In 2000, I broke my collar bone. That made typing a painful process. So I purchased what was then called voice recognition software that would translate my words into text. The technology was in the first stages of deployment, and much more cumbersome than we now experience. I had to teach the computer how to understand “my voice” by ‘reading’ 20 pages of pre-set up text to my computer. That reading helped to computer to recognize how “I” say the different words in our English vocabulary. And even then, it was far from perfect. But it got the idea across, and instead of having to painfully type all of my sermons, I could simply edit them – a shorter and less painful task. We take all that for granted now, as our smartphones do that *snap, just like that.
That process, though, has stayed with me. If it took the computer a while to ‘learn and recognize’ my voice, isn’t that true of others. With my college students, I have to learn again and again how to ‘recognize’ their voices. Not the physical side, but what is underneath. For some, the reading between the lines is an easy process, because they are so transparent. Others might only say ONE word about their emotional state, and if you miss the implications of that one word, then the conversation stays at that surface level, even though they really want to be led deeper. They want their truth to be pulled out of them.
You who have been married long know that, don’t you. You know how you can say and hear a whole conversation in just a tone of voice. (for better or for worse.) You know the other so well, that often, you can hear the truth they are struggling with long before it is in their consciousness.
So, too, in the realm of our relationship with God – which Jesus describes as a relationship between a shepherd and his sheep – we are called to a kind of ‘voice recognition’ of our savior. And like my college students, or folks who have been married for years – sometimes there are whole conversations that happen in single words. Or in this case, a single deed. The laying down of his life is for us the ultimate moment of voice recognition. A good shepherd lays down his life for us – that is how you know that Jesus is there for you. The recognition comes when we connect the DEED that Jesus did upon the cross – the laying down of his life – with his calling of us by name. When we realize we have a shepherd who laid down his life for us, then we can trust the motive, can’t we? Then we can recognize a love that calls us to life AND CALLS US TO THE SAME LOVE.
And why? Why does this shepherd lay down his life for us? Because he recognizes the connection between himself and the “sheep” he has come to save. Like those whole conversations that happen in an inflection of voice, Jesus knows us. “I know mine and mine know me.” And that knowing of us – is enough to connect us to him forever. He knows the pain, the struggle, the sacrifice – without a word being spoken. Because he sees a fellow human being, a member of his family, he knows that his Father’s heart would break if a single one of us would be lost.
That is the voice recognition that Jesus would have us know. That his desire for us is not to be lost, but to be given back to the Father. That is what his words say. And what his sacrifice on the cross does.
You and I are called to be shepherds after the heart of THE Shepherd. Perhaps people know our voices well enough to recognize in us the voice of the Good Shepherd acting through our lives and love. But the proof of the pudding is in the deeds. We can say a lot of ‘love words’. But do we do the “love deeds?” That, my friends, is the test of good shepherds…