Sermon by The Very Rev Chris Yaw, 5/11/2025
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, With you, All things are possible!
Good morning and welcome, dear saints of God!
In the eyes of the Church today, the fourth Sunday of Easter is Good Shepherd Sunday.
And in the eyes of our great country, on this second Sunday of May, it is Mother's Day.
Please turn to someone near you who looks like a mother and say, "Thanks for being a Good Shepherd!"
And so we gather as one flock under One Shepherd, and like the sheep of Jesus' day, we strive to hear the voice of that Shepherd.
In our age of fake news, Internet hoaxes, email scams, and rampant disinformation - which are all on the rise –
- we strive and struggle to wisely discern from the cacophony of competing conversations, which ones have the diamonds and which ones have the cubic zirconium.
And so my topic today is as timely as it is critical: Cultivating a Listening Heart - Cultivating a Listening Heart.
Yes, ours are tense times, when the dark clouds of uncertainty and the threatening winds of self-interested nationalism and political ambition, are kicking up in our land, and across too many others -
Fear over these things is on the rise -
- worry and anxiety force us into insomnia and depression - as we struggle to hear the Shepherd's voice.
For we know that voice is out there:
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me!”
But we need some help - to hear and discern that voice - like you mothers know the one cry out of a sea of crying babies in the nursery, exactly which one is yours –
- ours is this kind of discernment -
- to pick out that one-among-many -
- to precisely tune in our radios to that one divine station!
And we are witnesses to that problem in our gospel this morning when Jesus' detractors came to Our Lord in John, chapter 10, demanding a sign
- a declaration
- a clear proclamation
- of who he is!
And Jesus is flummoxed -
- because he has already given them so many signs!
Look no further than the preceding chapter, chapter 9, when Jesus healed a man blind from birth, and his detractors even held a lengthy inquisition!
But like many wonders Jesus performed on so many occasions, that was not enough!
As it becomes clear to him, to them, and to you, and me, that:
The problem was not Jesus showing them, the problem was the people not believing him.
They could *not hear - they could *not see - they could *not understand - the Shepherd's voice.
They no longer had listening hearts.
We cannot see - we cannot understand - we cannot hear the Shepherd's voice - when we do not have listening hearts.
I like to think that Jesus' detractors were originally God-centered servants, devout rabbis -
- humble and helpful to all
- devoted and disciplined clergy -
But they had risen to places of power and prestige in that society
- accumulating wealth, favor, and influence
- that ultimately proved poisonous -
- as it evolved into arrogance, greed, and a wholesale betrayal of their mission to care for the poor, marginalized, and oppressed, and to lead the people of God in God's ways.
Their hearts became closed, their eyes became blinded
- so that when God himself walked into their midst
- they could not recognize him
- indeed, he was seen as a threat!
And one that ultimately needed to be eliminated: "
You do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep."
And let's be straight here -
- this is not just a bunch of 1st century Jews
- because this is what happens in all religious institutions of every stripe in every nation given the right circumstances -
Neither is this some cautionary tale appropriate to another people in another age
- Jesus was not playing.
For we also see in our age - in our time - the threats of hubris and arrogance - that are as real today as they were back then.
There are very powerful nations,
- who have nuclear arms that are able to kill everything on this planet, several times over, who are operating in increasingly dangerous ways
- out of self-interest and conceit
- egoism and arrogance.
And while we can do little to stop the proliferation of these weapons - we can do something to mold the moral composition of the leaders and people who can use them.
Thoreau described our problem well,
“We have improved means to an unimproved ends.”
Those are the ends you and I - dear people of God - are here to improve!
Your salt, your light, your hope, your love!
We must make world harmony, tranquility, and peace our ultimate goals - and not domination, power, and wealth!
These are false Gods who demand deadly sacrifice.
You and I gather this morning as a people of hope
- who do not see nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, and widespread oppression as foregone conclusions and inescapable destinies
- but who believe in a God of possibility
- a God of resurrection
- a God of power
- a God who can make a way out of no way!
And because the only people we can change are ourselves
- let us look to our first task
- which is to listen to the Good Shepherd's voice:
- to cultivate a listening heart -
Not a cold, selfish heart - but open, obedient, and listening hearts!
And that first task is realizing something very important about ourselves - about our own precious, unique, irreplaceable and invaluable selves:
That ingrained in that one-of-a-kind, extraordinary soul of yours
- is a very distinctive point of view
- shaped by the cells inside of you, and the circumstances outside of you
- that is bias.
You and I have personal preferences and strong opinions that define what we see and how we see it.
God has made each of us as different as snowflakes.
And our job is not to mold every snowflake into the spitting image of ourselves -
But it's to wonder and marvel at God's majesty and power at making that snowflake that is you, and you, and you
- and to discover the boundless possibility unleashed when we let be you, and you.
For I cannot be who I am meant to be - unless you are able to be who you are meant to be!
Knowing your bias is not an admission of imperfection, it is a declaration of self-knowledge.
It is not a sign of your weakness, but a sign of your strength
- as an early Church father famously observed,
"The glory of God is the human being fully alive."
The president of Key Bank in Cleveland was recently out to eat with a group of executives of similar stature when the conversation moved toward the D-E-I cuts being made in major corporations - and he was asked about his observations.
