Hearing the Voice of the Shepherd: Truth and Faith-Narrative in the Gospel of John

The 4^thSunday of Easter is traditionally called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” The reason for this lies in the shepherd theme of the readings appointed for the day. These include Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my Shepherd”), perhaps the most beloved psalm of all, and one of three passages from John 10, most memorable for its “I am the Good Shepherd” discourse. For many of us, these passages conjure up images that look more like the gentle coloring book Jesus with shepherd’s staff, or the portraits we often see of him carrying a lamb across his shoulders, than they do the scruffy realities of life in the shepherding and herding villages that dotted the landscape of first-century Palestine. How apt we are to forget that such communities still exist in many parts of the world today.

John 10:1-3 sets a scene all too familiar for many, though, I dare say, not for many of us: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (1-3).

This passage reminds me of a story I once heard of an African preacher who told a group of Americans how the people of his village knew each other’s livestock the way a suburbanite might know the kids of the neighborhood. He described how commonplace it was for a person to stop by a neighbor’s house to ask the whereabouts of a missing animal: “Have you seen my sheep, So-and-so?” (calling it by name). He went on to describe how shepherds called out to their flocks before dark to gather them into the safety of a common sheepfold in the center of the village. Then, just before dawn, the shepherds would again enter the fold to lead their flocks back out to the fields. He concluded his story with the words, “Sheep always seem to know which shepherd to follow.” 

Strikingly, our Gospel evokes the same image: “When the shepherd has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

While it may be easy to identify the shepherd in our passage as Jesus, the passage does not explicitly identify his sheep, though we know they must be his followers. This begs a number of questions for would-be followers (“sheep” if you will): Are we part of this flock? Are we following the right shepherd? Are we listening to the right voice? What about these thieves and bandits that climb into the sheepfold by another way? Should we be concerned about them? As a stand-alone passage these questions are not specifically answered. But the preceding story in John Chapter 9 (Jesus’ healing of the man born blind) may give us some clues. 

The healing of the man born blind provoked quite a stir in Jerusalem, especially since it occurred on a Sabbath. Witnesses were brought in to identify him after he was presumably healed. Some were certain, others not. Even many who passed by him each day as he begged in the streets were afraid to say for sure. After all, who had ever heard of a blind person receiving their sight? Failing to expose the man as a fraud, the Pharisees questioned his parents, and finally the man himself. They demanded that he denounce the one who had healed him, which he refused to do. Because of this he was made a social outcast. 

When Jesus eventually finds the outcast man, he says, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” A group of nearby Pharisees overhears this and scoffs back, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus responds, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see’, your sin remains” (9:41). 

What both chapters have in common is the use of sense-metaphors in the recognition of (or, as the case may be, in failing to recognize) Jesus as the one sent from God. Chapter 9 employs the metaphor of sight or vision, and Chapter 10 the metaphor of hearing. In the former, blindness on the part of the Pharisees consisted in their failure to recognize the work of God in the acts of Jesus. In the latter, hearing refers to the responsive recognition of the sheep to the voice of their Shepherd. 

At first, we might think that both senses are of equal value. Perhaps we might even value vision over hearing. But the author of the Gospel employs a bit of conventional wisdom here, along with subtle irony, to make an entirely different point: namely, that sheep have very poor eyesight (or so it was thought), and so do we sometimes, metaphorically speaking. Indeed, we saw an example of this in last week’s Gospel (Luke 24:13-35), where the two travelers on the way to Emmaus failed to see Jesus in the stranger who walked and talked with them on the road. Similarly, the blind man of John 9 hears and obeys the command to “Go and wash” before he ever lays eyes on Jesus. He then refuses the Pharisees' demand to denounce Jesus even before he could pick him out of a line-up. The blind man’s eyes were indeed opened by Jesus, but not before he opened his ears.

The term “wool-blindness” comes from the fact that wool frequently grows over the eyes of sheep, obstructing their vision. Yet even shorn sheep can be observed strangely lifting and cocking their heads to check the position of other sheep in the flock. This seems to support the belief in their poor vision. Scientists now know that in at least one respect the eyesight of sheep is very good! Sheep have a 300-degree field of vision, making it possible to detect predators from behind, as long as other factors, like wool or excessive horn growth, don’t obstruct the view. But, admittedly, sheep have poor depth perception, which causes them to baulk at shadows and dips in the field, and, like other prey animals, they are farsighted and astigmatic.

