4 Easter

 

April 26, 2026

John 10.1-10

+ I was in a grocery store the other day, and was asking a clerk where something was.

All of a sudden a long-time friend of mine came running up me and said, “I knew it was you!”

 “You knew it was me?” I said. “How was that?”

 “I heard your voice and said to myself, ‘that’s Jamie Parsley!’”

 Somebody knew my voice!

 Which I think is funny

 Because when I was a teenager, I hated my voice.

 I was so self-conscious of my voice.

 When I was younger, before my voice changed, whenever I would answer the phone, people thought I was my mother.

 I remember being so embarrassed by that!

 Then, later, when my voice was changing, I went through a period of great self-consciousness.

 One day, in German class, I was called on my by the teacher and I responded, which my weird, teenage, cracking guy voice.

 My voice just made that cracking, Peter Brady kind of sound.

 Some kids in front of me started laughing, as kids often do.

 I was so embarrassed that for several years, even after my voice changed, I didn’t even want to talk.

 Which, I know, you are sitting there thinking, “Father Jamie didn’t want to talk? How can we make that happen again??”

 But I went several years just hating the way my voice sounded.

 Well, that’s not a good thing for a person who wants to be priest.

 So, I started making a concentrated effort to work on my voice.

 I worked on things like inflection and emphasis and how to enunciate.

 And now, people in grocery stores run over to me from the next aisle because they heard me asking a clerk a question.

 Let’s face it, our voices are kind of like our names.

 They define us in a distinctive, unique kind of way.

 They become a part of who we are.

 And if you don’t believe me, just think for a moment about the voice of your parents or someone you have lost.

 Think about how important the voice of your mother is.

 It’s the first voice you would’ve hear heard or responded to.

 If your mom is no longer with us, do you remember their voice?

 Because one of the hardest things in the grief process is the day you suddenly realize you don’t remember your parents’ or your loved one’s voices.

 So, our voice is important.

 And today, in our Gospel reading, we hear about a Voice that is equally important to us.

 Jesus tell us, “The sheep hear the Shepherd’s voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

 And I think most of us—if we’re honest—have spent a good part of our lives trying to sort out which voices are worth following, and which ones are just noise dressed up as authority.

 Because there are a lot of voices in our lives.

 And not just audible ones.

 There are voices in our social media and our communication.

 We hear voices in our emails and in our text messages.

 And we sure hear some voices from those who are supposedly in authority in this country and in the world.

 We want to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd.

 But sometimes it’s the Bad Shepherd’s voice we end up hearing loudest of all.

 Sometimes that voice promises us safety, but what it really means to do is to control us.

 Some voices promise belonging, but what they really offer is conformity.

 Some voices promise life, but what they deliver is exhaustion.

 And Jesus, characteristically, doesn’t argue with those voices on their own terms.

 He doesn’t try to out-shout them.

 What does he do instead?

 He tells a story instead.

 He talks of a sheepfold.

 He talks of a gate.

 He talks of a shepherd.

 And then he says something we don’t expect to hear.

 He says,  “I am the gate.”

 He doesn’t just say he’s the shepherd, the one who leads.

 No, rather he says he is the gate itself.

 The threshold.

 The place of passage.

 The place of decision.

 The place where you decide whether you are going to live inside fear, or step out into something wider, riskier, more alive.

 “I am the gate,” he says. “Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

 Notice that: they will come in and go out.

 This is not a locked enclosure.

 This is not a prison disguised as piety.

 This is not a system designed to keep you small and manageable.

 The life Jesus is talking about has movement.

 Breathing room.

 It has grass under your feet and sky over your head.

 It’s a life where you are not owned, bur rather known.

 Now, that sounds nice.

 It’s sounds great!

 But, is it?

 It’s actually a hard thing.

 Because being owned is simple.

 Someone else tells us who we are when we are owned.

 Someone tells us what to do or where to go.

 We don’t have to listen very closely.

 We just have to obey.

 We just have to be obedient.

 But being known?

 Actually being called by name?

 That requires listening.

 That requires actually hearing.

 That requires trust.

 That requires the slow, sometimes painful work of learning the difference between the voice that gives life and the voice that diminish it.

 Jesus is blunt about the stakes.

 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”

 Now, we tend to imagine that in dramatic terms.

 Some external evil, something obviously evil.

 But more often than not, the thief sounds reasonable.

 Respectable, even.

 The thief is the voice that tells you “your body is a problem to be solved.”

 The thief is the voice that tells you “there is no place for you unless you become someone else first.”

 The thief is subtle.

 And patient.

 And very, very good at sounding like truth.

