Gatekeepers and the Gate (Sermon)

“Gatekeepers and the Gate”

John 10:1-10

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

5/18/14

          I'll call her Martha.  Martha was a member of one of my previous congregations.  She and her husband had retired to North Carolina from New Jersey, and they brought with them two rather interesting sons.  One of them started a successful business after the move.  The other son, though very intelligent, could have been the poster child for “failure to launch” syndrome.  All four of them lived in the same house.

          Martha alone attended and participated in the church.  In faith and in life, she was herself extremely bright, curious, and bold.  She held great potential as a lay leader in that congregation, and one year she did receive a nomination to serve as elder.  On the Sunday when we were to vote on the nominating committee's proposed slate of officers, one gentleman rose and offered a nomination from the floor.  When it all shook out, Martha had been replaced by a man who had a long history at the church.

          Procedurally, nothing contrary to The Book of Order had happened.  However, through subsequent conversations, I was cut to the quick to learn of a carefully staged effort to replace the outsider with an insider.  Disappointed and humiliated, Martha stayed away from church for quite some time.  Eventually, she returned, and when she did, all of her wit, charm, and intelligence came with her – bearing vivid witness to the very sort of grace and character one would hope a congregation would desire in its leaders.

          Gatekeepers.  Families have them.  Businesses have them.  Volunteer organizations have them.  Political parties really have them.  And perhaps nowhere do gatekeepers wield their power more inappropriately, and to greater harm than in the church.

          Gatekeepers are those folks who possess something to which others always seem to defer, be it charisma, community influence, conspicuous wealth, or history in a particular place.  And it is not simply the charisma, the influence, the wealth, or the history that warps a person into a gatekeeper.  When an individual twists some personal asset into manipulative power, that is when giftedness gets reduced to something of a black art.

          With a subtle nod, or through quiet, backroom conversations, gatekeepers often determine who gets in and who does not.  The more pathological gatekeepers will even threaten the community by threatening their own relationship with it.

          “If that happens,” the gatekeeper says, “I'm leaving, and I will not come back.”  And those who live under the illusion of the indispensability of the gatekeeper will rally, using whatever means necessary, to protect some sacred but increasingly lifeless status quo.  Gatekeepers use their very presence, and the dis-ease of losing it, to manufacture a sense of anxiety.  When gatekeepers willingly use the willingness of others to leverage fear, they become Lord of their domains, and all the while appearing to be the benevolent ones, the linchpins who hold the community together.

          Jesus calls such folks “thieves and bandits.”

          Get ready for one confusing casserole of metaphors all stewed together into one cocktail: “I am the gate,” says the shepherd, who enters the sheepfold, when the gatekeeper opens the gate, who is also the shepherd, and who belongs in the fold, unlike the thieves and bandits, and strangers – all of whom Jesus is scolded for eating with, drinking with, and otherwise welcoming.

          Who can blame the Pharisees for failing to understand Jesus?  But this is the Johannine Jesus at his mystic shaman best.  He does not tell people what or how to think.  He dares them to think and imagine for themselves.  As John says, Jesus uses a “figure of speech with them.”  When Jesus speaks of the sheepfold, the gate, the gatekeeper, thieves, and bandits, he does not give us information to manage.  He hangs a picture on the wall.  He gives us symbols that ground us in a way of life, in a tangible arrangement of relationships.  This picture and its symbols place us in a story, an ancient and ongoing story.

          “In the beginning…God said…and it was so.” (Gen. 1)  The voice speaks, and the flock that is matter itself responds by creating the fold.

          ‘If they ask who sent me, and what your name is,’ quibbles Moses, “what shall I say to them?”  And Yahweh answers, “Say to the Israelites, ‘I AM [the God of your ancestors] has sent me to you.” (Ex. 3)  And so begins the great sheep drive of the Exodus.

          Awash in all the images of his vision, Isaiah’s response of commitment comes when he hears “the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send?”  And Isaiah cries out, “Here I am; send me!” (Is. 6)

          Then, when the stars align, that same, familiar voice cries out in the wilderness, quoting Isaiah: ‘It’s time!’  “Prepare the way of the Lord.” (Mt. 3)  And the one for whom the way is prepared says, “I am the gate…I am the good shepherd…[and] the sheep hear my voice.”

