And of course we do need to learn how to hear Jesus' voice. After the Resurrection and Ascension, Jesus no longer walks among us, as he walked in Solomon's Portico in the Temple at the Feast of the Dedication, and talked to the people who gathered there, so they could hear his voice with their own ears. Our hearing Jesus' voice has to come through other channels, and we need to learn how to use those other channels, so that we can hear Jesus' voice calling to us and we can follow Jesus our Good Shepherd into eternal life.

One of the ways we hear Jesus' voice speaking to us today is through Scripture. The Gospels record and re-present to us the things that Jesus said, so that his teaching and his word and his voice can speak to us now. But hearing Jesus' voice in Scripture is more than just reading the words he is reported to have said. We need to read Scripture in a way that goes deeper, a way that engages more of us, than the way we read, say, a newspaper. A newspaper can tell us, for instance, about debates between presidential candidates, with all their soundbites and slogans and talking points; but the newspaper just tries to report what happened; newspapers usually doesn't try to go into the depths of what it all means. The Gospels are different. We have to remember that the Gospel writers were doing more than simply reporting on Jesus: the Gospel writers were interpreting Jesus, they were writing down their own impressions of what Jesus meant, they were drawing on years of their own experiences of being Jesus' disciples, and they were writing down not just what Jesus was way back when, but what Jesus was to them, present in their own lives, in their here-and-now. The Gospels--and the Acts, and the Epistles, and Revelation, too--all the New Testament writings are richly textured, deeply structured documents. And if we really want to hear the voice of the living Jesus speaking to us in those documents, we must read them with a richness of imagination and a depth of devotion which matches the spirit with which they were written. Then the words of Jesus reported in Scripture can become a Living Word, the voice of the Risen and Ascended Christ speaking to us in our hearts, in our minds, in our spirits, and calling us to follow him as our shepherd, who will lead us to springs of the water of life, and hold us so that death and destruction and despair can never snatch us away.

And one of the best ways we can engage Scripture with imagination and devotion is to do it together, to read and study and reflect on the Bible in small groups. We did that here at St George's on Wednesday evenings in Lent, and we're doing it again on the Wednesday evenings of Eastertide. We've had Cursillo reunion groups, and Bible study classes, and lectio divina prayer groups, all kinds of ways of reading Scripture together, and listening together for the living voice of Jesus to speak to us through those written words. And something happens when you read the Bible with others: you hear differing interpretations; you learn things you hadn't known about a Bible passage before; you hear what sparks someone else's imagination, something you might never have thought of on your own; you have your spirit opened up to a way of hearing the Word that wouldn't have occurred to you otherwise. When we read Scripture together, and are bold and curious enough to really share with each other how it makes us think and feel and respond--when we do that, we do more than just read, we make meaning, and the Spirit makes meaning in us. We hear Jesus' voice, we follow Jesus in new life, when we when we engage the Scriptures deeply, hearing the Word in each other, hearing the Word in our hearts.

Another way we hear Jesus' voice speaking to us today is through service, through ministry in the world to people who are in need or hunger or under the power of death, the very people Jesus was with in his earthly ministry. We hear the voice of Jesus as he calls us to follow him in doing the very ministry he himself did. We see a powerful example of that in our reading from Acts today, when Peter raises Dorcas to life after she had fallen sick and died. Peter in this story does exactly as Jesus had done in an earlier story, during Jesus' earthly ministry. In fact, this whole scene is very carefully patterned to read exactly like the scene of the raising of Jairus's daughter in Luke 8:41ff. Luke, of course, wrote both the gospel and the acts, so Luke the narrator is telling the story in a way that is deliberately intended to make us see the similarity between Jesus and Peter. Both Jesus and Peter come without delay when they are called to help; both of them put the others out of the room and pray; both of them take the dead person by the hand and say "Get up!"; both of them present the living person to their loved ones and yield them into their care. At each step, Peter does exactly what Jesus had done; Peter follows in the way his Good Shepherd calls him, so that he becomes not just a follower but a leader too. Peter becomes a shepherd in his own right, leading Dorcas through the valley of the shadow of death, leading Dorcas to springs of the water of life, leading Dorcas in the way that he himself has learned to go because he has heard the voice of Jesus.

And we can hear the voice of Jesus in that way, too. Jesus calls us to serve those around us--but more than that, I believe Jesus calls us to be leaders in service, leaders who will not only help to heal the hurting but who will shepherd the community through the difficult and challenging social changes that will lead to less hurting in the first place. We've been having some conversation in St George's lately about whether the church should get involved in politics, whether we should engage social issues in the pulpit or the classroom, whether we as religious people have any business talking about the same topics that show up in election campaigns and candidate debates. That's a conversation we need to have, and keep on having, and I don't want to preempt it from this position of authority. But I do think that Jesus calls us to minister as he ministered, to tend his flock and feed his sheep, to become shepherds of society because we follow the Good Shepherd who is the shepherd of all. I think that if we want to hear the voice of Jesus calling to us today, we must learn to hear it in the voices of the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcast--even to hear Jesus' voice in the issues that tend to polarize us, because it is precisely in the pain of polarity, precisely in the tension of life and death issues, that we can come face to face with the promise of New Life, the promise of new possibilities of ways of being together that will bring more abundant life to us all. We hear Jesus' voice, we follow Jesus in new life, when we become shepherds for the healing of society.

A third way we hear Jesus' voice speaking to us today is through worship, through coming together to pray, because wherever two or three are gathered together in Jesus' name, Jesus is there in the midst of them. In our reading from Revelation today we are given a glimpse of the worship of heaven, the eternal prayer of the redeemed--and in that supernal liturgy, Jesus is in the middle of it all, the Lamb at the center of the throne, around whom are gathered saints and angels and time-spirits and living things, the Lamb who leads them all to the springs of the water of life. And Jesus is at the center of our worship, too. When we gather in Communion like this, we believe that the real and living presence of Jesus is here with us. When the Eucharistic Prayer reminds us how Jesus was at supper with his disciples, how he took and blessed and broke and gave bread and wine to them as a sign of his presence, his very self--and then, in our Eucharist, when we do the very same thing, when we take and bless and break and give bread and wine in communion--we believe that Jesus himself is there in those actions, that his taking and blessing and breaking and giving and our taking and blessing and breaking and giving are made one and the same, so that our actions are made part of his action, so that our service and worship and ministry is taken up and made part of Christ's service and worship and ministry, so that we become Christ's hands and heart and voice to speak and love and serve the world he died and rose to save. We hear Jesus' voice, we follow Jesus in new life, when we dwell in Jesus and he dwells in us in this communion worship.

Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand." Let it be our prayer today that we may indeed learn to hear Jesus' voice--in Scripture, in service, in worship--and let us pray that we may follow Jesus' call, in all the ways that will lead us to share Jesus' eternal life. Amen.