Here is an interesting but cryptic passage from the Fourth Gospel about shepherds and sheep.

I have come that human beings may have life and may have it is all its fullness. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hireling, when he sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away, because he is no shepherd and the sheep are not his. John 10 :10-12

Those who give sermons on the good shepherd often assume that this ancient image applies to a contemporary pastor who tells his flock what they should believe and how they should act. Such a view also assumes that most people are sheep in the sense of being gullible go-along authority-addicted dumbbells.

I do not believe this was the meaning intended by the original author of these verses. The original shepherd image was grounded in the experience of being or noticing a highly dedicated person living on a hillside with a flock of sheep, providing them grass and water and protecting them from wolves. Being a follower of Jesus means being such a leader.

So where can we actually experience this Good Shepherd in our lives today? Let me answer this with a fictitious story, but a story made out of my own experience. In my story, Sally McGillicutty teaches an adult class in the Sunflower room of the Umpity Ump Christian Church. Sally believes the Ultimate Message that the Infinite Silence (that Overallness that is giving Sally every element in her life) loves Sally and every other person (and creature) on this planet or any other planet. Because of this trust in the Infinite Silence, Sally is herself an embodiment of the Ultimate Message. When Sally walks into the room, the Ultimate Message walks into the room. When Sally speaks, the Infinite Silence speaks the Ultimate Message. When Sally notices the despairing living going on her class, that despairing living knows itself noticed by the Infinite Silence, audited by the Infinite Silence, forgiven by the Infinite Silence, and called by the Infinite Silence to a free, trusting, compassionate, tranquil sort of living. Sally constantly confronts each member of her class with the option of living human life in victorious freedom. She challenges her class to live with courageous freedom the same lives over which each of her class members quite commonly despairs.

The men in her class who feel they have no feelings worth expressing learn to experience, trust, and express those feelings. They learn that every anger, every fear, every hostility, every compassion, every bodily desire, is part of the goodness of life. The women in her class (most of whom always thought that being nice was the one thing that a proper woman should do) learn from Sally that being firm and ruthlessly honest is the sort of aliveness approved by the cosmos. The parents in her class (most of whom walk in despondency over the thought that they are to blame for every failure or flaw in their offspring) learn from Sally to realize that each of their children is virgin born, offspring of the Infinite Silence–that children are strange and mysterious beings who must do their own despairing, failures, depravities, as well as find their own buoyant living and astonishing novelties. “Parents,” Sally says, “who love, feed, and protect their children from injury, are doing their job.” “And loving them fully,” she says, “includes allowing them the freedom and the dignity of going to hell in their own way.” “Maybe,” Sally says, “you might pray without ceasing that your children will find trust in the Infinite Silence, but if they don’t, it’s not your fault.” In these and many other ways, Sally is the Ultimate Message in human flesh. Sally is Jesus to this particular flock who come each week to probe with Sally into the secrets of living life in an ongoing trust of the Infinite Silence. Sally is the Good Shepherd. Before Abraham was born, Sally IS.

Now, Sally has not been appreciated by every person who has attended her class. Some left in a huff and never returned. One particular official in the church sought to have her class disbanded. “A disgrace,” he called it. But Sally believes that such opposition is to be expected. She even uses this opposition to teach her point that we live in a world of darkness that opposes the light. And as to her own inconvenience and grief over being opposed in these ways, Sally says, “The Good Shepherd lays down her life for her sheep.”

Now my story might have taken place in some other environment than a church. Sally could have been a teacher of secular wisdom or a teacher of Buddhism or not even a teacher at all. The Jesus-dynamic, since it is the Ultimate Message of the Infinite Silence, is not limited to communication within the context of Christian churches or even Christian symbolism. Any person who communicates in any way whatsoever that we are loved by the Infinite Silence is a fleshly embodiment of the Ultimate Message. That person can be said to be “in Jesus.” That person is living “in the name Jesus.” Indeed that person, insofar as he or she actually embodies the Ultimate Message, is Jesus!

There are many Spirit persons who do not call themselves by the name “Jesus.” It is only those of us who use and understand the Jesus-language who can call Sally McGillicutty or some Buddhist teacher or some secular writer by the name, “Jesus.” We can do so because we see that a genuine Spirit person, whatever name they prefer, can also be included, as far as we are concerned, within the name, “Jesus.” The true flock know their Shepherd wherever and whenever that Shepherd shows up. Yes, Virginia, the Ressurection really happens.

Every Good Shepherd is the second component of the triune experience of Divinity. Every Good Shepherd is the Beloved Offspring of the Infinite Silence, the Ultimate Message in human flesh. the New Adam or Eve who knows this Love from the Infinte and lives the full ambiguities of life.