Easter 4A
May 7, 2017
John 10:1-10, Psalm 23
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Many of us
have been watching the news regarding the impact of all this rain we’ve been
having, especially on those who live on the lake. Flooding is a real problem
this year – and not just in Rochester! In fact, people all around the country
are experiencing flooding. This week I heard a woman from Illinois interviewed.
She was scared for herself and her mom. “I don’t care about my shoes and my
clothes,” she said, then, as she held back tears, “But if the water gets up to
our second floor, I don’t know where my mom and I will go. There’s just no one
we can count on, you know?”
It was a
stark reminder of how, when it really comes down to it, our things don’t matter nearly so much as
our relationships.
Perhaps this
is why it is such a comfort each year, when we come to this Good Shepherd
Sunday to hear about how Jesus is our good shepherd. He knows us, and loves us,
and leads us, and keeps us safe. He desires a relationship with us, and this
relationship provides us with all that we could ever desire, much more than any
of our stuff ever could. Pair that
promise up with the 23rd Psalm, and there is plenty by which to be
comforted. Truly Jesus, more than any thing on earth, provides us with abundant
life. Our cup runneth over!
But Jesus as
shepherd isn’t the only image we hear today. In fact, in the part of John 10 we
just heard, Jesus never says, “I am the good shepherd.” Instead, he says, “I am
the gate.” So let’s think together for a minute about what that image, “the
gate,” might mean for us and our call as Christians.
So first of
all, a gate for… what? … Yeah, it’s for getting through a fence or a wall. You
don’t usually just see a gate standing out in the open unless it is a garden
ornament or something. So it gets you through a barrier. Ok, so why would we
have a fence or a wall? … Sometimes, again, it is for decoration. But usually
it is either for keeping someone or something in, or keeping someone or
something else out. In doing so, a wall necessarily divides: us from them.
Wanted from unwanted. Safety from danger.
Up to now
we’ve probably all been imagining physical walls, but these aren’t the only
sorts of walls we build. We build plenty of figurative walls, as well – and in
fact, often for the same reasons we build physical ones. We put up walls when
we have been hurt, and want to keep ourselves safe. We put up walls when we
perceive danger, and seek security from that danger. We put up walls when we
want protection from that which is unknown. And just as much as physical walls,
these emotional walls we put up, though they may serve the purpose we intend
for them, also serve to keep us divided, to keep us from relationship.
A gate,
though – a gate makes it possible to overcome that division. It holds the
potential to bring “us” and “them” together, even, to bring “us” and “them”
into a relationship.
“I am the
gate,” Jesus says. Suddenly, that which would have divided us no longer has
that power. What would have been used to keep someone out of someplace has become
porous. And with that, walking into abundant life – life centered around
relationship – becomes a possibility.
Previously,
the Pharisees had seen themselves as the gate-keepers. They got to decide who
is in and who is out. They made sure people were following God’s law. Indeed,
it was a noble profession they took very seriously! They were upholding God’s
law, after all, and someone needed to keep order around here! But then Jesus
comes along and upsets everything – not by saying that he is the gatekeeper,
but that he is the gate itself! He – and not their rigid law-keeping – is the
one who makes it possible to get through the gate and into new and abundant
life.
But with Jesus,
the gate is not one-way. As with most doors, Jesus the gate is for coming in and for going out. It is for coming in
to experience abundant life, and then for going back out to bring that
knowledge of what is truly abundant life back into the world. It is for coming
in to be assured of the love and comfort of Jesus, and for going back out to
build relationships, and to bring the assurance of God’s love into those
relationships.
In other
words, Jesus-the-gate is not one who brings the sheep into the safety of a
walled off area, safe from the harms of the world, safe from anything that will
hurt or challenge, and shuts behind them, holding them there forever. Rather,
he’s the sort of door that brings them in, and equips them to go back out.
You know, I
wonder if maybe Jesus isn’t just a vertical door. Let me explain: My aunt and
uncle just moved into a new house last year, and one of the first things my
uncle worked on was his office, where he would be able to work on his photo
editing and printing. He needed a lot of desk space – so he purchased three
large doors, turned them sideways, and used them as tabletops. Instead of
serving
as something to shut things out, those doors became a place where work
is done, where flaws get addressed and fixed, where beauty is created.
 |
| Door turned table (Pinterest) |
That, I
think, is the sort of gate or door Jesus is. He is the door that is turned around
and becomes a table. Indeed, he is that table the 23rd Psalm refers
to, a table that is set before us in the presence of our enemies – people we
struggle with, people who have hurt us, people whom we need to forgive or seek
forgiveness. He is a table where our cup overflows with the opportunity for
relationship to be created and nurtured and healed.
Of course we have a very special sort
of table in our Christian faith where that very thing happens: the altar table.
And yes, Christ is also that table, as one communion prayer states, “Christ, our
Table and our Food,” inviting us, in all our brokenness and all our flaws, into
relationship with him and with one another, to be nourished and forgiven and
strengthened to go back out into the world to serve, to seek healing, to reach
out to those in need of community, with the good word of God’s love. Jesus, the
gate-turned-table, turns back into the gate, sending us out – to go to that
family displaced by a flood with no one they can count on, to the woman who is
worried her family will be deported, to the man who lost his job and doesn’t
know if he can feed his family, to the friend with whom you had a falling out
but still feel the pain of the separation – to go to all of those with the promise
of God’s renewing and enlivening spirit and love, and to seek with them the
relationship that is so characteristic of the abundant life Christ promises.
Christ our
good shepherd. Christ our gate into abundant life. Christ our table and our
food. And Christ once again our gate into the world. Each image offers us
comfort even as it challenges us. As sheep of God’s pasture, let us listen to
the voice of our shepherd, calling us to the hard work of
relationship-building, service, and love of the world in need.
Let
us pray… Jesus, you are the gate. Help us
to listen to your voice, calling us in and sending us out, and make us feel
secure enough in you that we would embark on the tough work of loving your
children as you have loved us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit. Amen.
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