Sermon by The Very Rev Chris Yaw, 4/26/2026, Easter 4
Lessons:
John 10:1-10
Dearly beloved—Happy Eastertide.
Let me ask you to do something a little strange this morning.
I want you to borrow a memory that isn’t yours.
Just for a moment, step outside your own life and imagine…
You were there.
You walked the dusty roads of Galilee with Jesus.
You remember what the air smelled like at the end of the day.
You remember the way smoke clung to his clothes after a fire.
You remember how his eyes crinkled when he laughed - like he knew something about joy the rest of us were still trying to figure out.
You heard him teach. You watched him heal.
You saw people come alive around him.
And then - You saw the unthinkable.
You saw the trial.
You saw the crowds.
You saw the slow, staggering walk toward Calvary.
You saw the sky go dark in the middle of the day.
You felt the ground tremble beneath your feet.
You saw the cross. You saw the tomb.
And just when your heart had folded in on itself - You saw him again.
Alive.
You spoke with him. You ate with him.
You watched crowds gather again, pressing in, hungry for something they couldn’t quite name.
And then… you watched him ascend. ##
Now imagine living the rest of your life after that. You wouldn’t need convincing.
You wouldn’t need a seminar or a study group or a podcast.
You would just go. You would go wherever the wind pushed you.
North, south, east, west.
You would carry that story into strange lands and unfamiliar faces.
And you would watch that good news spread - quietly at first, then like fire catching dry grass.
And at some point, you’d want to mark yourself.
Your home. Your table. Your heart.
You’d want a symbol that said: this is who I belong to.
And here’s the strange part. You wouldn’t pick a cross.
That feels almost unthinkable to you and me.
Because in our world, the cross is everywhere.
Around necks. On dashboards. Etched into stained glass and towering above steeples.
We’ve polished it. We’ve gold-plated it.
We’ve turned it into something almost… decorative.
But for those first Christians?
The cross was not decorative.
It was raw. It was recent.
It would be like Christians in another time choosing a guillotine as their symbol.
Or an electric chair. It wasn’t abstract.
It was an instrument of state-sponsored execution.
It was trauma you could still smell. So they chose something else.
They reached back into the language of the Psalms.
Back into the prophets. Back into the stories Jesus himself told.
And they chose an image that felt like home.
The Good Shepherd.
Years ago, I had the privilege of traveling to the Holy Land with some of you.
And one of the things that stayed with me wasn’t just the geography - it was the archaeology.
In those early Christian ruins…in tile floors tucked away underground…
in quiet catacombs where people gathered in secret - we kept seeing the same image.
Not a cross. A shepherd.
A man with a sheep draped across his shoulders.
And I love this image, partly because of the physics of it.
Sometimes that sheep looks enormous.
Almost comically oversized.
Like… Jesus is carrying what looks less like a sheep and more like a very stubborn ottoman.
And you get the sense that this sheep didn’t just wander a little.
This sheep got lost. Properly lost. It wandered into briars. Got tangled up.
Wore itself out trying to get free. And now?
It’s too exhausted and worked up to walk back.
And here’s the detail that sticks:
The shepherd doesn’t stand at a distance and whistle.
He doesn’t say, “Well, if you really wanted to come back, you would.”
He doesn’t give a lecture about better decision-making.
He picks it up. He takes the full weight of that sheep onto his own shoulders.
And he carries him home.
That image carries more theology than a stack of books.
Because it tells us something essential about God.
Not just that God finds us. But that God carries us.
Carries us home.
Now, in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us two angles on this shepherd image.
He talks about the voice. And he talks about the gate.
And both of them, at their core, are about love.
In a few minutes, we’re going to sing, The King of Love My Shepherd Is.
That’s not just poetic language. That’s theology doing its work.
The Shepherd is love.
Which means the voice of the shepherd is the voice of love.
And the gate of the shepherd is the gate of love.
Let me put it this way.
Why did you listen when your mother called your name?
Was it fear of punishment? Sometimes, sure.
But more often?
It was because somewhere deep down you knew - that voice was for you.
“Get your hand off the stove.” “Put on a coat.” “Come inside.”
Not because someone was trying to control you.
Because someone was trying to protect you.
Henri Nouwen once wrote about the Lord’s supreme use of the human voice.