This president said that he had great diversity in his junior executive ranks - men, women, black, white
- but that his top executives were almost all white men.
And this president admitted that this was not right
- and that the bank would do better
- but he observed that it gets that way because people are used to promoting people who are like them
- they have a bias.
In this case, in many cases, it's not good - and it does not have to be.
Cultivating a listening heart means recognizing our bias, learning from it, and dispatching it to do the greater good.
I remember talking with some of my Evangelical brothers and sisters - one of whom once told me "The Bible clearly says..." to which I said, "Your reading of the Bible clearly says..."
"Oh no, the Bible clearly says...."
And we went back and forth - talking about that interpretive lens that each of us has.
Certainly, there are eternal truths and universal moral laws
- for example, hate is always bad, everywhere and every time -
But when it comes to discerning the intricacies of our faith and lives - we are wise to see and know our biases and deal with them appropriately.
Want to cultivate a listening heart?
Realize that you are biased.
Know what you're biased about - good or bad -
Because sometimes the best gift you can give yourself is self-knowledge.
And as we come face to face with our biased, we are led to my second observation this morning -
And that is: that cultivating a listening heart demands humility.
The great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had just finished preaching a sermon on civil rights one day.
He had demanded an end to segregation and the right for blacks to vote.
And when his speech had ended, a reporter asked him if he was sure he was right, Dr. King looked him in the eye and said, "I hope so."
The opposite of faith is not doubt - it is certainty.
It is that inability to be molded and changed by new information
- it is to be rigid and unmoving
- because our pride is at stake.
What is the original sin of the Bible if it is not pride?
"I can eat that apple, I don't have to believe God's warnings, I know better!"
Our fragile frailty demands humble humility.
When will we understand that the road to success is paved with a failure that demands humility?
That there is nothing new under the sun?
- and that our grandest successes are usually just slight iterations and modest modifications of things that have been around a while
- and were only arrived upon because we got lucky or went through the frustrating process of trying, trying, and trying until something finally worked?
When I was in college, I had an internship with a copier company and went out on the road with a salesman.
We knocked on one door after another of potential customers telling us "no."
After each failed attempt my mentor made a tally -
And he was happy after each one - because he knew he was getting closer to that one-in-ten customer who would say 'Yes!' and buy a copier.
What would Christianity now look like if those fierce and angry detractors of Jesus had come down from their lofty places of judgment and high-mindedness
- and assumed places of humility
- and become a bit more like Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea - those devout leaders who had the humility to consider that maybe, just maybe,
God was doing a new thing in a very unexpected way?
You and I are well aware of the capricious nature of Our Good Shepherd - and of life! -
That the spouse we didn't see ourselves with,
the house we never thought of buying,
even the job we never imagined we would take -
- turned into the perfect person, place, and profession?
Cultivating a listening heart necessitates a humility that our world desperately needs
- which takes me to my third point
- which is community
- being in relationship with a variety of people
- different ages, races, economic, and occupational backgrounds –
- opens us up to the variety of ways God speaks with us
- which helps you and me cultivate a listening heart.
And the richer we get in financial resources - the harder being in deep community becomes!
You have certainly heard of the research that tells us that wealthier people pay less attention to the people around them
- that the more money you make, the less empathetic you are
- that increasing your ability to give to others tends to decrease your desire to do so.
This is one of the problems with our electoral system that has us voting time and again to be ruled by the rich.
Here are some of these conclusions from INC Magazine:
Jesus' number one preaching topic was the Kingdom of God
- but close behind
- In second place was money
- And that money's not bad
- but it's dangerous
- it will keep you from being the deeply social and communally-embedded neighbor you want to be.
How it gladdens my heart to be at St. David's
- and with a people who understand how to properly regard our financial resources in our own discipleship
- which we couple with our shared desire to give ourselves more readily to the Good Shepherd and his flock.
It is an uphill, upstream, and upending endeavor given our cultural context,
- which tries to convince us that we're not pretty enough, smart enough, rich enough, so we won't be accepted by others and are better off staying far away.
For we understand that life's most rewarding experiences are not dictated by the number of dollars we have in our wallets,
- but the number of quality relationships we have on speed dial.
Ours is a siloed, pigeon-holed, gated-community:
- where the uptick in loneliness is wreaking all sorts of social ill
But as we cultivate our listening hearts
- we see the importance of taking another road
- the road of widening our circles of relationships
- including people who don't look like us, talk like us, or think like us - knowing that we are
- and the world is
- better off for it!
So, as we go from here - brothers and sisters:
Cultivate a listening heart!
Let us be quick to identify our biases
- and not beat ourselves up for being imperfect,
- nor commend ourselves for having such great judgment!
Let us be quick to be humble!
In the words of Romans 12:16 -
"Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;
“Do not claim to be wiser than you are...
“[but] live in harmony with one another."
And let us strive to build that blessed community
- where we learn from one another because we give of ourselves to our neighbors!
Knowing that the investment we make reaps rewards that are multiplied beyond measure!
And through it all may our Good Shepherd lead and guide us
- that we may be the ones who:
hear his voice,
heed his call,
and do his work!
Amen.