          This is not information.  This is art.  Jesus hangs a portrait on the wall to remind us that we have been spoken, that we have been storied into an identity and a purpose; and that story is far from complete.

          Jesus himself shows up as different elements of the picture.  As post-Easter followers, we do, too.  Yes, we have a role as sheep, but think about it.  To be of use, a gate must hang on something.  A gate needs fenceposts, doesn’t it?  That’s where you and I come in – again.

          Now, I know that this sounds like I am saying that God is somehow dependent on us.  But remember, from the very beginning of the story being recalled by the symbols in the portrait Jesus hangs on the wall, God chooses to be revealed in, with, and for the creation through relationships.

          We looked at one of the most memorable expressions of that truth last week when we pondered the story of Jesus appearing to two disciples on the road to Emmaus.  In the midst of that very normal, human exchange something mystical happens: “Their eyes [are] opened, and they [recognize] him.”  This story is itself another picture.  It illustrates what Jesus wants us to understand when he says that “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Mt 18)

          As fenceposts, who live in relationship with one another, the words, the gestures, the laughter, the tears, every element of every moment of every relationship places us at the very threshold of the Kingdom of God, because every interaction we have holds the potential to reveal the Gate, which is the living Christ.

          It is not we who open the gate, of course.  That is the work of the mysterious Gatekeeper we call the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit’s role in opening the Gate is so vitally important to proclaiming hope in the story of creation, it is no wonder that the “thieves and bandits” try to usurp that role and to do that which only the Gatekeeper can do.

          Our calling, our vocation as creatures made in God’s image is to be in open, vulnerable, interdependent relationship with each other.  And when we do, when we stand face-to-face, heart-to-heart, grateful in each moment for each person with whom we interact, the Gatekeeper has another opportunity to reveal and open the Gate, the Christ in our midst, and to turn us out, deeper into God’s kingdom.

          We do not have to agree on issues that divide us.  We do not even have to like each other.  But until we make the effort to love each other as we are loved – with that sacred, vocational love called agape – until we make the effort to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God together, we will not fully experience or appreciate the presence of the Gate, the redeeming work of the Gatekeeper, or the abundant new life they promise.

          Here is our spiritual reality as I see it: When we even so much as stand next to other human beings, certainly when we make eye contact or speak to them, the space between us is never simply dead air.  It is a kind of energy field, teeming with presence and possibility.  It is, indeed, a gate to deeper and wider wholeness and holiness.  When we channel our inner thieves and bandits, we will treat those next to us with suspicion and fear.  We will keep them at whatever distance we need in order to feel safe.  And at times we all give in to the thieves and bandits within us.

          However, when we, like sheep, hear and trust the Shepherd’s voice, we will follow his lead.  When we stand grounded in love and hope, we stand like fenceposts, ready to serve as ones between whom the Gate himself hangs and may swing open at the Gatekeeper’s touch.  Every relationship we have holds the potential of revealing something new of the presence, the beauty, and the abundant life of heaven itself.

          I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: When we go downstairs for family lunch today, we will stand next to, look at, and speak with one another.  To a significant degree, we know and are somewhat comfortable with each other and the context.  Still, pay attention to yourself and to your brothers and sisters.  The Gate will be creaking and clanking like crazy down there.  Practice expecting to sense the presence of God’s kingdom between you those next to you, so that you may carry that awareness out into the rest of your life.

          Yes, the world can be a wild, mixed-up, and dangerous place.  It often frightens us into playing gatekeeper.  The idea of seeing strangers as fellow fenceposts, ones with whom we hold creative, kingdom-revealing potential, frequently seems like foolish, even reckless naiveté.  But doesn’t that just make our effort to bear witness to the presence of the Gate and to the redeeming activity of the Gatekeeper all the more important, all the more urgent, and all the more an act of Easter's resurrecting faith, hope, and love?