He harkened back to Jesus’ baptism –
Then his time upon the Holy Mount at the Transfiguration – in which that voice would inform our spirituality:
Nouwen wrote: “The spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to {the} voice that says… ‘You are the beloved.’” Not a loud voice.
Not a booming voice. An intimate voice.
The kind that doesn’t shout across a field - but leans in close enough to be heard.
That’s the voice of the Shepherd. And every one of God’s sheep knows it.
Even if we forget it sometimes.
Because we do forget.
We have very sheep-like memories.
We wander. We get distracted by shiny things. We panic at shadows.
We forget that we are held. We forget that we are known.
We forget that the Shepherd has never once misplaced us - even when we’ve misplaced ourselves.
Which is why this image matters.
Because the Good Shepherd isn’t just a comforting picture.
It’s a map of what God is always doing.
And if you follow that image, it unfolds, five-fold.
Five gifts. Five ways. Five rooms in one house –
One home. One heavenly dwelling place
First: Presence.
The Shepherd is always with the sheep.
Not occasionally. Not seasonally. Not when it’s convenient.
Always.
Even when you feel alone. Even when you can’t quite name what’s wrong.
Even when the room is full but you feel like no one really sees you.
God does.
A good priest might be available most of the time.
But the Good Shepherd? Twenty-four, seven.
No off hours. No voicemail.
No “I’ll circle back.”
So live, like that’s true.
Live like you are not walking through this life alone - because you aren’t.
Second: Protection.
In the ancient world, shepherds would gather sheep into a stone enclosure at night.
No wooden gate. Just an opening.
And when darkness fell, the shepherd would lie down across that opening.
He became the gate. Nothing got in without going through him first.
So when Jesus says, “I am the gate,” he’s not speaking in metaphor alone.
He’s saying: “I am the one standing between you and what would undo you.”
Which makes you wonder…
How many things has God already protected you from that you’ll never even know about?
Not just the obvious dangers. But the subtle ones.
The paths you didn’t take.
The decisions that somehow unraveled before they could harm you.
God protects.
Third: Provision.
Green pastures. Still waters. The basics.
Enough.
And I know many of you have stories about that.
Times when things were tight. When you were counting every dollar.
When dinner was… creative – with a “K.”
Maybe it was a season of a lot of boxed pasta and hopeful seasoning.
And yet - You were okay.
Not because everything was abundant.
But because something deeper was steady.
The Shepherd may not always give us what we want.
But the Shepherd has a way of giving us what we need.
Fourth: Purpose.
The Shepherd doesn’t just gather the sheep.
He leads them out.
Which means you are not saved from the world. You are sent into it.
Not to be someone else.
Not to chase some version of success that doesn’t fit your soul.
But to be fully, honestly, unmistakably yourself.
Because that’s where your calling lives. Not in imitation. In authenticity.
Your purpose is not to become a different person.
It’s to become more deeply the person God already knows you to be.
And finally, Paradise.
And here’s where we often get it wrong.
We think salvation is something that happens later.
Someday.
After everything is over.
But the word itself - soteria - means something more immediate.
Wholeness. Healing. Rescue.
Now.
The early Christians didn’t just believe in heaven as a destination.
They believed they were already living in relationship with it.
Paradise wasn’t just ahead of them. It was already breaking in.
Every time they followed the voice.
Every time they trusted the Shepherd.
So yes, “Good Shepherd Sunday” can sound a little… soft.
A little sentimental. Like something you’d stitch onto a pillow.
But for those first Christians?
This was not a soft image.
This was survival. This was defiance. This was a people saying:
“The Empire does not get the final word.”
“Death does not drop the curtain.”
“We belong to the one who carries us.”
And that matters.
Because when we leave this place - we are walking back into a world that feels uncertain.
Economically. Socially. Personally.
There are things you’re carrying right now that no one else fully sees.
Questions.
Fears.
Grief.
Hope that feels a little fragile.
And into all of that, the Shepherd says:
You are not alone. You are known. You are carried.
Even when you’re heavy.
Even when you’ve wandered.
Even when you’re not sure how to get back.
So go.
Not as orphans.
But as beloved, slightly stubborn, occasionally lost.
Go as people who recognize the voice that calls your name.
Go as people who know you are held.
You are carried.
And you are never, ever walking alone.
Amen.