The British writer Arthur C. Clarke proposed three “laws” of prediction that are known as “Clarke’s Three Laws.” Here they are:

Law 1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Law 2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Law 3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.     

Taking Clarke even further, some historians of science have argued that the roots of science in the mists of time lie in magic, that science began as magic. According to these scholars the astrologers and magicians parted company: those who sided with the astrologers accepted fate and the destiny of the stars; those who cast lots with the magicians looked for ways to change our future and manipulate the world.

For people of my generation, we are living in a magic renaissance. Science and technology are awash in magic with things like 3-D printers, which are now printing human organs and 3500 square foot homes in 24 hours. Have you seen how they work? That’s magic. Then there are Google glasses and Amazon drones. That’s magic.

But some of the biggest magic around is voice recognition. As a young Samuel was instructed to speak by his mentor Eli, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” Our technology now is saying to us, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears and obeys.” We “speak,” and our toys turn on and do our bidding. Your voice is enough to get the GPS systems in your car to be your digital concierge and report back to you with a voice of our choosing. X-Box One recognizes who is speaking to it and obeys the voice of its “master” instantly. It’s all magic. But to our kids, it’s not magic, it’s normality.       

But Voice Recognition didn’t begin as magic, or as science. It began with Jesus. In some of the most defining words of discipleship Jesus ever spoke, here is what he said: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27).

A disciple is defined by Voice Recognition. A disciple is one who recognizes “The Voice,” and whose voice is recognized in return to follow wherever “The Voice” leads.

Of course, this definition of discipleship is not “magic” to mothers, but normality. Expectant mothers have long played music to their infants in the uterus, because the sound resonates within the womb, soothing and stimulating the baby. But long before anyone strapped headphones on their belly, moms-to-be always spent hours talking to their unborn children. And when a baby finally arrives into this strange new world, there is one comforting, familiar sound. A baby knows its mother’s voice. Humans are born with voice recognition.

When seals and sea lions gather together in huge colonies to give birth and raise their babies, hundreds of seal pups swim out and then come back and hit the beach together. But each and every pup can find its way back to its own mother because she calls out with a distinctive, utterly unique bark. The baby seal locates its mommy by voice recognition.

Our “voice prints” are as individual as our fingerprints. The unique properties of each of our voices are what made it possible for us to recognize who was on the other end of a phone call long before there was “caller id” Our brain has a huge “vocal directory” stored up, and can immediately identify the unique tenor and timber of a familiar voice, telling us who is giving us a call. That is why it is so frustrating when we get a bad connection or some sort of distortion on the line. It messes up our ability to recognize the voice of our caller.

Even before he was arrested in the Olive Garden there were some problems with the connection between Jesus and his disciples. Those who faithfully followed Jesus throughout his ministry seemed to suddenly get static on their lines whenever he spoke about his impending sacrifice, his death and his resurrection. They heard the words. But there was no recognition of his voice when that truth was received. It was as if those truths had a totally different wavelength than the rest of his teachings, and that wavelength just whizzed by the ears of his disciples. They could not recognize who Jesus truly was and what the fulfillment of his mission required of him and them.

Remember in the story when Mary Magdalene made her early morning appearance at the tomb? She did not recognize the risen Jesus until he spoke to her and called her by name. When Jesus spoke the word “Mary,” suddenly her “voice recognition” kicked in and she realized who was standing before her. When she recognized the voice, she also recognized the miracle that was the resurrection.  Jesus instructed Mary to tell them that she had encountered the resurrected Christ, making her the “apostle to the apostles,” as she is often called. But once again static interfered.

Mary’s words did not appease the fears of the Jesus’ disciples, who remained huddled in the rooms they had used for their Passover meal, doors locked in fear. The disciples who had not heard and seen Jesus for themselves could not bring themselves to believe in the miracle. Neither their hearts nor their hopes could hear the good news that Mary had to report. It was on a wavelength that whizzed right by them. They needed something more.

In this week’s gospel text, John reports how they got that “something more” and what that “something more” was. That “something more” was Jesus’ voice.

Suddenly the risen Christ stood in their locked-down, windows-barred room. No walls or worries could keep Jesus away from their company. The tightly wrapped bands of the grave cloths couldn’t keep him. The stone that sealed the tomb couldn’t stop him. Now the locked doors and barred windows couldn’t block him. It’s a whole new world, this world of resurrection.

Jesus’ first act is not to act. Jesus’ first act is to speak. His final act is to breathe. But his first act is to speak. His voice is his first resurrection appearance to his frightened, furtive disciples.

The first message that his voice offers is both familiar and future-oriented. “Peace be with you” is the quintessential and traditional Jewish greeting of “shalom alekem,” a phrase still used as a greeting in the twenty-first century. Instead of fear and despair, Jesus affirms that both he and his “peace” are present and in their midst. They are to continue to proclaim that peace because “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Even Thomas, who said he would not believe until he could touch the wounds of Jesus, melted at the sound of his voice. His voice was enough to banish all need to prove by the other senses. 

