The Good News Is … There’s a Gate

The Reverend Shirley Smith Graham, St. Martin’s Church, Williamsburg, VA

April 13, 2008

John 10:1-10

 

            The gospel reading for today gives us two distinctly different opportunities:  to reflect on Jesus as the shepherd or on Jesus as the gate.  I’ve made a calculated guess that you’ve heard more sermons about Jesus as shepherd, so this morning, you get the “gate” sermon.  In reality, John’s gospel causes us to acknowledge that there is no single metaphor sufficient to express who Jesus is.  In addition, because Jesus is the gate, Jesus as the shepherd can do his work.  Only once that gate has been found can the shepherd do his work of leading the sheep to God’s pleasant pasture.

            As a way of entering into this gospel passage, it may help to think about some of the ordinary gates of our lives.  As I reflected on gates I have encountered in my life, I was surprised to be riveted to the memory of the gate to my grandmother’s garden.  It’s curious that my grandmother’s gate holds my attention because there have been other gates that seemed more important in terms of vulnerability and physical security.

            I could have thought about the gate that the Kenyan taxi drove up to at 1 a.m. in the morning, on a dark night in Nairobi.  Yes, I knew even as I prepared for my internship in Kenya that I would be staying first at the Anglican Guest House in Nairobi, but somehow my preparation had not included the detail that the Guest House is set in a walled-off compound, which is bordered by a tall fence.  Set in this tall fence is a locked gate, which is watched by an armed guard.  So when the taxi-driver honked briskly to summon the guard to unlock the gate, I was surprised to realize that someone thought I needed to be inside a locked gate.  But in preparation for this sermon, I did not linger long with the memory of this Nairobi gate.

            I could have thought about the gate that was two sets of double steel doors which separated one part of Folsom State Prison from the other.  In the early 1990s I participated in a prison ministry that took me into this maximum security facility, a facility in which visitors were forbidden to wear blue jeans.  Simply put, if a riot started and the guards began shooting, the guards wanted a fair chance at not hitting the visitors.  I have never experienced anything more vulnerable than standing in the no-man’s land between one set of steel doors and the other set of doors; between leaving the visitors waiting room and entering the utter defenselessness of Folsom prison.  But in preparation for this sermon, I did not linger long with the memory of Folsom’s gate.

            Instead, the gate that I think of when I consider this passage from John’s gospel is my grandmother’s garden gate.  In suburban London, my grandmother lived in a modest home, accessed through an iron gate, which separated the public sidewalk from the concrete path.  This path ran the length of the front garden, down the side of the house, to the door of her home.  I cannot think of the gate to this path without feeling like I’m five years old all over again.  So there I am, inside the house, and playing on the red patterned carpet of my grandmother’s living room.  And even though my mind’s eye recalls the carpet, her armchair and the cozy grandma smell of home, it is the feeling associated with this memory that overwhelms me.  For in my grandmother’s living room, I experienced well-being, safety, protection, comfort and care so complete that this memory serves as a high watermark for my life.  So my grandmother and I are in this living room, and I hear the gate outside clang, as someone enters the garden and comes down the path toward my grandmother’s door.  It is grand excitement to see who next will be coming to experience this marvelous home.  For inside the gate is my grandmother’s house, and inside this house there is comfort, there is love.

            I have described this feeling-world intentionally – not to be sentimental but to take us to a place in our guts that reminds us what total physical and emotional well-being can feel like – the sense of being utterly loved and cared for, the knowledge of what it feels like to be well.  I take us to this place because this is the kind of place intended in the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 34, verse 14.  In it the prophet Ezekiel communicates God’s promise that the people will not always suffer but that there will be a time of comfort, a time of justice, a time of peace.  Through the words of Ezekiel God says,

I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.

 

So then, in this “good pasture”, there will be food, plenty of food; there will be safety, enough safety that the people can sleep; they shall lie down in comfort; no enemy shall attack them or move them from this consoling place.  Such a setting of food and shelter may seen a given until we consider even in our contemporary day the situation of homeless families or refugees displaced during war.

Well the prophet delivers this promise as if it is surprising news, as if it means a change from the status quo, and indeed it does demand dramatic change.  In the setting of Ezekiel those with power in Israel had been hoarding that power and wealth for themselves.  So, this good news for the people follows an indictment against the power elite who have not fed the sheep.  Here this striking indictment (34:4-6):

You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, //: with no one to search or seek for them ://.

            Because we have heard the indictment in its stark ugliness, we can see, in dramatic relief, the good news of God’s promise to bring change, as it follows in Ezekiel, verses 8 – 14:

As I live, says the Lord God … because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep; therefore … I will demand my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them.  For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.  As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered … I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.

            So then, we have heard god’s promise to bring the sheep into good pasture, and here is Jesus, fulfilling the promise, who says:

“Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.  All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them.  I am the gate.  Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture … I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:7-10).

What does Jesus say?  “I am the gate for the sheep.”  God is ready to bring the sheep into that rich pasture.  God is ready to gather up the weak, the sick, the injured, the strayed, the lost, the abused, the tortured, the bullied, the scattered, the refugee, the vagrants -- God is ready to gather up all these.  God sends His own self, the Incarnate One, Jesus, to be the gate to let them all in.

This Jesus is the “gate for the sheep.”  God is ready to fulfill his promise to his people for comfort, for justice, for peace.  God is ready to fulfill that promise, and so Jesus becomes the gate to let all those sheep in … to let all these sheep in.  Because let us not fool ourselves, we may be fine in many respects.  The mortgage may be getting paid; the kids might be having healthy grandkids; the food on the table may be plentiful.  But in ways that may not be seen easily, we also are the weak, the sick, the injured, the strayed, the lost, the abused, the tortured, the bullied, the scattered, the refugee, the vagrants.  Jesus is the gate, and by his gift we have passed through the gate into God’s own pleasant pasture that we “may have life, and have it abundantly.”  Inside the gate, here is our Father’s house, and inside this house, here is comfort; here is well-being; here is love.

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