THE KIRK OF KILDAIRE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

CARY, NC

www.kirkofkildaire.org

A sermon preached by Joseph Welker, Jr.

Whose Voice Do You Hear?

John 10:22-30

April 29, 2007

You may remember the story. It was in a book, popularized in the movies a few years ago. He was hailed as one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. He was a genius who developed a thesis on the dynamics of human conflict that would revolutionize economic theory and he would eventually win the Nobel Prize. He did this work at an age when many people are still trying to figure out how to move away from Mom and Dad. Before he was out of his twenties he was a distinguished professor at MIT.

But at the height of his career, John Nash suffered a breakdown. He interrupted a lecture to announce he was on the cover of Life magazine disguised as the pope. He claimed foreign governments were communicating with him through the media, and he turned down a prestigious post at the University of Chicago because, he said, he was about to be named Emperor of Antarctica.

In the movie, A Beautiful Mind, we see the characters and hear the voices that exist only in his head, unconnected to reality. They made him feel important-as if he were the center of the universe. They played on his darkest fears. When he listened to them, they destroyed his relationships, distorted his perceptions, made him obsessive, irrational and terrified. They led to death.

Paranoid delusion is one of the most difficult forms to treat in all of psychopathology. I remember someone in a previous congregation who claimed to hear God's voice… and that was harmless enough until the person turned violent on others. (I wonder if this is what was going on with the Virginia Tech gunman.)The voices were absolutely real to this church member. To tell the person that the voices were not real would be like asking you or me to distrust the existence of our best friend or our boss. Thankfully, my friend and church member received medication that helped them deal with their condition and improve.

What makes John Nash's story so remarkable is that he was able to learn, over time, the art of discernment. He learned to test the voices, to find out which ones were false and which ones were true. He had to learn to not listen to the ones that lead to death. He learned not to dwell on what they said. He learned not to do what they requested. And while never completely freed from his illness, he discovered that over time their hold on his mind could be greatly weakened.

Nash speaks at one point in the film about how in a way his battle is the battle of all of us. "I'm not so different from you," he says to his friend. "We all hear voices. We just have to decide which ones we are going to listen to." [1]

That is the real trick, isn't it? Deciding which voices we will listen to.

I hear voices all the time and so do you. There are voices in our culture telling us that the secret to a full and abundant life is to make all the money you can, climb to the top of your profession and all will go well with your soul. There are voices that tell parents that if your kids are not involved in sports and music and a calendar full of activities, they will not have a happy and full life. I've heard those voices, haven't you? Why else do we sacrifice our families to the calendars unless we hear voices telling us that soccer or basketball or football or band are the keys to a successful life? By the way, have you been watching how that seems to be working out for our stars and celebrities who did exactly that? How happy are they? I can't help think about Brittney these days-some would say she has achieved the dream of many a child… but does she seem happy and fulfilled to you? In my own life I hear voices telling me that if I just work harder and harder-and longer hours, then a full and abundant life will come to the Kirk and to me. Do you hear those voices in your calling as a business person or a teacher or in wherever God has called you to serve? I know a self made business person who used to brag about having never taken a vacation in 30 years. He was one of the most bitter people I've ever met. He needed a vacation!

Voices… the real trick is deciding which ones to listen to… which ones are real and lead to abundant life and which ones lead to death-as seductive as they sound.

To be a person of faith, you know is largely a decision about which voices you will listen to. Jewish people will listen to Moses and the torah for guidance. Muslims listen to the voice of Mohammed and the Koran to connect them with God and lead them to a full and abundant life. It might be said that to be a Christian is to be a person who has decided to listen to the voice of Jesus to be the one who connects us to God and leads us to a full and abundant life.

That's how John sees it, don't you think. He uses the common image of his day and of the people of Israel to illustrate the point-sheep and shepherd. For most of this chapter Jesus has been talking about being a good shepherd… and how the sheep follow him because they hear his voice. Others try to distract and steal the sheep with their voices, but he keeps on calling.

In our passage in this confrontation with Jewish leaders, he stakes his claim for his sheep- "My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life (life to the full or abundant life) and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand… the Father and I am on."

In other words, to be a Christian, is to be a person who listens to the voice of Jesus, believing that his voice will lead them to God and the abundant life God offers.

One might even say that we are here this morning because Jesus gathers his flock together on a regular basis to listen to his voice. Worship is in part an act of listening. Every week we gather to listen and I hope during the week, you find that private time to listen. For to be a Christian is to be a person who listens to the voice of Jesus.

I've been thinking about this as we engage in Long Range Planning at the Kirk. Long Range planning is in part the act of listening as a Christian community for the voice of Jesus-gathering us and leading us. Asking again and again, "What does Christ call us to be and do?"

I have been through several of these long range planning processes now and sometimes I become fearful that we think our task is to listen to the voice of the congregation. We send you all of those surveys and have all of the meetings and don't get me wrong, we do want to hear from you. But what we really need for you to do is to be actively listening not only to your own voice and not to the voice of a favorite program or ministry or need that you have… but listening actively to the voice of Christ. This is not our church after all, but Christ's church of which we are a part.

