The Voice of the Wolf

 I had the privilege of preaching the sermon in the parish yesterday.  It is based on the Gospel passage John 10:11–18 which is the Jesus the Good Shepherd.  The sermon follows the Gospel passage below:

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

¹² The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep,

sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

¹³ The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.

¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me,

¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.

¹⁶ I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.

I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.

So there will be one flock, one shepherd. ¹⁷ For this reason the Father loves me,

because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me,

but I lay it down of my own accord.

I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.

I have received this command from my Father.”

 

The Voice of the Wolf

Have you heard the voice of the Good Shepherd?  If you have, what did the voice sound like?  Is it a deep bass voice; or a high tenor; or perhaps it is a bel canto soprano or rich contralto?  Was it a loud voice like the boom of thunder or perhaps the still small voice that whispers in the breeze?  Any of those might surprize you if you heard them.  If you have heard them, it would be very interesting to hear what the voice said to you. 

Perhaps the voice of the Good Shepherd was not, like a human voice at all.  I believe that the voice of the Good Shepherd can speak to us in many different forms.  After all it would be trying to put God in a nice neat box if we were to declare that we would only accept the voice of God if it came in a particular form or even in a particular language. After all God did not speak to Abraham or David or Joseph – either the Joseph in the OT or the Joseph who was the step father of the Good Shepherd – in the King's English or any other form of English. 

I believe – and I believe this with every fiber of my being – the being that is created in the image of God - that the Good Shepherd and every aspect of the Holy Trinity speaks to us in more ways than we can ask or imagine.  Of course, God speaks to us in scripture as we hear every time we meet to worship and the word of God is proclaimed.  But God also speaks to us in the beauty of nature and in the awe-full power of nature unleashed.  God speaks to us in prayer – when we pray it needs to be a two-way conversation and not just us speaking to God.  We need to listen to what God says – and of course that may be in silence as well as in the many different ways God responds.

One of the ways that I know God speaks to each of us is through dreams.  I hold that dreams are what is called God’s Forgotten Language.  Our culture no longer understands what the dreams are saying to us and how to understand that message.  We need to learn the language of dreams to help us become the people that God created us to be.

Let’s try something different – let’s look at today’s Gospel reading as if it were a dream and explore it how we might explore a dream.  First, let’s look at the images in the story/dream.  There are quite a few – there is of course the Good Shepherd and there is the Father.  There is also the hired hand, the sheep that belong to the shepherd as well as the sheep that do not belong to this fold, and let’s not forget the wolf.  So, there are a number of images we can work with in this dream.

Next, what we can do is to take each of these images and explore the associations we have with them.  We don’t have time to explore all the images, but let’s take one and see what is revealed.  First, we need to approach the images with the idea that all the images in the dream are actually aspects of ourselves.  This is a rather different way of looking at the dream or especially a passage of scripture.   This may be a radical idea for you but give it a try.  Each part of the dream represents an aspect of you whether you are aware of it or not.  That idea may be comfortable for some of the images – such as the Good Shepherd – but it may be rather uncomfortable for others such as the hired hand who runs away from the wolf. 

Now let’s take one of the images and explore it - let’s unpack it.  We can do this with all the images but we will only choose one to give you an idea how it works.  It is especially effective when we do this with one that we are not that comfortable with.  So, let’s unpack the image of the wolf.  What can we say about a wolf – it is dangerous, it runs in packs, it is ravenous, it is heartless - killing its prey without mercy.  There are quite a few negative images.  It has received a lot of bad press over the years.  However, there are also positive characteristics we can attribute to it.  Wolves are also maternal and care for their young being very protective.  A pack of wolves seems to be well run – an orderly society.   There are more but you get the idea – there can be both positive and negative parts of this image. 

Let’s walk around the image even more to get a more complete understanding of it.  I want to call on a traditional aboriginal teaching to help us further unpack the wolf within us – remember that each of the images is part of us. 

A wise elder is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old man simply replied, “The one you feed.”

We have been created with all these aspects of ourselves whether it is the wolf, the sheep, the shepherd, the hired man or yes, the Good Shepherd with positive and negative aspects – well perhaps not the Good Shepherd.  If we are to recognize all that we are, we need to acknowledge those aspects of ourselves.  Once we have done that, we can recognize that God calls us to be more than what we believe we are now.  It is up to us to feed those aspects that God calls us to be - what God created us to be.  What parts will we feed - which path will we choose.  It is up to us.

Amen