 And then there is the voice of the Shepherd.

 It’s not coercive.

 It’s not frantic.

 It’s not shaming.

 It’s steady.

 It’s persistent.

 It’s familiar.

 Our name is vital to who we are.

 It is our essence, kind of like our own distinctive voice.

 Calling us by name means we matter.

 I matter.

 You matter.

 It means we actually exist.

 And here’s the thing Jesus insists,

 “you already know that voice.”

 Maybe not clearly.

 Maybe not all the time.

 But somewhere deep down, beneath the noise, beneath the fear, beneath all the ways we’ve been told to mistrust ourselves, we know the sound of the voice that leads us toward life.

 And Jesus names that too:

 “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

 Not minimally.

 Not just barely.

 Not just enough to get by.

 But, abundantly.

 But I want to stress, it also doesn’t mean we have it easy.

 It doesn’t mean safe in the way in which there are no dangers.

 Sheep still walk through valleys.

 Shepherds can’t eliminate every danger.

 Rather what do they do?

 They accompany us through it.

 They lead us through the hard times.

 Abundant life is not the absence of risk.

 It is the presence of relationship.

 It is the freedom to come in and go out.

 It is knowing that we can rest when we need to rest, or to move when we are called to move, to trust that the One who knows our name is not interested in confining us, but in leading us into something larger than ourfear.

 So many of us need to hear that right now.

 Because a lot of us are tired.

 We are tired of the noise.

 We are tired of trying to prove we belong.

 We are tired of trying to sit down at tables to which we aren’t invited.

 We are tired of all those voices that take more than they give.

 And Jesus does not respond to that exhaustion with a demand.

 He responds with his voice.

 His calm, soothing voice.

 And what is that voice saying to us?

 It’s calling us.

 By our very own name.

 Not to trap us.

 Not to use us.

 Not to make us into something we’re not.

 But to lead us, slowly and patiently, into life.

 Real life.

 Abundant life.

 The kind of life that can’t be stolen.

 The kind of life that doesn’t run out.

 The kind of life that, once you begin to recognize it, you realize has been calling you all along with a voice so familiar it sound almost like a song.

 

Amen.

 

3 Easter

 April 19, 2026

 

Luke 24.13-35

 

 +Back in 2019, when I became the Rector of St. Stephen’s after serving as Priest-in-Charge for many years, Vonnie and Thom Marubbio gave me this.

 

This drawing.

 

It is a drawing by the French artist Jean Louis Forain called “Apre l’Apparition” or “After the Apparition.”

 

It is an amazing piece of art!

 

In it, we see the two disciples on one side of a table, one seated, one kneeling in awe.

 

On the table is a broken loaf of bread.

 

And across from them is an empty chair.

 

One of the disciples looks in amazement at the empty chair, a glow on his face, both of them realizing who is was that had just been sitting and breaking bread with them. 

 

I love that piece of art (I look at it every day), and I love what it represents.

 

I find myself looking at it at times and just sitting in silence in its perfect simplicity.  

 This holy moment at Emmaus.

 I love the story of Emmaus.

 I love the story because it’s a story that begins not in joy, not in triumph, not in the basking Easter glow.

 It begins in disappointment.

These disciples are leaving Jerusalem.

 They’re leaving the place where everything had happened.

 They’re leaving the place where everything fell apart.

 Jesus, the one whom they have followed and loved and believed was the Messiah, the Son of God, was been betrayed, and tortured and killed.

 They have failed him.

 They were not there for him at the end.

 They too fled in fear, like the other followers.

 So, here they are, leaving the scene of their loss.

 And as they do, they are leaving hope.

 They had hoped.

 They even say that, “We had hoped…”

 I think that might one of the saddest sentence in all of Scripture.

 They had hoped Jesus was the one.

 They had hoped this finally meant something.

 They had hoped death wouldn’t have the last word.

 We’ve been there.

 We know this feeling.

 We have walked that road of Emmaus ourselves.

 Sometimes many times.

And so here they are.

 Hope has died.

 There are in despair.

 They are confused.

 They are grieving. 

 They are trying to make sense of a world that no longer holds together the way it used to.

 Again, we know this.

 We have known disappointment in our lives.

 We have known loss and fear and crushing despair.

 We too have hoped that faith would feel more certain than this.

 And what do we do in those moments?

 We walk.

 Sometimes we just have to walk away.

 We walk carrying our pain, our disappointment, our confusion, and that strange absence of God.

 Then, sometimes happens to them.

 Without announcement, without spectacle, Jesus is just there.

 He comes alongside them.

 Not in glory.

 Not in blazing resurrection light.

