The Lamb will be your Shepherd.

Many people do not understand what I am doing.
I am trying to create a culture of artists.
We are creating a virtual artist colony 
with shared values and commitments.
And so we come back to some core ideas again and again.

Listen to the Lord
and do what he tells you.

Fear not God can be trusted.

Your inner life determines your creative output.

Jesus Christ came not to start a religion
but rather to establish his Kingdom.

Kingdoms have culture,
and the culture of the Kingdom of Jesus
begins with the Shepherd
and his voice.

A lot of the components of our Belonging House culture
run counter to cultural trends in the church.
There is an old adage that says 
the leaders of the last revival kill the leaders of the next one.
And it is not surprising
that more and more often
I have tensions with folks from 
the independent charismatic stream
who came out of the movements 
around the Toronto Blessing.
We are doing a new thing.

The Kingdom is always advancing,
never retreating.

Throughout the fifty days of Easter,
the readings first look back to the Resurrection 
of Jesus from the dead.
And then we transition from looking back to 
the Passover of the Lord
to the Ascension of Jesus,
and the day of Pentecost.
We are now
halfway between Easter and the Ascension.

And this transition
from the earliest time
has been marked by readings from 
John 10.
And so, this is called
Good Shepherd Sunday.
And if you do a simple search online,
you will discover that the earliest depictions of Jesus
are all
Iesus Pastor Bonum:
Jesus the Good Shepherd.

Sheep are hard to find in the United States.
We don't raise a lot of sheep here.  
And so,
on my first trip to England,
I was so excited that I was going to get to see a cuddly sheep
and be friends.

I had a great surprise.
Sheep are stupid.
Very stupid.
And if you get close to a sheep
it will run away from you.
There is only one person that sheep will get near,
and that this their shepherd.
The sheep has known 
this person
from birth.
And they get to know the voice of the shepherd,
and this is the only person they will follow
and this is the only person they will listen to.
And any other person
from the sheep's point of view
is either a thief or preditor.
And the the sheep know who is a hireling,
a person who is just there to do grunt work
with no investment in the care of the sheep.
The hireling is only there to make sure 
he gets his money at the end of the day.
And because of this,
the hireling only does the work that is necessary to get paid.
And the welfare of the sheep
is not the hireling's concern.
They are not his sheep.

John 10
is an exposition of Ezekiel 34,
"Woe to the shepherds of Israel who 
who feed themselves 
on the best of the flock,
and have no concern for the sheep."

Jesus gives us a very different vision.
We are the sheep for whom the Shepherd died.
Rather than the shepherd taking from the flock for himself,
the Good Shepherd
lays down his own life for the flock.

Today we get a beautiful alignment in the readings
we get to see this idea
from an earthly and a heavenly perspective.
John recounts to us
that the voice of the good Shepherd
is the sound we follow.
The voice of Jesus
is the voice of the Father,
because Jesus and the Father are one.
Throughout scripture
the voice is understood as the "Call of God."
That call in Hebrew
is the word "cara."
It is the sound of creation.
God spoke creation out of nothing.
So when you and I hear the voice of God,
and we respond,
we are engaging in creation.
God creates through his voice.
The voice of God
and the work of creating can never be disconnected.
Creating is a supernatural act,
in response to the voice.

Paul tells us in II Corinthians 5:17
that if anyone is in Christ
he or she is a new creation.
The old is gone and the new is come.
You are a new created being.
Our Bibles use the word "saint" for this new being,
but the Greek uses a word 
that doesn't make sense in English.
You are a "holy."
And so if we translated this properly
you would read that Paul is greeting the "holies"
in a certain place.
Your identity
as a sheep of the fold of the Good Shepherd
is a "holy being."

You are not a sinner.
Sin is not what defines you.
Sin is nothing more
than static on your new identity,
because Holies do not live in sin.
And as you hear the Shepherds voice,
and you present your body to the Shepherd,
you are more and more transformed
into the real you.
Jesus tells you who you are.
Jesus reminds you of his love.
Jesus encourages you to become more and more
your true identity in Christ.
And everything that sticks to you,
with the static cling of sin,
will fall away.

In Revelation
we get this picture again.
We are seeing the Good Shepherd 
from heaven's perspective.
And it is shocking.
The Shepherd is the Lamb.
Remember from last week
this Lamb has seven eyes and seven horns.
The lamb has perfect power,
perfect perception,
perfect understanding.

