From the beginning of time we have had the power to choose.  Faith is
both a gift from God and a choice we make.  Faith like eyeglasses causes
us to see life differently…to look at life and see God at work in the
small as well as the big things.


But faith is not everyone’s choice.  I have a friend, a scientist named
Harry, who for much of his life has studied climate at the National
Climate Research lab in Boulder.  He does not have faith in God.  He is
somewhere between agnostic and atheist, and so what he studies and writes
about daily..the  wonders and cycles of nature, he does not attribute to
God at work in the world. His background and his temperament have not led
him to a faith decision He sees what he sees…he measures what he
measures..he concludes what he concludes, but the Creator God does not
enter in. Faith is both a gift from God and a choice we make.


In the three years of his ministry, Jesus made an extraordinary impact on
people.  Yet they couldn’t figure him out.  He was unlike others before
him, or for that matter since.  Some thought he was demon possessed.
Some believed him to be the Messiah.  He compelled people to form
opinions…to choose, and they did.  Jesus teachings, indeed everything he
taught and did, was rooted in the Hebrew  Scriptures, what we call the
Old Testament.  But  even though Jesus teachings were rooted in
scripture, they still couldn’t quite peg him.  He was both familiar and
different.  Perhaps he was different not so much because of what he said,
but because his behavior actually and audaciously reflected his words.
This man spoke and acted with authority…only a carpenter from a village
up north, and he spoke and acted with authority.  Where did it come from
this authority?  But Jesus made no claim nor did he make a claim that
morning when they confronted him in the portico of Solomon.


In this morning’s scripture from John, Jesus is walking in the portico of
Solomon at the Temple.  Jesus who could never go anywhere without drawing
a crowd soon had people gather around him.


“If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly,” they said…Was he the Christ or
was he not. Again they may have been more interested in entrapping him
than in getting an answer.
Their minds were already made up.


But Jesus didn’t give them the answer they wanted. He answered instead:
“I have told you and you do not believe.  The works I do in my Father’s
name testify to me, but you do not believe, because you do not belong to
my sheep… My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”


Because the shepherd and his sheep were as familiar to people in Jesus
lifetime as the sight of a car is to us, it was logical that this image
should be used as it was in the 23rd Psalm in today’s scripture and in
today’s reading from Revelation. We see the shepherd leading us to
springs of water of life…the shepherd who sees to our every need.


But  the people who questioned Jesus had been led to expect a royal
conqueror, a Messiah that would defeat all Israel’s enemies, and what
they saw was a rabbi, healer, prophet, mystic in sandals.  They wanted to
hear Messiah. He told them  Shepherd. Prisoners of their traditions and
expectations they could not entertain new possibilities.  They were not
offered a choice they expected or wanted, and they rejected Jesus.  But
God seldom comes to us as we anticipate or design.  God likes surprises.


So the people were rooted in the worldview they had always known…that God
would send a king to free them and make a new and powerful kingdom of
Israel.  They could not imagine another kind of Messiah.  Surely they had
heard Jesus preach. They knew of his miracles.  They had all that
information, but they could not see what stood before them.  Sometimes
only after the fact do we realize that God has walked among us.


Jesus offered them eternal life as a gift.  They wanted the Kingdom of
David on earth, and they made their choice.  Had the Jews of Jesus world
believed that he was word from God, we do not know whether the gift of
Israel’s God would have reached the Gentile world. We have the Jews
rejection to thank for our faith.  Was God actually at work in that?  You
have to wonder.


Often people choose out of their preconceptions and expectations.  It’s
what they know and feel safe with.  But they may miss what is right in
front of them…a new possibility..God’s surprise.  The Spirit of God in
this world calls us to be awake, to be alert to his voice, not to slumber
amidst our comfortable traditions.  The Spirit of God is busy in our
world, and often only after the Spirit has done its thing among us, do we
look back and see the smoke.