Sheep make up for these deficiencies with their other senses, particularly their superb sense of hearing. Every shepherd can attest to the uncanny ability of sheep to distinguish the unique bleats of other sheep, not to mention the individual voices of their human tenders. A young lamb that looses sight of its mother need only cry out. The familiar sound of its mother’s bleating, even among the cacophonic bleats of other mothers, instantly reassures the lamb that she is nearby.

But what exactly do the sheep of our passage hear? What draws their attention and causes them to leave the sheepfold to follow the shepherd out into the hills? The shepherd’s voice too is a metaphor, but again for something that does not appear in the immediate context. 

Often in my sermons or lectures I make reference to the original audiences of, say, one of the gospels or a letter from Paul. I mean this in the most literal sense possible. Audience comes from the Latin word audire, meaning “to hear.” The earliest Christians would have heard John’s gospel read to them in their gatherings. They would not have read the gospel for themselves. Pew Bibles and lectionary inserts were not available in ancient times, and most people were illiterate anyway. So imagine the impression made on early Christian audiences when they heard Jesus say, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). This highlights how important audience-familiarity with the main themes of a sacred text was in ancient times.  

Among the main themes in the Gospel of John is truth. John portrays Jesus as the truth-bearer, indeed, as Truth itself. To bear witness to Jesus is to bear witness to truth. Hence, to “hear the voice” of Jesus is to listen to true speech. The Greek word for truth (alëtheia) literally means “unconcealed” or “out in the open.” This implies that truth is readily available to our senses, unless, of course, our senses happen to be dull (metaphorically or otherwise). Truth is used 48 times in John’s gospel in comparison with a combined total of 10 instances in the other three gospels, underscoring the importance of truth as a central theme in John. The gospel is filled with memorable examples of this:

(John 1:14)  The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

(John 1:17)  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

(John 8:31-32) “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

(John 14:6)  Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Perhaps the best-known example is the scene at Jesus trial when Pilate mockingly deduces that Jesus must be a king (18:37-38). Jesus answers back, in part, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (The author would have his audience recall the sheep who hear the voice of Jesus.) 

Jesus’ response elicits Pilate’s famous question, “What is truth?” Yet before Jesus can answer, Pilate walks off to address his accusers. But it doesn’t really matter at this point, despite the spilling of many centuries’ worth of ink by commentators attempting to answer for him. The important thing here is that John’s audience already knows the answer. They had been listening to the stories of Jesus as they unfolded in his gospel.

In ancient times, as in modern times, the definition of truth depended on whom you asked. Truth had currency in Greek, in Roman, and in Hebrew thought. Yet each of these cultures approached the question differently. Greek philosophers sought truth in the knowledge of abstract forms in their attempts to make sense of reality. Roman society, famous for it jurisprudence, was concerned more with factual information and with the accurate interpretation of events. Truth in the Hebrew Scriptures primarily conveyed the notion of God’s faithfulness and the covenant response of God’s people.

Yet John’s audience would have recognized truth primarily in terms of his portrayal of Jesus. For them Pilate’s cynical query was not a summons to debate the nature of reality, as in Greek thought, or to ascertain the factuality of events, as in Roman thought. Rather Pilate was speaking directly to the Truth, saw it with his own eyes, and yet refused to recognize it. Pilate’s question turns out to be the theme sentence of John’s Gospel.   

Truth then, in Johannine representation, is at heart personal and relational, because Jesus calls his sheep into personal relationship. They “follow him because they know his voice.” It is hardly surprising to find this same author referring to Jesus as the Logos, the "Word,” at the beginning of his gospel.

The voice of Jesus is not heard in the eloquence of a philosopher’s syllogism, or in a theologian’s doctrinal precision, or even in a historian’s forensic study of the past. Rather the voice of Jesus is heard through story, through faith-narrative – that is to say, through hearing about the work of God in the acts of Jesus, and coming to know him as the embodiment of God’s salvific program. The other gospels refer to this as “the kingdom of God,” but John’s favorite metaphor is “life” – eternal life. By this he does not merely mean the “the life of the world to come.” He means something much more, though certainly inclusive of that. He means “life in the here-and-now” – a life lived for God; a life lived for others; a life that has eternal value in the present.

(John 20:30-31) Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.