It is a cold, drizzly December day in the time of Hanukkah, the Feast of the Dedication. Jesus pulls his cloak close around him as he walks in the portico of Solomon, the only side of the temple sheltered from the wind.

The wind sings a cold song. And cold hearts, frozen by their inability to hear, to believe, come to him, demanding: "Tell us if you are the Messiah. Don’t keep annoying us with parables. Say it plainly."

Jesus knows that they’re trying to trap him into saying something that can be used against him. He pulls his cloak even closer and answers: "You have seen, but still you do not believe. You do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them. And they follow me."

In that brief response, Jesus gives us a blueprint for being an Easter community. Hear. Be known. Follow.

His imagery evokes a scene familiar to his questioners. They’ve seen it many times. The village shepherds all bring their flocks to the spring to drink. The flocks intermingle. When it comes time for a shepherd to leave, he doesn’t go through the sheep looking for his own. That would be hopeless. He sings a song. And they come to him. They know his voice. They know the song he sings and the way he sings it. They hear his music and know that he is their shepherd, and they separate themselves out and follow him.

As Easter people, we are called to hear Christ’s voice. That sounds beautiful and poetic and comfortingly religious, but it’s not easy, and there’s something of a mystery to it. It’s something of a mystery because we really can’t explain why some hear and some don’t. Why do some of us hear, and the voice resonates within our souls, when others—bright, educated, good people— reject faith out of hand?

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr saw faith as "the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence." The philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche said, "Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and dishonorable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called faith."

Two brilliant, thoughtful, reflective men —why the profound difference? And why does God let it be so? Why doesn’t God just make us so that we all respond? Couldn’t that be the frustration we hear in the request to Jesus? "Quit toying with us. Make us believe or send us home."

I think I’ve told you this story before, but I remember a dinner conversation years ago, before I went to seminary. The man I was talking to was very bright and had been brought up in a Christian family. The conversation turned to faith, and the man said, "I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or Jesus Christ."

When I went to seminary, I told one of my professors about that conversation, and I asked, "What could I have said to this man?" The professor thought for a minute, and finally answered, "I would have said, ‘Please pass the butter.’ "

He was telling me that there was no argument I could make to force my dinner companion to hear. And I realized that that’s what I really wanted—to be able to make someone else hear the Shepherd’s tune. To be able to make myself hear Jesus’ music sung for me, during those times when all I can hear is silence.

I wanted God to make it happen. "Come on, God, just make us all believe and be done with it."

Of course, love doesn’t work that way. Christ does not want us to love God out of a sense of necessity, or obligation, or fear. It’s self-contradictory to say that you have to love somebody. It’s like a boss instructing an employee to get the boss a birthday present. There’s no way that could be a present given out of love. Gifts of love must be freely given. And that means there must be the freedom not to give.

And so God suffers our freedom not to give, not to hear. Christ doesn’t, Christ can’t, force us to love God. So what does he do instead? Christ sings us love songs, and hopes, hopes, always hopes, that we will hear.

The Bible is not a logical, systematic work of theology; it is a collection of God’s love songs— and our responses, and our failures to respond.

Listen with your hearts to this love song from the Book of Revelation:

Heaven is full of a great multitude that no one can count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne of the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands, and singing, "Salvation belongs to our God." "They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

A love song. We Christians must listen for our Lord’s songs—sung for us. They sometimes fill the rafters, and are sometimes so quiet. But as we are each Easter people, and as we at St. John’s are an Easter community, so we must filter out the din of the details of our everyday lives and tune our ear to God’s music, calling us to separate ourselves out and come to him in love freely given.

And we must be aware that we will be known by the love songs we sing. Will we be known as people who coerce? Threaten with damnation? Get people to come to church and fill out a pledge card to hedge their bets? No. Recently one of you told me a story: a pair of Christians from St. John’s went to try to help another person, and they ran into that person’s landlord. The landlord was hostile at first, so the pair said, "We’re here to try to help; we’re from St. John’s." The landlord said, "Oh, you’re from that do-gooder church up the road?"

I don’t know whether he meant that as a compliment or an insult, but I know how I took it. I’ll take us being known as a "do-gooder church" any day. That means that we’ve made beautiful music in an ugly world. As much as I love our Sunday music program, that’s not the music I’m talking about. I mean that we’ve been known by the poetry we’ve sung, the music we’ve made, of the Good News of God’s love, sung out to the world.

There are lots of ways of making that music; you can do it with your voice, or your actions, or with a smile, or a tear. We do it at the Bargain Shop, at Holy Comforter, at Begin Again, in Sunday school, resettling a refugee family, supporting Family Life — any of a thousand ways. I think my professor left some important advice out. In addition to saying that I could have said, "Please pass the butter," my professor might have added that I should have been my dinner partner’s friend. For in that friendship he might have heard God’s love song sung to him.

We will of course sing God’s song on Sunday mornings with our music and our prayers and our fellowship at the Lord’s Table. We will sing it as we gather for meals and fun and fellowship and caring about one another in Christ’s name. We will sing it as we visit one another in the hospital and in the nursing home. We will sing it as we work through conflict together as sisters and brothers.

Sometimes it’s so hard to hear God’s voice, God’s song to us. I know. I’ve been asked so many times, "How do I hear God speaking to me?" I know from my life and from you sharing yours that it often seems like God is silent.

But Jesus tells us that God is singing a love song to us. I know you, and I believe that you know what that love song says, even if you can’t feel it for a time, even if you can’t hear the tune at that moment, even if it seems to you that God is silent.

So, what to do in those times? I suggest two things: listen. First, listen. Be still. Quiet your life. Make time. Close your eyes and be with your God and be quiet. Stop telling God how to run things. Stop telling God what you need. Stop telling. Listen.

And, when you get up from listening, sing. Funny thing: you know that love song even when you can’t hear the melody. But often the best way for you to hear it in your life is for you to sing it in another’s life.

We are Easter people. We strive to hear our Lord’s love song and to follow. The way we follow is to make that music, whether it be in singing hymns and anthems, or talking to a landlord. We sing, in a thousand ways and with a thousand melodies, the sweet music we hear from our Shepard.

Listen: Christ is Risen! As for the people who hear and don’t believe, I don’t know why; let’s leave that to God. But listen: Christ is Risen! As for us, how can we not sing it? Alleluia!