The people of Jesus day were confronted by an amazing figure who
unsettled them, challenged their traditions. They were being called back
to God’s real and radical love. And when Jesus brought their tradition
into question, there was bound to be trouble.


For example, Jesus would say: “You have heard it said you shall not
murder, but I say unto you that if you are angry with a brother or a
sister you will be liable to judgment.”


As Jesus taught, he made it clear that his was a new teaching, an
authoritative teaching that went beyond tradition.  But I say unto you
broke with all they had learned and knew to be true.  God’s Word had
burst into the world, and they didn’t know what to make of it.


We were born and baptized to be sheep to Jesus as our shepherd.  We never
had to break with all we loved and knew to accept Jesus as Lord, as
Shepherd.  We have been given a great gift, but we cannot take it for
granted, nor see it as God’s last gift of wisdom and insight.


Born and baptized into the Christian faith, we may think we don’t have to
choose as the people of Jesus day did, or those born later to
non-Christian homes.  In the course of our lives we must choose to follow
the Shepherd time and time again.  For the ways of Jesus our shepherd may
lead us into narrow and rocky and even risky places, and we must choose
whether we will risk the next bend or not….risk it when the path is
slippery underfoot….when a bend in the path takes the Shepherd out of
sight and we feel alone. We have to choose time and again on life’s path.
Faith is a gift from God and a choice we make and make again.


Being a sheep means more than being led to green grass and fresh and
sparkling water as our texts say. It can at times mean traipsing along a
steep embankment…taking risks, risking what we know and are in order to
follow the Shepherd’s lead.  Like the people of Jesus time, we still must
choose to follow or not to follow Christ.  And sometimes even having
chosen to follow, doubts invade our trust, for that is human.  Doubt
finds a way of questioning the direction righteousness would take us,
especially when righteousness leads away from self interest. Doubt
questions the cost of being a sheep.  What if it’s all just smoke and
mirrors doubt asks in the quiet of the night.  Or as troubling as doubt,
even more dangerous, is the ease with which we rationalize our behavior
when the route we want to take diverges from the course the Shepherd
would have us take.  Doubt and rationalization.


You don’t see church groups that gather to share their doubts with each
other.  You see them gather around coffee to share their amazing faith
experiences, and actually that is encouraging if not competitive. But
doubt is like some crazy aunt in the attic and is rarely acknowledged.
Just think though, if doubt had entered the minds of the men who
questioned Jesus at the temple, history might have been quite different.
Christianity might have become part of traditional Judaism.


Doubt takes us where we may not want to go.  It comes at us as we see the
wicked prosper and the innocent suffer. It comes at us when we are alone.
Doubt is only human, and the struggle it gives us puts muscle  on our
faith.  Faith without any doubt can get  flabby and half alive.


When Kirkegaard would speak of the leap of faith, he would say that this
leap takes us from the land of reason and intellect to a new place called
God.  The leap takes us from the rational/ethical mode to a religious
state of mind.  It is a risky leap, and sometimes we have to struggle to
stay in the place called God. Have you ever read the book, “Diary of a
Country Priest” by Georges Bernanos…the story of a priest struggling
alone with his doubts.  But it can be worse to have no doubt.


Fyodor Dostoevski once said: “It is not as a child that I believe and
confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.”


Doubt and faith can go hand in hand.  For the people who questioned Jesus
in the portico of Solomon, there was no room for doubt and no room as
well for light.  Perhaps some doubt would have allowed mystery to enter,
and with mystery new truth.


Much as we might want to do so, we cannot know it all….we cannot possibly
know the mind of God and how God may reveal himself/herself to us in our
lives….for God is still at work in our world.  The people at the temple
knew it all or thought they did, and they missed God’s word for them.
Better openness to God’s Spirit than  mind closed. God’s Word to us in
Jesus met closed hearts and receptive hearts. As sheep called to follow
Christ’s shepherd, let us follow Christ, but be ready for paths unknown