And this Lamb has been slain,
and his blood has washed all of these people
they are his sheep.
These sheep are the vessels in God's temple,
just like Moses splattered blood on all the vessels
in the Tabernacle,
to make them holy for service,
so the sheep have been been made white and clean
in the blood of the lamb.
And the white robes
are the white robes given to them at baptism.
And now,
they are holy.
And because of this
they are before God day and night
and God will shelter them 
with his Presence.

So if you are able to hear the Shepherd's voice
you are now
in the temple of God in heaven.
And you 
are in his presence,
and that Presence
is going to be your protection.
And out of that Presence
you will not be hungry,
you will not thirst,
you will be protected from the toil of the heat in the midday sun,
and you will be Shepherded by the Lamb.
And God will guide you to the springs of living water.

This spring of water is this thread we keep following--
out of your belly will flow springs of living water,
out of the side of Jesus on the cross flowed water,
the temple in heaven has a spring of water from it,
and the New Jerusalem has a spring out of it.
It is the life of the Holy Spirit out of you:
the Presence of God.

The Voice and the Presence 
makes you who you are in Christ.

Being back in the US
is very challenging.
The church in the U.S.
goes to extremes,
is sin focused, and performance based.
It is always hard for me to come back.

Whatever you look at becomes larger.
And so many around me are fixated on sin.
When you fixate on sin,
you cannot hear the voice of the Shepherd.
As I mentioned earlier,
sin is static on your true identity as a holy being.

Imagine if a bluebird
in my garden
decided that it wanted to be a groundhog,
and it started burrowing underground.
Imagine if a fish in the stream
decided it would like to run through a meadow.
Imagine if a ground hog
decided it was going to become a flying fish.

All three creatures would die.

This is not their nature.
Your nature,
when you hear the voice of the Father,
is to be a holy creature.
You are supernaturally made to be 
in the image of Jesus,
and you are a new creation
bent toward
wholeness
healing
and peace.

As Merton said,
our trouble is
we can choose to not be our true selves.
We can choose to be bound to hirelings,
and toil under the scorching heat of sin and death.
We can choose 
to not follow the Shepherd to the living waters.
This is not sin
but it is a misdirection.
And a lot of churches teach things
to keep you in sin
so that you can be controlled,
and used to build up the membership
and the budgets
and the programs of the 
Hireling Church.

When you become fixated on sin and repentance
you are no longer in the Presence,
and as we see all around
this leads to death.
The first step to freedom for many Christians
is to get them to stop "repenting."

And Jesus says,
come to me.
Listen to my voice.
Listening to the Voice of Jesus
begins to open up the flow of the living water.

So first,
we have to tune our hearts to the voice of the Shepherd.
This is why we ask everyone who has made the Belonging House commitment
to read the daily gospel reading.
You can find this reading on Universalis.com
or Oremus.org/almanac.
We encourage people to use 
the Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition. 
This isn't a command or a rule,
it is just so that we 
as a community
hear the voice together.
It's about creating our culture.
It's about being in a shared community,
people like us do things like this.

Jesus is the Rabbi.
Jesus and the Father are one.
And so we need to hear the voice of the Father,
and that voice is the voice of Jesus.
In a Jewish sense, 
Paul is in the rabbinical "school of Jesus"
and so we understand that Paul is the interpreter of Jesus,
Paul is not the Rabbi.
And if you fixate on Paul's letters,
and quote things out of context,
you will become sin focused,
and works oriented.
Jesus is the Shepherd,
not Paul.

And then we want to open up the flow of the Holy Spirit
and listen to God.
Often,
when I sit and listen to God,
I get a lot of static on the line.
When you listen to the radio
sometimes there is static.
Do you focus on the static or do you focus
on the music you are trying to hear?

So if there is static,
I always begin with 
forgiving anything that is coming up.
Sometimes I have to ask Jesus to forgive me
for not living out of my true identity,
and let it go.
And then I have to give Jesus my rage and anger.
The big red ball.

And then I have to put my hand on my heart
and speak calmly and gently 
and say,
"It's okay,
you can calm down,
and listen to God now."
And then I sit.

Sometimes I get big prophetic words,
other days,
the Lord just tells me he loves me
and that I am okay,
and it will all be okay.
And some times there is clear guidance and direction.

And then I sit
in the presence
until my heart and my head are in alignment,
and I have a sense of shalom.
I can't leave my room
or face my day
until I am in that place with God.
And the Lamb 
becomes my shepherd.

It is very simple.
And then you walk it out.
Imagine if every artist on earth
lived this way.
Imagine what we could create
and do.

These simple steps work,
and they will bring a shift in your life.