So, Thursdays I tend to set apart as reading day, which means that I'll take some books and drive up to Hamilton to sit at the Catos' while they are out. This is a good way to get off alone with the added bonus of spending time with Cotton the Dog. Cotton and I were preparing for my new class, and I had the news sort of burbling in the background when I heard that the crowds in Rome had seen white smoke, signifying that the cardinals had already chosen a new pope.
I was curious and turned the sound up just in time to hear that they had picked an American. This was unusual, and I'll admit that I was a bit concerned. See, I had read reports that a group of Christian Nationalist Catholics and right-wing Catholic social media influencers had traveled to Rome before the Conclave locked the bishops up in St. Peter's Basilica. They had gone for the sole purpose of essentially bribing cardinals to chose a man who was anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, anti-justice, well, anti-most everything. “Anti” seemed to be the operating prefix in their world.
I did a quick perusal on Elon's platform to find out that all those folks were ecstatic! Until I checked a couple hours later, and suddenly the man they thought was one of theirs, Pope Leo XIV, was now a woke, Marxist, globalist, climate-change affirming, pro-immigrant man of God, and not anti-much of anything that they hated. And the voices rose to the stratosphere! They were loud and violent and having none of the idea that the Holy Spirit might just have had a say in all this.
So when I thought about our Gospel today, I thought about all those clamoring voices which too much overwhelm, demanding attention and allegiance in ways they do not deserve. Those voices which in too many ways, too many times, too often, drown out the one voice which calls us to eternal life.
And when we wake up each day, I expect you know the voices I'm talking about. Voices which insist that winning is what matters, at any cost, that using power for enrichment at the expense of the poor is good and proper. That some are more worthy of love and belonging, of due process and dignity than others. That say that the only way to get what one wants or needs in this world is through fear or brutality.
Those which lay claim that you must fall in line or disappear. That somehow, if you disagree, you are less than human and an enemy of God and all good, God-fearing followers. Those voices which do not know you at all — demanding that you pretend to be who you are not, who God never meant to be.
They are powerful voices, and they try so hard to overwhelm us and force us into submission.
Y'all, these are not new voices...they have been around for centuries. These are the same voices that tried to outshout the Voice of the Shepherd in this week’s Gospel where Jesus speaks of the ‘sheep who hear his voice… those he knows… those who follow him.”
I wonder what it was the sheep heard when they listened to and followed this Voice. What did they hear in their hearts when they heard with their ears the promise of everything that will ever matter in this life and the next? When they heard about what REALLY matter in life, that cannot be snatched away like some unwanted human being on an American street. And what do we think when we hear today the uncompromising promise of protection not once, but twice: that those whom God has claimed will not, cannot, be snatched away from Christ. No matter how insistently those other voices promise or threaten.
This voice of Jesus is always there, in all the gospels. It's there when he urges the disciples to come and see, calls them to ‘follow him.’ In the heart of Nicodemus, who wants a new beginnings even though he doesn't understand how, and in the woman at the well who wonders how Jesus knows her so well. That voice is there for the ill and the blind, the lame and deaf, the sinner and the hungry, the scared and the scarred. That voice creates wine at a wedding, describes living water which quenches all of our thirst, blesses bread and fish and the thousands that eat it.
The voice that is the Word at the beginning of John that says that Christ has been here from the beginning and will continue to be here long after the voices of evil and fear, of violence and division, fade away. A voice that will overwhelm all those human voices that want to limit and exclude and never welcome. Human voice that lead to judgment and rarely offer new chances, that preach shadows and fear, never abundance and hope. Human voices that don't really know you at all and don't really want to..
I heard the opening sermon of the new pope, and while I still disagree with much institutional teaching of the Catholic Church, I think I heard an echo of the Shepherd's Voice speaking for those worried about their next meal, how to pay the rent, how to keep their children safe from gun violence and predators. For those who have been battered and abused. For those who are far from home and finding that the welcome they were promised is replaced with warrentless masked men in black. For those who have spent their lives listening too much to the false promises of those other voices and who are just beginning to realize that in spite of their volume, their words are false and never, ever offer truth or justice, welcome, love, or life itself. Y'all, all those voices, bullying, grifting, lying. Enticing people away from the one Voice that knows and loves us in all with all our differences and never, ever lets go.
It's up to us now. It's up to us now to stand, stand in the streets, in Town Halls, around the family dinner tables. It's up to us now to speak on behalf of the Voice of the Shepherd to people who too long have been misled by too many other voices. To speak this tough and tender truths where falsehoods have too much, too long been heard and believed. To hear the promise of this Voice for ourselves so that we might then speak so others might hear.
This is what I heard when I was with Cotton the Dog, sitting and listening to new opportunities opening up in the world, thinking about how this Voice promising such fierce protection is speaking to us especially in this time when the other voices overwhelm and too much try to claim what is not theirs to claim – Jesus' claim to eternal life.
This week lets hold close the stories of Nicodemus and a woman at a well, those drinking wine at a wedding and those sitting down to a lunch of bread and fish. Remembering the voice of Jesus extending healing to those sick or blind all of their lives and those too much judged by those who have no room to judge. And listen to all those other voices and wonder if they lead us to the safety and love of the one, true Shepherd. Or if they lead us somewhere else in darkness.
The sheep know Jesus, and Jesus knows the sheep, and so he surely knows me. And you. Listen for the sound of his voice.