What two words have we heard most often in the media this week? Swine flu. Could the media be creating hysteria, or have we something really to fear? Though we cannot tell yet how serious this flu may turn out to be, we can prepare. Medical advice tells us that early attention to flu-like symptoms can make a difference. What about spiritual preparation? What would that look like? How might it help?

Let's consider the Resurrection. And for the moment, let's think about it apart from any religious context. In that light, the Resurrection serves as evidence, as a clue. Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel spotted that clue in 1933, and in a secular parody of the Resurrection, they created the “mild mannered Clark Kent” and his alternate identity, Superman. I hesitate to use a popular image for a deep spiritual truth; but is is memorable, so I am risking it. I am seeking a way to say that the Resurrection points to the double nature of our lives.

Let me give a down-to-earth example. As part of my seminary training I spent a year doing clinical pastoral education. It meant that for that year I worked at a hospital in San Francisco as a chaplain intern. Every day I would walk through the halls and stop in the patients' rooms for a visit. As you might imagine, for every three patients who appreciated the attention, there would be one who asked me to leave, sometimes with unaffected resentment. I left, of course, but always with a sense of failure, rejection, even shame for having intruded. I used to dread those rounds. “Who am I,” I would think, “to barge into this person's private space? What right do I, a stranger, have to enter uninvited?” As a result, I always entered a new patient's room with an apologetic posture. I spoke with such diffidence that it amounted to an invitation to throw me out – an invitation, as I said, that was all too often acted upon.

One day a revelation broke over me. I am not breaching the privacy of this patient's space. I come in Christ's name. I bring Christ's presence. Any rejection is a rejection of Christ. Some of you will be familiar with this poem by Juan Ramón Jimenéz, the Spanish poet, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. Entitled, “Yo no soy yo,” it describes what came to me as a revelation. He writes,

I am not I.

I am this one

Walking beside me whom I do not see.

Whom at times I manage to visit,

And at other times I forget.

The one who remains silent when I talk,

The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,

The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,

The one who will remain standing when I die.

With this new insight my whole approach changed to one of interest, eagerness and confidence. My sense of self had shifted. Clark Strand has an image for that shift in his new book, How to believe in God, Whether You Believe in Religion or Not. He writes of a thimble in an ocean. That is how we think of ourselves. Here am I, this tiny cup, and here I am, afloat in the vast, vast ocean. The Resurrection points us toward a shift that can happen. The thimble turns inside out. Now I am the vast, vast ocean, not the vulnerable, self-protective thimble. In other words, I now have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. I have it all. I am it all. From that point on, fear no longer checked me at the door of a new patient's room, while I screwed up my courage. I would hesitate while I recalled “yo no soy yo – I am not I”, and then enter with confidence and humility. I knew I had little to bring; yet Christ had everything to bring. You will not be surprised to hear that the number of rejections dropped to nearly zero.

That same story can be told again and again. Take the first lesson. One day John and Peter were going to the temple in Jerusalem to pray. On the steps they encountered a beggar, lame from birth. Having no money to give, they gave him what they could: healing in the name of Christ. This attracted a crowd, and Peter began to address the crowd, saying that the healing came through Jesus Christ and telling the crowd about the Resurrection. No surprise, the crowd attracted the religious authorities, enraged that a mere nobody presumed to preach in the temple precincts. They had Peter and John arrested.

The next day the entire establishment arrayed themselves against Peter and John. It included the rulers and elders, the scribes, the high priest and the whole high priestly family. Two blue-collar workers, so to speak, stood before the intimidating might and majesty of the government and the whole power of the priesthood. The disciples knew they risked being put to death, as Jesus had been put to death. To the amazement of all present, however, Peter spoke up boldly and with authority. He not only told them the source of his power, he even went so far as to charge them with Jesus' death. Peter, too, had made the discovery that “Yo no soy yo – I am not I.” For Peter, too, the thimble had turned inside out.

Now I want to say more about that 'turning inside out'. It amounts to discovering what has been true about us all along: that we live two lives. In one, which we naively take to be the only one, we feel like fragile, vulnerable thimbles in a vast, impersonal universe. In the other, we are that universe. How can we know this? The Resurrection offers the evidence we need. Jesus' life did not end at his death and that puts beyond dispute that death is not the end of life. Not only so, but the life that was revealed after his death had been there all along. It had been the source of his power, his authority, his fearlessness and his love.

In today's Gospel Jesus compares the Good Shepherd with the hired hand. Perhaps he did not mean two different people; perhaps he was talking about the two lives within himself. One of those lives, the eternal one, intrinsic to his very nature, he called the Good Shepherd. The other, the hired hand, showed itself in the various roles he was called upon to play – teacher, counselor, preacher, healer. I am reminded of myself as a mother. As a mother, I would die for my children; and yet I had moments when I felt like the baby sitter, the hired hand – moments when for two cents I could have walked out and slammed the door on my screaming, whining, snotty-nosed children. I didn't, though. I was a mother, I had an identity deeper and larger than passing circumstances.

Imagine Jesus in Jerusalem when he felt the forces of the religious authorities closing in on him. The hired hand in him said, “Cut and run.” He still had time to slip away and return to Galilee. They would not have bothered with him up there. I imagine him, like me, pausing in some inner doorway and recalling who he was, his true identity – not the thimble, but the sea; not just Jesus, but the Christ. Not the hired hand who reacts to situations, who cowers for mercy before the face of circumstances; but the Good Shepherd, master of any circumstances. So when Jesus said, “I lay down my life in order to take it up again,” perhaps he was speaking of these two lives. He laid down his human life, his life as a hired hand, and turned instead to his eternal life; and that life gave him the courage he needed. In the power of his larger life he could go all the way to death and beyond.

Now, to return to the swine flu: let us rejoice. We have a choice. If panic threatens to engulf us, we can pause in the doorway, so to speak. We can give the Holy Spirit a moment to turn us inside out. We can observe the inner panic but not be swept up into it. We are not like hired hands, fleeing before the wolf. We have access, through Christ, to that larger life that Jesus calls the Good Shepherd. As Good Shepherds we have the courage, the love, and the vision to act wisely for the long term good of all. We might even adopt a mantra to stabilize ourselves in threatening circumstances, perhaps “yo no soy yo ... yo no soy yo ... yo no soy yo.”