Listen to Him

How a Three-Year Old's Theology Got It Right

I am not preaching this coming Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Easter. But if I were, here’s what I might say based on the assigned gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary, John 10:22-30.

A few years ago, Allison, Camden, and I were seated at the kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon. We had just gotten home from church and were eating lunch, like we did every week. As we ate, we debriefed from the morning.

“What did you do in Sunday school and children’s church?” we’d ask Camden. “What was the best part of your morning? Did anything exciting happen?”

That routine still happens, mostly because of what I’m about to tell you.

On this particular Sunday, Camden had learned about Noah’s ark in Sunday school. And depending on how you tell it, the Noah story can go one of two ways: a fun parade of animals and a rainbow, or a horrifying global flood and the destruction of almost everything. Great material for the kids, right?

Camden told us about the rain, the rainbow, and the bird bringing back a tree branch. I thought, “Pretty impressive for a three-year-old.” I mean, obviously, he gets it from me. After Allison brought me back down to reality, I asked him, “Camden, who was on the boat?”

He looked at me like I had just asked the dumbest question in the world. I tried again: “Camden, who was on the boat?” Same look—annoyed, and now with a chocolate milk mustache.

“Okay, buddy,” I said, “I’ll get you started. Noah? Animals?”

Still nothing. Just that look. Then Camden puts his grilled cheese down, takes a sip of chocolate milk, looks me square in the eye, and says, “God.”

“God, what?” I asked.

He looked up again, calm and matter-of-fact, and said, “God was on the boat.”

I wasn’t letting it go. “What about Noah and his family and the animals? They were on the boat, right?”

He sighed and said, “Teer”—because that’s what he calls me when he’s frustrated with me—“God was on the boat.”

In the early church, the Easter season was a time when new believers were taught the core of Christian doctrine—what it meant to live as a follower of Christ.

What does it mean to listen to Jesus?

“How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” (John 10:24)

Now, the very fact that they ask this question means this wasn’t the first time Jesus had been confronted with it. Back in chapter 7, during the Festival of Booths, the same crowd had been asking the same question: Who is this guy? Where does he get off talking like this? Especially considering “he has never been taught” (John 7:15).

And, true to form, Jesus doesn’t give them the answer they want.

“If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

“Yes or no, Jesus? Just tell us.”

Most of us have asked the same thing. We want a clean, easy answer. But Jesus says, “I’ve already told you, and you don’t believe” (John 10:25).

In Jesus’ mind, it was plain. But it hadn’t landed for them, because they weren’t really listening.

And if we’re being honest, Jesus had only been truly direct about his identity once so far—and it wasn’t with a religious insider. It was with a Samaritan woman at a well. She said, “I know that the Messiah is coming,” and Jesus responded, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you” (John 4:26).

The religious leaders weren’t there for that. And they hadn’t gotten the answer they were looking for.

But here’s the thing—they had seen and heard things that should’ve pointed them to who Jesus really was. Healings. Miracles. Forgiveness. Restoration. Just one chapter earlier, Jesus had healed a blind man (John 9), and those same leaders had launched a whole investigation. They had heard Jesus call himself the Good Shepherd. They had more than enough to go on.

But they were waiting. Waiting to trap him. Waiting for a clean “yes” so they could charge him with blasphemy. Or a “no” so they could dismiss him altogether.

It’s easy to point fingers, but let’s not forget—we do the same thing.

We come to Jesus with our questions, but really, we already have the answers we want in our heads. We want Jesus to confirm our expectations.

Who are you?
Where are you in my life?
Why haven’t you fixed ______ yet?
What should I do?

It’s what I was doing to Camden at the table. Asking a question but already expecting certain answers. And when the response doesn’t match, we keep asking. We treat faith like it’s a puzzle to be solved instead of a relationship to be lived.

“Doubtying Thomas” - Caravaggio

We act as if we just had enough proof, enough facts, then we’d believe.

But that’s not how faith works. Faith doesn’t come through facts. It comes through God’s faithfulness.

Jesus says, “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me” (John 10:25). Everything he did—healing, forgiving, restoring—was connected to God. Jesus and the Father are one.

And the faithfulness of the One who sent Jesus is as sure as the empty tomb.

That’s what Camden got right—better than I did in that moment.

“God was on the boat.”

Because God is on the boat.

Right in the middle of the storm, in the middle of the flood, in the middle of your doubt and questions and anxiety—God is there.

We’re not separated from God because we don’t have enough answers. We’re not saved by being able to explain Christ’s divinity in a tidy doctrinal formula. We’re saved because Jesus is faithful. Jesus remains faithful even when we come to him with our predetermined questions and fragile faith.

So listen to him.

Not to get the answer you expect—but to hear the voice of the one who is always in the boat with you.