 He comes as a stranger.

 And they don’t recognize him.

 There’s sometimes so honest and weirdly beautiful about that.

 They don’t recognize him. 

 The fact of the matter is: this is exactly how Christ often comes to us.

 Christ just appears in our midst.

 And we don’t recognize Christ.

 In our Gospel, Christ listens to them.

 He asks them questions.

 He lets them tell their sad story.

 He lets them speak.

 He doesn’t interrupt.

 (Which, as you’ve heard me say recently, I think is an epidemic right now in our society. We interrupt each other. He don’t listen to each other.  We don’t hear each other).

 Jesus doesn’t correct them, at least not right away.

 He receives their grief, he receives their confusion, he receives even their incomplete understanding.

 There’s something so beautiful about that.

 And that is important for us today.

 This is how God works in our lives as well.  

 God is not afraid of our unfinished thoughts.

 God is not threatened by our disappointment.

 God does not require us to have everything sorted out before drawing near.

 But then, in our story, somewhere along that road, something begins to shift.

 Jesus opens the Scriptures to them.

 He reframes the story for them.

 He doesn’t erase their pain.

 Instead, he places it inside something larger.

 Something that includes suffering, yes.

 But that doesn’t end in suffering.  

 And how do they respond?

 They say, later, “Were not our hearts burning within us…?”

 Burning.

 Not exploding.

 Not suddenly certain.

 But burning.

 A slow, steady warmth.

 The kind of warmth that you almost miss if you’re not paying attention.

 The kind of warmth you could easily explain away at some point.

 To me, that’s often how resurrection happens.

 It’s not about certainty.

 It’s more like a  flicker.

 A stirring within us.

 A sense that maybe, just maybe, all is not lost.

 But even then, they still don’t recognize him.

 Not until they get to the table.

 They sit.

 He takes bread.

 He blesses it.

 He breaks it.

 He gives it to them.

 Just like we do here at the Eucharist.

 And when the bread is broken, in that one holy moment, something amazing happens!

 This scene from the illustration happens.

 Their eyes are opened.

It didn’t happen on the road.

It didn’t happen in the conversation.

 It didn’t happen in the talking and the explaining and the discourse.

 It happened without words.

 In the breaking of the bread.

 They came to know him not by explanation, but by participation.

 Not by argument, but by gift.

 They recognize him in the act that has always defined him.

 Self-giving love.

 And in that one instant, without one other word, he simply vanishes.

 And they are left, staring, the glow of his presence still fresh on their faces.

 Now, I know, it sounds at first kind of rude.

 He just leaves.

 Without one more word.

 No good bye.

 No so long.

 But the important thing to remember is this.

 He’s not gone.

 He has simply shifted.

 No longer in front of them as something tangible to be seen.

No, now he is within them,

 He is a presence that stays with them.

 And they, in turn, turn back.

 They go back to Jerusalem, that place where so much pain and disappointment happened.

 They walk the same path that they had earlier walked in sorrow and disappointment.

 But now that road has been transformed into a road of joy and life.

 See.

 That’s resurrection.

 That too is Easter.

 So, where are we on this road right now?

 Because I can tell you, I have been in every part of that road.

 I’ve walked that road in disappointment.

 I’ve walked that road in loss.

 I’ve walked that road in sadness.

 But I’ve also walked that road realizing that all is not loss.

 I’ve walked that road in joy too.

 I’ve walked that road rejoicing in  resurrection and renewal.

 And the amazing happiness that comes after so much loss.

 This story is our story in so many ways.

 As we come forward to this table, we realize that what happened then, in Emmaus, happens here again and again every times we celebrate the Eucharist.

 Resurrection and recognition happens every time we gather, every times the bread is taken and blessed and  broken, and given.

 Resurrection happens in something so ordinary it almost escapes notice.

 In something so simple it can be missed entirely.

 It is in this way that Christ truly makes himself known.

 Not by overwhelming us.

 Not by forcing belief.

 But simply by giving himself again and again to us.

 In a tangible way.

 In something so simple we can hold it in our hands.

 And having done so, once we have been fed, we are sent back out.

 Back into that world that still doesn’t quite make sense.

 Back into lives that are still marked by loss and disappointment.

 Back onto roads where Christ walks with us, often unrecognized.

 But now we know.

 Or at least, we are beginning to know.

 He is here.

Right here.

 With us.

 The story is not over.

 In the breaking of the bread, we find a presence that death cannot undo.

 And that is enough to cause us to turn around.

 It is enough to cause us to go back.

 It is enough to move us to say, even if our voices tremble.

 Alleluia. The Lord is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!