I AM: The Good Shepherd

I read an article about voice recognition software that claimed by 2020, 50% of all web searches would be initiated by voice command. Advertisers will tell you that virtual assistants Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and soon Viv are all available to answer your questions, order your pizza, remind you of your appointment, and tell you what time you need to leave given traffic and weather conditions. But, they don’t really recognize our voices. One story that made the news told of a 6 year old talking to Amazon’s Alexa about cookies and dollhouses. Soon, cookies and a dollhouse arrived in the mail. Then, as people watched the news, the anchor’s recounting of the incident caused their Amazon Alexas to order dollhouses for them, too. And I don’t know about you, but when I ask them something, the response is almost always either laughably wrong or “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

Why? Because speech recognition is incredibly complicated. Yet, scientists have found that even before babies are born, hearing their mother’s voice makes their heart rate decrease because it has a calming effect on them. My dog knows when we are almost home…and who is home. When I am home and Chris is on his way home, the dog goes to the door and waits. I think he hears the car. Pretty easy to explain. But, when I come home and go inside, if I am by myself, he keeps sleeping in his crate. If the kids are with me, but still in the car, he starts scratching to get out. He knows the sounds they make. He knows their voices.

Shepherds know their sheep. Unlike our virtual personal assistants, shepherds know what their sheep are asking, they know what they need, they are in tune to their communication. And sheep know the sound of their shepherd’s voice and are calmed by it.

When Jesus said, “I AM,” the Pharisees recognized what he is claiming. He was claiming the name of God, the name first spoken by God to Moses from the burning bush.
As he stood barefoot looking at this bush on fire, yet not being consumed, Moses tried to make sense of God’s call to go back to Egypt. “Who will I say sent me?” asked Moses as he tried to imagine how he could convince Israel to follow him out of Egypt. Tell them “‘ehyeh asher ‘ehyeh” sent you. The literal translation is I am that I am; I am being.

Jesus reveals who he when he says “I am.” I am the bread of life; the light of the world; I am the resurrection and the life; the way, the truth and the life; I am the true vine, I am the good shepherd. Each “I am” statement allows the sheep to recognize Jesus – to link the descriptions of God in the Old Testament to Jesus.
“I am the Good Shepherd,” says Jesus. “You are my sheep.” And with those words, the Pharisees had no doubt what Jesus meant. The prophets had foretold God sending a shepherd to lead the remnant of God’s people.

Micah spoke of a time when the Lord would gather the remnant of Israel like sheep in an enclosure. Their leader will break out first and they will all go through the gate with their king leading the way with God at their head.

Jeremiah warned that disaster lay ahead for the shepherds who lose and scatter the sheep of God’s pasture, who haven’t taken care of them.

God promised through the prophet Ezekiel to care for God’s flock and look after it like a shepherd looks after his flock. God said, “I shall raise up one shepherd and put him in charge of them to pasture them.”
God has shepherded Israel with judges and kings and prophets, all of whom have fled when they saw the wolf approaching. Jesus isn’t a hireling, though, sent to watch the sheep for the master. The sheep are his own – one flock, one shepherd.

In the 1st Century, shepherds spent most of their lives with their sheep. They led them out of the sheepfold to a pasture in the morning and gathered them back in a sheepfold in the evening. A sheepfold might be a cave or it might be a fenced area the shepherd built with rocks. Once the sheep were safe in the sheepfold for the night, the shepherd would lie down at the gate or opening near the sheep to protect them through the night.
Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd.” Never leaving you alone, guiding and protecting. Jesus leads us out in the morning, walks with us throughout the day, and gathers us safely in and protects us through the night.

And shepherds know their sheep. When British Lieutenant Colonel H. R. P. Dickson visited Arab shepherds in Kuwait after World War I, one evening, shortly after dark, he watched as one of the shepherds called, by name of his fifty-one mother sheep, and was able to pick out each one’s lamb, and restore it to its mother to suckle – all in complete darkness, and in the midst of the noise coming from the ewes crying for their lambs, and the lambs crying for their mothers. ([Manners And Customs of Bible Lands]
http://www.baptistbiblebelievers.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=qDQAYzDf0WM%3d&tabid=232&mid=762.

In the same way, sheep know the voice of their shepherd. Sometimes, shepherds would bring their flocks together around a well to get water. The flocks would intermingle, but when it was time to separate the sheep, all the shepherds had to do was get apart from one another and call their sheep.

I was curious about how lambs came to recognize the shepherd’s voice. People who have raised lambs know. “…sheep aren’t dumb. They know who feeds them, protects them, and cares for their needs. Sheep can distinguish their keeper’s voice from others.

But what about newborn lambs? How do they learn to recognize the shepherd’s voice?…From birth, lambs are conditioned to follow the flock. Sheep get a bad rap for their flock mentality, but God created them with an instinct to stick together as a means of survival. That instinct allows the lambs to flourish….sheep…will follow the other sheep until they too recognize the shepherd.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2016/july/learning-to-recognize-shepherds-voice.html

Like our voice recognition personal assistants, those around Jesus who heard Jesus him say “I am the Good Shepherd” heard different things. The Pharisees heard him claim the name of God for himself. While the disciples were calmed by the assurance that their shepherd knew them and would lay down his life to protect them. In a world where herding and farming were two of the main occupations, Jesus’ original hearers would have known the comfort to the sheep of having the shepherd with them, the intimate knowledge the shepherd has of the sheep, the way sheep could identify and follow the voice of the shepherd, and the instinct of lambs to stay close to the flock until they recognized the shepherd’s voice for themselves.

For us, certainly, it is comforting to know that Jesus is present with us, protecting and guiding. It is assuring to know that Jesus knows us as well as a shepherd who can call his sheep by name in the dark of night. We are made accountable to know and recognize the shepherd’s voice and to follow it. And we are charged as a church by the instinct of lambs, staying close to one another as we discern his call together.

I wonder, though, at their response to Jesus saying he has sheep in other sheepfolds. Who did he mean? And I wonder at our recognition and understanding of what Jesus was saying. Like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, and Viv, sometimes we are going to get it wrong. Sometimes we are going to be left saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.” May we remain close to one another as we seek to discern the voice of our shepherd.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.