The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Easter 4C
Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
In a day and age when we hear many, many voices, it might feel harder to discern that voice. Even within the church, the voice of Jesus has been hard to hear at times – but I give thanks that the Episcopal tradition has put the Bible, and especially the Gospels, at the heart of our liturgy so that at least we would hear that.
In the history of Christianity, so often the voice of Jesus has gone unheard. In some centuries, blood was spilled and fires lit up the sky to try to purge the wrong kind of believers. In some centuries, blood was spilled and arms and legs were put in shackles to try to prove that the church and its European lords were the only force of civilization. In some centuries, no blood was spilled directly, but spiritual blood was spilled as the church became a bloodless social club for the “right” kind of people, and they belonged to a club that promised a beautiful salvation with a minimum of effort.
Throughout the centuries, the voice of Jesus has called us – and those who responded we have called “saints”. They heard, they listened, they followed. And if we weren’t listening to the voice of Jesus, at least we might hear the voice of Jesus filtered through the voices of the saints and the voice of Jesus demonstrated in their lives.
And, if we are without a saint whose life and witness make it abundantly clear they are following Jesus, we turn to our leaders, lay and clergy, to help us to listen for the voice of Jesus. Through their teaching, sermons, leadership, and compassion, we hope to hear the voice of Jesus speaking through them, even if it is soft and subtle.
But still we are faced with so many voices around us. In every age, and especially in this one, it is easy to listen to the voice we want to hear, the voice that confirms what we want to think, the voice we want to be the voice of Jesus.
We want the voice that aligns with our political views to be the voice of Jesus.
We want the voice that aligns with our liturgical preferences to be the voice of Jesus.
We want the voice that aligns with our socio-economic status to be the voice of Jesus.
This reality has made it even harder to be a preacher, pastor, and priest for me and other clergy colleagues. As the rhetoric shifts, some words become buzzwords and landmines. Love, mercy, and empathy suddenly have a connotation beyond their Biblical meaning, and the pressure is on. To be a pastor is an impossible task – how are we to be the “all things to all people” that some expect, with contradictory expectations? And to be a preacher – how do we preach the Gospel when what people assume the Gospel means may not align with what is preached?
Is the Gospel a self-help message about living a good life? Is the Gospel a comfortable message about an eternal life filled with family and fluffy clouds? Is the Gospel about building a “family values” society and hearkening to “good old days”? Or is the Gospel far more than that? And what if the Gospel as the Bible and tradition tell us is more demanding than what we want to give?
In years past, I’ve always been mindful of trying to focus on the logic of the Gospel in how I preach. Instead of telling people which side of an issue they should be on like politically-focused pastors, I want to look at issues and concerns Biblically, to think through how our Scriptures, our tradition, and our thinking brains can sort through complexities. Any issue is far more complicated than our politics will ever make it out to be, and a Christian is not called to commit themselves to a party; we are called to follow Christ, to hear his voice. We have to discern, we have to ruminate, we have to contemplate our way into hearing his voice better. It’s deeply spiritual work to write a sermon, and it’s deeply spiritual work to listen to a sermon and to discern what it might mean beyond, “Oooh, I like that!” and “Hm.”
Some pastors love the opportunity to preach in a way that tells people what to vote, what to do. Some shepherds walk into the pulpit with confidence that there is no difference between their voice and the voice of Jesus. Some shepherds have no qualms about guilting and shaming and raging in their sermons and writings.
And from the other direction, some folks would enjoy sermons that focused on our rightness versus others’ wrongness. Some would want an uplifting sermon that tells us that we’re on the correct side by speaking from the pulpit what we already think. Some would want to just be told what to do and what to think.
But the goal of a sermon is not to take the difficulties of the Bible and the challenges of being a Christian and make them easy; the goal of a sermon is to open up the Bible, to look around the world and to open our hearts to hear the voice of Jesus. That is hard. And it’s even harder when everything that is said also gets filtered through layers of assumptions and experiences. We pick who we trust, if they fit into our worldview.
Let’s see those layers at work. Already in the last few days with the election of a new pope, commentators have been poring over every single thing he’s written to try to predict what kind of pope he will be. Is he a leftist, woke, Marxist pope (yes, there are some commentators already calling him that), is he a centrist, is he secretly a conservative because he’s an American Catholic who served as a missionary?
You tell me what kind of pope you think this is:
“The Church has a responsibility towards creation and she must assert this responsibility in the public sphere. In so doing, she must defend not only earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone. She must above all protect mankind from self-destruction. There is need for what might be called a human ecology, correctly understood. The deterioration of nature is in fact closely connected to the culture that shapes human coexistence: when “human ecology” is respected within society, environmental ecology also benefits. Just as human virtues are interrelated, such that the weakening of one places others at risk, so the ecological system is based on respect for a plan that affects both the health of society and its good relationship with nature.” (Caritas in Veritate)
So themes of environmentalism, human relationships, a working “human ecology” where the parts of the world work together for mutual flourishing. I can tell you that the rest of the document I’m quoting from also supports labor unions and criticizes modern corporations for prioritizing only shareholder value and not the needs of communities and workers. So what kind of pope would write that?
A trick question! It wasn’t the new pope, Leo XIV, that wrote it. And you might think because the environmentalism that it was Pope Francis. No, it was the “conservative” Benedict XVI that wrote it. Surprise! But our world wants to split up things into nice, neat ideological brackets. And those ideological brackets mark who we trust and who we do not trust, and that trust is an easy thing to lose.
When we Christians try to follow the voice of Jesus, we should go deeper in our discernment. Jesus did not come to bring us pithy slogans and easy answers; Jesus’ favorite method of teaching was the parable, a short story that calls us to pray and contemplate many layers. Jesus gave us the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, the Summary of the Law, and then he gave us the fullness of his life, death, and resurrection. Discerning the voice of Jesus takes us back to the Gospel stories, takes us to the work of community, and it takes us to our own lives, the world around us to ask where Jesus calls us.
In the week ahead, notice what Jesus is saying to you. Do you hear his voice? What does it sound like, what does it feel like to hear the voice of your good shepherd? Listen to the voice of Jesus, wherever he speaks. But always be listening for Jesus’ voice. Amen.