is the stillness at the center of every storm, the strength that does not flinch or flee, regardless of the threat. And if we listen long enough, walk close enough, we begin at least to hear it not just in miracle, but in mourning; not just in answers, but in the patience to wait with the questions; not just in success, but in the quiet fidelity that lasts, that holds, even when all seems lost.
•••••
One last, perhaps whimsical, observation.
The Gospel tells us this conversation between Jesus and his critics took place in winter. I think we’re meant to notice that detail. He speaks also in winter.
Sometimes, there are no resurrections. Tabitha dies and is not returned to life. But even then, communities still gather, in sorrow and in joy, to pray. Even then, garments are still woven and widows still weep and remember—and their weeping is not ignored.
I do not say we shouldn’t expect miracles. I do not say that God’s power is limited by our doubt or pain or small faith. But I do say that miracles are not the only shape grace takes. Even when the trees are bare, when there’s no fruit on the vine or sign in the sky—our Shepherd is not silent. He speaks also in winter. And we recognize his voice.
To know the Shepherd, then, is not only to be comforted, but to be changed, not only to be carried, but to follow him wherever he leads—not only in springtime joy but also in winter sorrow, not only in bold hallelujahs but also in groaning, gasping prayers; not only in heroic feats of faith but also in the most unassuming works of careful love—until we finally fall silent, like Mary and John at the foot of his cross, all our judgments are shattered into prayer, and his still, small voice begins to sound quietly in our own.
Amen.
