Known and Loved

Sermon, "Good Shepherd Sunday", Easter 4, May 11, 2025

The Reverend Will Berry

+ Beloved in Christ, I speak to you today in the name of the God who creates us, the God who sustains us, and the God who leads us towards abundant life—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Please be seated.

In a world of chaos, uncertainty, and fear, who will we let ourselves be led by, and where will we let ourselves be led?

Friends, today is the fourth Sunday of Easter, which is commonly called "Good Shepherd" Sunday. It’s the day that we hear one of the most well known and perhaps one of the most frequently depicted images for who God is in Christ—the Good Shepherd who leads us towards abundant life (John 10:10).

What we hear in today’s Gospel are eight verses of what, essentially, is an entire chapter of John that’s dedicated to this well-known image. Unlike the other Gospels, there aren’t any parables in John per se, but there are metaphors, images, and allegories that offer a rich tapestry for understanding who Jesus is. The Good Shepherd is one of those key allegories, and it has captured the Christian imagination for nearly two thousand years.

In the context of today’s story, Jesus offers up the image of the Good Shepherd as a response to some of his kin who can’t seem to grasp who he is. Since the wedding of Cana, Jesus has been performing miracles and demonstrating signs; all of which were foretold by his spiritual ancestors, the prophets.

But for whatever reason, the people aren’t getting it. Despite everything that Jesus has done, despite all the miracles and works and wonders, his identity is still being questioned. “Are you the Messiah or are you not?” the people ask. “Tell us plainly.”

What the crowd in today’s gospel is demonstrating is what psychologists call "perceptual blindness". The evidence of who Jesus is is right in front of them, and yet they completely seem to miss it. At the turn of the millenia, a couple of Harvard psychologists conducted a study about the strange and frustrating tendency that human beings often have to miss what’s right in front of our faces. They ended up calling the paper they published “Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events.” They named the study after the participants' inability to recognize that a person in a gorilla suit was walking right in front of them while they were busy with another task. What they essentially found is that what we physically see depends on what we mentally focus on. As the study’s paper suggests, “conscious perception seems to require attention” [1].

This "perceptual blindness" is what Jesus is calling out in some of his countrymen. The text refers to them as “the Jews,” which is a bit misleading, since everyone Jesus was interacting with at the time were Jewish—including himself. But like the other Gospels, John delineates between the members of the Jewish community who come to follow the Way of Christ and those who don’t. His distinction, however, is a bit harsher than the others, since the Gospel was written at a time when the division between those two communities was even wider and more fraught than it had previously been. So what we see this morning isn’t an indictment on the Jewish people who were living during the time of Christ, but a distinction that both John and Jesus make between those who recognize the messianic identity of Jesus and those who don’t.

The temptation in engaging with this morning’s passage, however, is to assume that we are the ones who are on the inside and that we know the Shepherd’s voice. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, the truth is that we’re just as capable of being misled as anyone else. As human beings, we are all prone to that condition of perceptual blindness that can obscure the reality of God that’s right in front of our faces.

So again, this brings us to the question: in this strange and wild world that we live in, who will we let ourselves be led by and where will we let ourselves be led?

When it comes to answering that question, Jesus doesn’t beat around the bush. In the verses that precede this morning’s passage, he contrasts himself with a hired hand who, unlike the Good Shepherd, “cares little about the sheep” and is all too willing to put them in danger (John 10:10). He also contrasts himself with the voice of a thief who wants to steal the flock, and even the wolves who want to eat them.

So what we see this morning is Jesus challenging his listeners to ignore the voices of indifference, corruption, and malevolence that try to ensnare them and lead them astray. Instead, he encourages them to listen to his voice; to the still, small voice of the Good Shepherd who calls them and knows them each by name.

The problem is that, much like our tendency towards "perceptual blindness", we have a habit of forgetting who and more importantly whose we are. So often we are willingly led astray by voices that promise wealth, power, prestige, and security; voices that pray on our fears and anxieties and promise that life will somehow be free of hardship and pain. Jesus never promises that our lives will be easy—but he promises that ,as we go through life, we will never be alone. He promises that in and through him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, God will always be with us.

Our call as God’s people is to attune ourselves to this divine Presence; to recognize it both within ourselves and within the world around us. Despite the countless voices that try to draw our attention, we are called to discern what voices are leading us towards the abundant life that God intends for all God’s creatures, and which ones are only leading us even deeper into isolation, despair, and self-destruction.

In the end, that work is up to us, in partnership with our Holy Advocate and Guide. We are each gifted with the responsibility of discerning the voice of God in the midst of all the other voices that try to grab our attention; voices that would love nothing more than for us to rely on and serve them instead of the God who made us and calls us in love. These voices are legion, but you can always discern them by their fruits. Even if they appear enticing, simply take a look at what they’re producing and ask yourself if it’s reflective of the abundant life that God intends. As Jesus so wisely teaches us elsewhere in the Gospels, if the fruit is toxic, then so is the tree. A healthy tree doesn’t produce unhealthy fruit, nor does an unhealthy tree produce fruit that is good (Matthew 7:17-23, Luke 6:43-44).

And so friends, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, my prayer for us is that we will be led by the voice of love that’s always ready for us to hear it; the voice of the Good Shepherd who calls us on the Abundant Way of God. You know as well as I do that there are countless voices out there that promise us life and happiness, but only God makes good on that promise. Only God can shape us into the people who we’re called to be—a people who produce fruits of the Kingdom. Beloved, Let us learn to trust the still, small voice of God and learn how to pay attention to it, because it will lead us towards the pastures that we’re promised; where goodness and mercy will follow us all of our days, and where we will dwell with God forever.

Amen.

© 2025 Will Berry

Image credit: Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash 

Also posted on Substack here