This empowering voice of peace reaffirms the promise Jesus had made in John 17:18: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” The “shalom alekem” Jesus’ voice offers both comforts and empowers. It gives the disciples the courage both to unlock their doors, open their windows, and it empowers them to step back out into the world to voice themselves the “good news.”

We all have “good” voices and “bad” voices ricocheting around in our brains. Sometimes we hear, “That was a good thing you did!” But more often we hear “What a stupid move!” “How could you have been so dumb!”  “You really are a failure!”  In his new book Crash the Chatterbox, Steven Furtick encourages Christians to stop tuning into that static and instead focus on “hearing God’s voice above all others.” Furtick calls that annoying, eroding, inner voice that has nothing good to say, the “chatterbox.” The “chatterbox” is like being on some kind of social media overload, with hundreds of negative twitter messages bombarding your brain whenever you try to take a chance, take a walk, take a deep breath and take a giant step forward.

In the early Disney classic “Bambi,” Thumper the rabbit has a word for the “spring fever” he sees among the forest creatures. People are becoming “twitter-patted,” Thumper said. The creators of “Twitter” probably didn’t have that reference in their inbox. To be “twitter-patted” was to become so influenced and infatuated by some outside influence that one’s own opinions were mowed under and one’s own convictions were one-upped. 

How many voices influence you each day? How many voices, how many facebook posts, tweets, instagrams, or hash-tags, decide how you will respond to the events and experiences that you confront today or tomorrow? Whose “voice” are you listening to? Whose voice has ultimate authority in your life? Have you become “twitter-patted.”

The disciples did not know how to respond, how to react, to the horrific event of Jesus’ crucifixion until they heard the voice of their resurrected Lord. It was not until the disciples heard and recognized Jesus’ voice as he stood among them and spoke the words of “peace” and action, “so I send you,” that the disciples knew who they were and knew what they had to do. The #1 problem the disciples had after his resurrection was their failure to recognize him. It’s our #1 problem today. We fail to recognize Jesus’ appearing. It wasn’t until Jesus spoke that the disciples recognized him. It was voice recognition then. It is voice recognition today.

They needed to listen to Jesus’ voice and follow his resurrection presence into the world.

They needed to listen to Jesus’ voice and act like Jesus would act in this world.

They needed to listen to Jesus’ voice and be Jesus’ voice to those who never got to hear him in person.

They needed, sometimes, just to be quiet and listen to Jesus’ voice, blocking out the “chatterbox,” the “twitter-patted” static of the world.

A ventriloquist is someone who learns how to “throw” their voice. They keep their lips from moving to make it seem that the words they are saying are coming from some other place. A ventriloquist typically uses a puppet to be their partner in a “dialogue.” It is a pretend back-and-forth discussion, but it is only one person who is doing the talking. We are all ventriloquists at times . . . speaking in voices different from our own.

But disciples of Jesus are called to be a different kind of “ventriloquist.” We have real conversations with real people in the real world, but we are called to speak with a Jesus voice. We are to echo the voice of Christ, the voice that calmed the terrified disciples in the locked upper room, the voice that beckoned Lazarus from out of his tomb, the voice that drew fishermen from their ships, the voice that called children to sit on his knees.

That it is the voice we are created to hear and that is the voice we are called to ventriloquize. The voice of Jesus is a layered voice. It is our original voice layered into the Jesus voice that’s the voice we speak as purely as possibly to the world.

It’s not always a comforting voice. Jesus appeared and spoke to his disciples in the upper room not so they could be comforted, but so that they could continue that “Jesus-voice” outside of that safe haven. We are now Jesus’ voice, we are now Jesus-speak in this world. And the best voices, the best prophets are not boom-boxes of doom but bearers of hope.  

But there is no slyer piece of ventriloquism than letting things speak for themselves. Let your life so speak for itself that the world may hear the Jesus in you, and glorify your Father which is in heaven (Mt.5:16). In other words, to ventriloquize Jesus by letting our life be his life, and our heart be his art. The 4th century Archbishop of Constantinople, Gregory of Nazianzus, was known for being an artist with words. But his art was all directed to lifting up Christ. In his words of great beauty and passion: 

The scope of our art is to provide the soul with wings, to rescue it from the world and give it to God, and to watch over that which is in His image. If it abides, we are to take it by the hand; if it is in danger, to restore it; if it is ruined, to make Christ dwell in the heart by the Spirit. In short our task is to . . . bestow heavenly bliss upon one who belongs to the heavenly hosts.” (As quoted in Gregory L. Jones and Stephanie Paulsell, ed., The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of a Theological Teacher [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002], 203).

Let’s bestow some heavenly bliss this week.