“Symbol”
comes from the Greek word symbolein, literally meaning “to throw
together,” or “to bring together.”
Symbols united reality. In the
case of our language about God, symbols are intended to bring together the
divine and the human. Despite claims in
popular culture, God and humankind are not identical: one is the cause, the other is an effect of
that cause; the divine is wholly free from space-time, whereas we human beings
exist in space-time. To communicate
anything about divine reality, symbols are needed. And among these symbols are words, or
language symbols, as well as gestures, art, and music. Symbols are needed for mind to communicate
with mind.
All
of our language about Jesus is symbolic, and needs to be properly
interpreted. A mind must search for the
meaning intended by another mind. To
understand the meaning of word symbols requires mental effort. Most of us have learned that many people put
insufficient effort into seeking to understand someone’s meaning. Often we think we understand the words of
another, but we do not, or we “do not know as we ought to know,” using St.
Paul’s phrase. The evangelists employed
language symbols to communicate to ancient readers the truth and beauty of
their experience of “life in Christ Jesus.”
These writers felt so much joy and spiritual renewal through their union
with God in Christ, that they wanted to share their joy, and did so by writing
down their thoughts and circulating them.
The evangelist John, a master in the use of language symbols, has Christ
Jesus declare: “I have come that you may
have Life—Life more abundantly.” Clearly
that is the evangelist’s experience of what he has found through faith-union
with Christ.
One
must seek to understand word-symbols in light of the experiences of the one
speaking or writing. As any adult knows,
the word “love” has vastly different meanings, depending on the one using the
word, on the occasion, on the intention of the one speaking. One way that the evangelist John sought to
communicate his experience of Christ was by using the Jewish symbol of God as
the good shepherd, as in the 23rd psalm, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not
want….” The evangelist experienced
himself being guided, tended, shepherded by God in and through his
faith-response to Christ. In calling
Jesus “the Good Shepherd,” the evangelist tells us that he experiences the love
and providential care of God in and through the Resurrected Christ. “I will not leave you orphans, I will come to
you,” John writes, speaking for the Resurrected. “I am the vine, you are the branches.” “I am the good shepherd, who lays down his
life for his sheep.” “I am the Way, the
Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, except through me.” All such expressions written by the
evangelist John testify to his experience of God through his loving faith-union
with the Risen Christ.
And
whom, we may ask, does God shepherd in Christ?
A reasonable answer would be:
everyone who allows God to rule and to guide him into true Life. Potentially, this includes every human
being. But each of us has discovered in
ourselves an ability to turn away, to rebel, or simply to ignore the silent,
subtle promptings of God as he seeks to shepherd us. We are not likened to sheep because we are
wise, prudent, and understanding, but because we “often go astray like sheep,”
to use the language of Deutero-Isaiah.
(Perhaps we can even at times be justly likened to mules, “who must be
driven to pasture by blows.” Can you
ever be like a mule?)
To
call Christ “the good shepherd” is a way of saying that he is the rightful,
just ruler over humankind—over and in all human beings potentially, and
actually over those who submit to his gentle and wise rule. All who “do the will of my Father” belong to
Christ. Ultimately, as St. Thomas
Aquinas wrote, Christ is the head over all of humanity. He is not the head of one group only, or of
some “elected” or “saved” individual beings, but over each and all of us, from
the beginning of history to the end.
That is why we call Christ “LORD.”
He is the beginning and end of each one of us, and of all of us
together. To you, to me, to everyone, the Risen One says: “You are mine. I have give my life for you, so that you may
know true love, peace, and happiness.”
Such is Jesus, “the good shepherd.”
