Sermon: Third Sunday of Easter 26/4/26 Penny Pullan

John 10:1-10/ Psalm 23/ 1 Peter 2:19-end/ Acts 2 42-end

May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Hello! I’m Penny Pullan and I’m an ordinand here at All Saints. It’s been a while since I preached here – I’ve been on placement as part of my training.

But, unexpectedly, my placement was at All Saints! It was at Muddy Saints, our children’s church that happens outside, whatever the weather, in the Rectory Wildlife Garden, every few weeks.

I first visited in October. It was cold and damp. My feet were absolutely freezing. I remember thinking: this is going to be an endurance test. Who in their right mind would spend December to March in an outdoor, all-weather children’s church? (I paused and there was a loud cry of ‘We would’ from the Muddy Saints crowd in the children’s corner of church!)

It wasn’t an endurance test. It was delightful!

Partly, if I’m honest, because I now have sheepskin-lined boots. And we had a tent! And I got to work with Hannah! (I smiled.) But mostly, it wasn’t that.

It was because, week by week, through the stories and the interactions, I began to notice children and adults beginning to recognise something.

One week, we told the story of the death and raising of Lazarus. We told it slowly, acting it out with little wooden figures on a big yellow blanket, like the ones in front of the altar:

Jesus, far away, travelling across the desert to be with his grieving friends. Jesus’ little figure came alongside Mary’s little figure. She was weeping because her brother had died. The story explained how Jesus joined in with the weeping.

There was complete and utter silence. You could have heard a pin drop.

Every eye was on the figures: Jesus weeping beside his friend.

(At this point there was complete silence in church as everyone listened.)

No one explained the details. And yet something was being passed on… that Jesus comes alongside us, where we are.

The same thing happened on Good Friday and the story of the crucifixion. Amid the horror, the children were getting to know and recognise Jesus, the Good Shepherd.

In our Gospel today, Jesus says: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”

He doesn’t say they understand everything. They don’t need to. He just says: “they hear my voice… and they follow”.

At Muddy Saints, we say to the children:

“You are beloved. You belong. You are delightful to God.”

That is what the Shepherd’s voice sounds like. It’s the voice of the one who knows his sheep and who lays down his life for them, not because of what we do, but because we are his.

Perhaps you need to hear that today, because we all approach God as children? So, let me say it once again, this time for you:

“You are beloved. You belong. You are delightful to God.”

But Jesus says in our Gospel today that there are other voices. The thief and bandit who come to steal and destroy. These are voices that tell us we don’t belong, voices that say we are not enough or we are too much, voices that call us away from God’s sheepfold. And part of growing in faith is learning to recognise the difference between those voices and the voice of the Shepherd. Because we don’t always get it right. We can go astray.

Our reading from the letter of Peter today puts it like this: “You were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” And that return is made possible because the Shepherd himself has gone ahead of us: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross… by his wounds you have been healed.” This is how we can come back — not by our effort, but by Jesus’ self-giving love.

So, it is not about us getting it right all the time. It is about learning, again and again, to return to the one who knows us and calls us by name.

At Muddy Saints, we don’t talk much about the false voices. We begin by helping children hear and recognise the true one. So that, slowly, over time, their recognition of Jesus’ voice grows:

You are beloved. You belong. You are delightful to God.

This is for all of us. We can all say: “The Lord is my shepherd…” We are known and held, even if we sometimes can’t feel it.

That’s where the Church comes in. That’s the church that Hugo has joined today by baptism.

Together, through shared life, through prayer, through Communion, we learn that voice. We learn it together. For some of us, that might include volunteering with Muddy Saints, helping children to begin to recognise that voice too!

As we come to meet Jesus at the table, where he gives himself to us, let’s hear his voice to all his people here:

You are beloved. You belong. You are delightful to God.

And the work of the Church is to become people in which that voice can be heard clearly enough that, even among many others, we learn to recognise the Shepherd who calls us by name.

Amen.