This came home to me recently when I heard Brian McLaren speak on a podcast. I shared this with the Session and the staff. Brian McLaren asked a question that has been rolling around in my mind for sometime now. He asked a question: "Christ's church has a mission, but does Christ's mission have a church?" Think about that. "Christ's church has a mission, but does Christ's mission have a church." There can be a difference you know.

There have been sad periods of church history when the mission of the church was to eliminate others who did not believe as we do… the crusades. The church had a mission but few of us would say it was Christ's. About a century ago the church had a mission to make sure slaves obeyed their masters and we even build slave galleries to segregate them in our sanctuaries. The church had a mission, we heard the congregation and the culture speak-but was it Christ's mission.

Do you see where I'm going with this, folks? Long Range planning is in part the difficult work of discerning the mission of Jesus Christ and how the church might pursue that mission. In other words, it is the work of listening for Christ's voice amid a sea of other voices-sometimes even our own. "Christ's church has a mission, but does Christ's mission have a church?"

It will if we listen to the voice of our Lord.

Let me make this more personal for you. For as my mind started going with that phrase, I heard a voice ask me another question based on that one.
"A disciple of Christ has a mission, but does Christ's mission have a disciple."

I've met followers of Christ who seemed to think Jesus called them to make sure the church parlor was clean and that children would not play there. Or it was Christ's call to them to make sure that we had the right color of paint on the walls or the right (meaning their) style of worship. I've never heard someone argue as hard and about the quality of involvement in caring for the poor. Myself included. And sometimes it leads me to wonder, "does Christ's mission have a disciple?"

That brings it down to me at a very personal level. It asks me to think about my life and am I living in the direction that brings the life and love of Christ to other people-members of my family… members where I work or at school or among my friendships-or even the people I meet who serve me at a store or wait on me at a restaurant. Do I belong to a church to get my needs met or do I belong to a church in order that Christ may speak to me and through me and lead me to share his love with the world?

It all depends, I guess on what voices you listen to. Be careful. Some voices will lead you to death… but John would be among those who would say that when he listened to the voice of Christ… it led him to find an abundant and full life - someone who saved him. He says it is why he wrote this gospel. He wanted to share good news with us: "these (words) 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."

I want to close with a story of someone whose life was saved when she heard the voice of Jesus. She admits that before she said "Yes" to Jesus, her life was a mess. Forgive me if I've shared this story before, I frankly don't remember. I will likely share it again sometime. But it is a powerful story that speaks to me the power of Christ when someone is able to hear the voice. It's the story of someone who describes herself as a "left wing hippie type" but chooses evangelical terms like "born again" to describe her traumatic journey from alcoholism to salvation. It's the story of Anne Lamott. "I don't know much," she says, "but I understand how entirely doomed I am without God."

Having been raised by atheist parents who were also anti-Presbyterians, she says, "I will go to my grave not understanding why I, of all people, ended up being such a committed Christian, let alone a Presbyterian." She marvels that the very church her father rejected … is the church where she discovered God's unconditional love. She says her parents considered themselves too sophisticated to be religious and equated Christianity with belief in extraterrestrials. She says she believed in God as a child, but had she been asked to choose a denomination, it would never have been Presbyterians because of her father's disdain for them.

Yet, in 1984 it was a small Presbyterian church - St. Andrews-in Marin City, California, that God used to turn her life around. She was 30 years old, living on a houseboat, trying to write in the daytime and drinking herself into oblivion every night. On Sunday mornings, when she was "hung-over or coming off a cocaine binge," she would wander over to the local flea market. One Sunday she noticed gospel music coming from a church across the street- St. Andrew Presbyterian. "I began stopping in at St. Andrew from time to time, she writes, 'standing in the doorway to listen to the songs." The sanctuary was drab and run down, but it had "a congregation of 30 people or so, radiating kindness and warmth." The sermons were usually "all about social injustice-and Jesus, which would be enough to send me running back to the sanctuary of the flea market."

That April she discovered she was pregnant. She had an abortion and she said she was sadder than she'd been since her father died. Drinking and pills helped dull the pain. One night, lying in the darkness, " I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner." She knew it was Jesus. "I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love." For the next few days she sensed Jesus following her everywhere, 'like a little cat'. Finally, she writes, "I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in." Looking back on that experience, Lamott says, "I was dying, and I got a second chance. I do believe I was saved."

But she didn't become a new person overnight. For the next year or so she fought her addictions and struggled with eating disorders. Over the years her life has become transformed. She began to listen to the voice of Jesus-learn of Jesus and learn from Jesus and allow his life to shape her own. She had a child who she makes sure is involved in church because it is the community of faith where she found her salvation-and she wants that for her son. She even helped organize a church school, she helps lead services in a nursing home. In 2000, she agreed to serve as an elder, after resisting for several years, because she sensed God telling her, "It's your turn." [2]

I think Ann Lamott would agree that to be a Christian, is to listen to the voice of Jesus who John says sounds like God to him. It's the voice that somedays will comfort you… other days will challenge you and it may even disturb or scare you from time to time… but always, always, if you listen… it will be the voice that will ultimately lead you to the abundant and full life that God wants for all of his children. Amen.

[1] Illustration adapted from John Ortberg, God is Closer than You Think, p 77-78
[2] Lamott's story is found in Traveling Mercies. This illustration is adapted from an interview with Presbyterians Today.