Comings and Goings

A Sermon Preached by

The Rev. Paul Debenport

August 9, 2009

+     +     +

I seem to be into metaphors of the faith this summer.  A couple of weeks ago I preached on various aspects of “Light,” and before that I preached from Jesus as the Good Shepherd in John 10.  Today I’m back to John 10, but this time my focus is on Jesus as The Gate.

But before hearing this passage, we need to remember that since chapter 5, Jesus has been tangling with the Pharisees—the official interpreters of Scripture then.  Just before today’s passage Jesus has healed a blind man on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees want to throw them both out of the synagogue.  Jesus calls the Pharisees the ones who are blind to God’s grace right before their eyes.  In this passage, Jesus is implying that they are “thieves and bandits” for being self-styled, self-righteous gatekeepers, more interested in their own prestige and power than in the welfare of God’s flock.^1. 

Hear the Word of God in the words of Jesus from John 10: 1—10:

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.  The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.  The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice.  He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.  They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”  Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, “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.  The thief comes

 only to steal and kill and destroy.  I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” 

The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

+     +     +

          Mixed metaphors can be humorous and they can mess with your mind:  “You’ve buttered your bread; now lie in it.”  But mixed metaphors can also speak deep truth to the heart, as in John 10.  Here Jesus is described as both the gate to the sheepfold and as the shepherd of the flock.^2.

          I’ve always treasured the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, but I haven’t ever much liked the idea of Jesus as a gate, or gatekeeper.  What gate-keeping connotes to me is just too big a temptation for the rest of us to go and do likewise.  From the very beginning of the church—from the conflict between Peter and Paul over whether only Jews or Jews and Gentiles were called of Christ—the history of the church is littered with gate-keeping battles, which, of course, is still happening in today’s church.  It is one thing to be a gate, but it is something else to simply enter and exit by it. 

Here’s what struck me about this passage this time.  First, Jesus is the gate.  And understanding the metaphor depends on a visual image of a Palestinian sheepfold or sheep pen.  It’s an enclosure made of stones or briars where the shepherd could bring his sheep at night to keep them safe from predators outside and from wandering away in the night.  A section of the enclosure was left open to serve as an entryway across which the shepherd would lie to keep sheep from straying out and predators from getting in.  Which is where the two metaphors come together.  The shepherd’s own body is the gate.  When the Shepherd calls the sheep in for the night, they come in; when he arises in the morning, he leads them out to do what sheep must do, be nourished to grow wool.  Shepherds are not cowboys that hound and prod the cows on their journey.  No, shepherds go ahead of them, calling to them, and they follow.^3. So when Jesus the Shepherd-Gate calls, we come in, and we go out, and we come in again.  When he calls, we listen.  When we listen, we are saved, because we have both the pasture and the rest we need.  So our job is just to listen to the One who guards our going out and our coming in.  That’s it, from this time forth and forevermore, as Psalm 121 proclaims.^4.

          Here’s the second thing I noticed in this passage:  we go out and we come in, even when we are saved.  For appropriate pastureland, the flock must keep moving, according to the shepherd’s best wisdom.  It goes in and out of the gate every day.  The gate is what marks the boundary between a place to graze and a place to rest.  It is part of the daily-ness of life.  Inside the gate, you gather together at the end of the day.  Outside the gate, you move on toward green pastures and still waters.  The rhythm of in and out is necessary to life, because the green pastures are outside the gate, as is—of course—increased danger.  A sheep that refuses to go out will die.  Likewise, a sheep that refuses to go in, when the call comes, may soon be lost in the night.  So the gate is part of life and key to life, but not because it keeps us out or in.  It simply marks the boundary between what we are to do in each space.

          Which leads to a third related observation:  the saving is in the going out and the coming in.  The way to save the life of a sheep is to know when it is time to go out, and when it is time to come back in.  So the sheep must depend on the voice of the shepherd to tell them what time it is.  Is it grazing time, moving time, working time?  Or, is it gathering in, resting time?  As individual followers and as a church, our job is to listen for the voice of our shepherd, the voice we recognize above all others, the voice of life and life full of meaning and purpose, and then, to follow his call.

+     +     +

          Does this mess with your mind as much as it does mine?  For years, I have thought about gates like I think about subway turnstiles:  insert your token, and the bar will release to let you in.  Jump the bar, and you can expect a swift response on the part of the police.  Often, to me gates required money or identification if you want to cross them.  You need a ticket or a passport.  You need the consent of the authorities.

          No wonder I haven’t liked thinking of Jesus as the gatekeeper.  If Jesus [or the church, as his willing representative] is like those border guards arresting the hikers who strayed into Iran last week, then the saved are those who hold a certain passport, can pay the fee, or answer the questions right.  Then the church marks a boundary between the saved and not-saved.  We are in; they are out—or vice-versa.  But if Jesus is a gate for the sheep—placing his own body on the line—then everything changes!  The gate is no longer something we pass once and for all, like the bar exam or a citizenship test.  It is not something that opens to us with the right tokens or words, like “Open sesame!”  No, the gate just marks the boundary between what we are to do in each space.  The gate, who is also Good Shepherd, tells us what we are to do next.  And it is not up to us to decide who gets to cross the gateway.  That’s Christ’s job.  Our job is just to listen for the voice, telling us when it is time to move forward.

          To me, there is a lovely, rhythmic quality to looking at our life and life-together this way.  It makes me think of Dr. David Buttrick’s descriptive phrase of the church as the being-saved community.  Of course by the most common definition of “saved,” we are saved by God’s grace once and forever.  But we are also being-saved,”—the theological term is “sanctified—thus, perhaps the church is more transient than static.  It moves in and out, back and forth.  It moves according to the rhythms of its call.  When it’s time to worship, it gathers at the sheepfold.  When it is time to move out and do the work of being a sheep, it spreads out over the hills.  But always, it must listen for the voice that calls it to the next phrase.  Of course, this means we must also live with the possibility of being lost.  Jesus does not protect us from wandering away, but he actively and persistently calls us back home, a mobile home, a home on the move following his call.

          Thus, Jesus as the gate is not a firm boundary of exclusion/inclusion.  Jesus does not insist on secure isolation.  Jesus does not give identity to his sheep at the price of their narrow confinement.  Rather, Jesus is the sort of gate that having followed him into the world of our callings, also opens to a place of safety and welcome, to a place of belonging, but not to a place of isolation, or exclusion, or imprisonment.^5. Jesus as the gate is good news to his sheep, and, except for the thieves and robbers who tried and failed to fence him in and bury him deep, bad news to no one.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.