The Shepherd Who Seeks

John 10:1-18 (CEB) · Witnesses: Encountering Jesus When It Matters Most

You know the experience. You call customer service and hear: “Your call is important to us. You are caller number forty-seven.” Finally a voice says, “How can I help you today?” But the voice doesn’t know your name, your history, what you’ve already tried. You’re not a person — you’re a ticket number.

Or maybe it’s subtler. The way you walk through a week and nobody asks how you’re really doing. The way social media offers thousands of “friends” but few who would notice if you disappeared for a month. The way institutions — even churches, even families — reduce you to a role: the reliable one, the difficult one, the one who always volunteers.

You know the experience. You call customer service and hear: “Your call is important to us. You are caller number forty-seven.” Finally a voice says, “How can I help you today?” But the voice doesn’t know your name, your history, what you’ve already tried. You’re not a person — you’re a ticket number.

Or maybe it’s subtler. The way you walk through a week and nobody asks how you’re really doing. The way social media offers thousands of “friends” but few who would notice if you disappeared for a month. The way institutions — even churches, even families — reduce you to a role: the reliable one, the difficult one, the one who always volunteers.

Somewhere beneath the noise of notifications and obligations, there’s a quieter question: Does anyone see me? Not my productivity, not my problems — but me?

Tonight we receive ashes. We acknowledge the most fundamental truth about our existence: we are mortal. Dust returning to dust. And in this moment of stripped-down honesty, Jesus offers an image that speaks directly to our deepest longing: a shepherd who knows his sheep by name.

This Ash Wednesday begins our Lenten series called “Witnesses: Encountering Jesus When It Matters Most.” Lent is a forty-day season of preparation — a journey from ashes to Easter, from honest confession to resurrection hope. For centuries, Christians have used these weeks to strip away distractions and pay closer attention to God. We fast, we pray, we slow down — not because God demands it, but because we need the space to hear a voice we’ve been too busy to notice. Over the next seven weeks we’ll meet real people in John’s Gospel who encountered Jesus at the most critical moments of his ministry — Martha grieving her brother, Peter denying his friend, Pilate calculating his politics, Mary weeping at an empty tomb. Their stories will become mirrors for our own. Tonight we start with the most foundational encounter of all: hearing the voice of the one who already knows us.

For years after the Vietnam War, the Americans who died were statistics in a conflict many wanted to forget. Over 58,000 casualties — a number too large to feel. When Maya Lin designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982, she made a radical choice: no heroic sculptures, no political statements, no explanations of the war. Just names. Every name, carved in black granite, in the order they died. When visitors find the name they came looking for, they trace the letters with their fingers. They make rubbings on paper to carry home. Some leave letters, photographs, medals. The wall doesn’t explain the sacrifice or justify the loss. It simply insists that every person who died had a name. And that changes everything. A number you can dismiss. A name carved in stone, you touch. That’s the difference between being counted and being known — and on a night when ashes remind us we are dust, it matters that we are not anonymous dust.

In John chapter 10, Jesus has just healed a man born blind, and the religious authorities have responded by throwing the healed man out of the synagogue. They protected their authority rather than celebrating his restoration. Into this failure of leadership, Jesus speaks two of John’s famous “I am” statements — language echoing God’s self-revelation to Moses: “I am the gate” and “I am the good shepherd.”

The shepherd imagery would have resonated deeply. Shepherding was common but lowly work — long hours, constant danger, minimal status. Yet scripture consistently used shepherd language for God. Psalm 23 declares “The Lord is my shepherd.” Ezekiel 34 promises that after Israel’s failed leaders scatter the flock, God will personally search for the lost sheep. Jesus claims to fulfill these ancient promises.

The Greek word translated “good” is kalos — meaning not just morally good but genuine, beautiful, the real thing. Jesus contrasts himself with hired hands who calculate risk and abandon sheep when wolves come. The good shepherd stays. The good shepherd dies. And most striking: “He calls his own sheep by name.” This isn’t institutional management. It’s intimate relationship.

In Methodist theology, we emphasize what John Wesley called “prevenient grace” — the love of God that seeks us before we ever think to seek God. This passage embodies that truth. The shepherd doesn’t wait for lost sheep to find their way home. The shepherd goes out, calls them by name, and leads them to pasture. Before we took our first breath, the shepherd already knew our name. Before we wandered, the shepherd was already prepared to seek us.

This is what makes Ash Wednesday more than a somber ritual. We don’t come here to be reminded that we’re dying — we already know that. We come because the one who knows us by name meets us in our mortality and speaks a word of life. Maya Lin understood something about that wall in Washington: when you carve a name in stone, you insist that this life mattered. God does something even more radical — God doesn’t carve our names in stone but speaks them aloud, calls us by name before we ever know to listen.

And this shepherd imagery reshapes how we relate to each other. In a church, we can slip into institutional patterns — tracking attendance, measuring success, managing programs. But Jesus describes something different: a community where people are known by name, where we notice when someone is missing, where we go looking for those who’ve wandered. Here in McPherson, that might mean the phone call to someone who hasn’t been at worship in a few weeks. The farmer who checks on a neighbor after a hard harvest. Shepherding isn’t a job for professionals. It’s how we care for each other — especially during Lent, when we intentionally slow down enough to notice.

The good news is that before you ever thought to seek God, God was already seeking you. Jesus doesn’t wait for us to find our way home. He calls us by name — not a generic summons, but a personal word that cuts through the noise. And when he finds us, he doesn’t scold or abandon. He binds up our wounds, leads us to green pastures, and lays down his life so we might live. The cross is the ultimate proof — the shepherd who loved his sheep so much that he stood between them and the wolf, absorbing the attack himself. Through the Holy Spirit, this shepherd’s voice still speaks. He is still seeking. He is still calling your name.

As United Methodists, we make five promises when we join the church: to support the church with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. Tonight, as we begin this Lenten journey, we focus on prayers — talking with God and building a real relationship through honest conversation. The good shepherd knows his sheep because they spend time together. Forty days is enough time to develop a new rhythm of listening.

Start with silence. Set aside five minutes each day this Lent to simply be still. Don’t fill the space with words. Notice what surfaces when you stop talking and start attending. Then go deeper with the Lenten devotional guide — pick up a copy on your way out tonight. It includes daily scripture readings and reflection questions that walk alongside our “Witnesses” sermon series, week by week, all the way to Easter. Each day’s reading prepares you for the next encounter we’ll explore together on Sunday morning. It’s a simple way to keep the conversation with God going between worship services.

And if you want to practice listening alongside other people — hearing the shepherd’s voice not just alone but in community — we’re launching Grace Groups this Lent. Small groups of six to eight people meeting weekly around three honest questions about faith, life, and where God is showing up. You don’t need to have answers. You just need to be willing to show up and be known. There’s information in the devotional guide, or talk to me tonight.

We began this evening with a question about invisibility — does anyone see me? We’ve heard the answer tonight. The shepherd who calls each sheep by name has spoken your name. In a few moments, you’ll receive ashes and the ancient words: “Remember you are dust.” But hear the shepherd’s voice alongside those words: You are my dust. I know your name. Beloved dust. And the shepherd is still seeking.

Will you pray with me?

Good Shepherd, tune our ears to your voice in these forty days. Call us by name, and give us courage to follow. Through Christ our shepherd. Amen.