The Gate (Sermon)

“The Gate”

John 10:1-10

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

5/7/17

         When our Sunday school class discussed this passage two weeks ago, one member of the group enlightened all of us on first-century sheepfolds. He told us that, as the name implies, a sheepfold is an enclosed space in which sheep are kept, usually overnight when predators prowl the darkness. He also said that sheepfolds were essentially commons areas. So, my sheep would have been mixed in with your sheep, and all of them entrusted to the care of the shepherds on graveyard shift.

         Now, sheep aren’t known for being particularly smart animals, but they apparently have the capacity to distinguish voices, and to trust that one familiar voice when it speaks. So, in the morning, my flock would follow me, and your flock would follow you as we each lead our own sheep to green pastures and still waters.

         The gate, then, was more than a passageway to be opened, closed, and guarded. It was a gathering place – the place we congregated to lay our flock by for the night, and where we met again to call our flock out at the dawn of each new day. This reminds me of the last verse of Psalm 121: “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.”

When Jesus calls himself the gate, he lays claim to that same welcoming and commissioning lordship. He is the gathering place where we are received, watched over, and sent back out.

It seems to me that one of the most consistent sins of the Church has been its willing, and often deliberate confusion regarding its place in the sheepfold. The Church has assumed for itself the role of the gate, rather than the witness to it. Now, by necessity, all human communities, including the Church, create statements of identity and purpose, as well as procedural guidelines. The Church’s blunder begins when it forgets that it’s a community of intentional and transformational witness to Mystery, to Incarnation and Resurrection.

It’s hard to be that kind of community, though. Religiously speaking, we’re not the only game in town. And it’s all-too-easy to adopt the exclusive ways and violent means of nations and other worldly institutions. In an effort to survive, we – and that’s a very broad, 2000-year-old we – have frequently gotten in bed with worldly power in order to protect and enhance our status. The medieval Roman Catholic Church got so politically powerful that it frequently bullied political leaders with the threat of excommunication. Make these policies, and issue these statements, said popes to emperors and kings, or we will condemn you to hell.

Now, fear does motivate, but it does not redeem. It doesn’t welcome, heal, and renew. Fear does not and cannot bear witness to Christ. But God knows the Church has tried to use fear as a tool for ministry.

Today we will celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. If we were Jonesborough Presbyterian Church 200 years ago, some of you would have little metal tokens in your pocket. And when it came time for communion, only those with tokens would be able to receive the sacrament. In the days prior to the sacrament, you see, the pastor would visit with each member who was eligible to take communion, and he would examine you. He would ask you questions about what you believe, and how you’ve been behaving since the last time you took communion. And if you didn’t pass muster, you didn’t get a token. You had to sit there, excluded and afraid, watching others more deserving than you partake in the reminder of God’s unconditional grace in and for the creation.

I am unspeakably grateful that my job does not include that kind of gatekeeping. I am not the gate. We are not the gate. Jesus is the gate. He is the place where we gather to be reminded that we are members of his own beloved fold. He calls us in. He surrounds us with himself. And he sends us out to live as witnesses to his gracious Love in and for the world.

No, the world is not a safe and comfortable place. There will always be threats and challenges to the well-being of all things under the sun. That being said, if there are “thieves and bandits” who warrant our vigilant attention, I think they are, first and foremost, those voices in our own midst that seek to limit grace, to guard the gate, and to make it a place to which one must earn access. Thieves and bandits seek to control rather than contribute. They seek to investigate rather than invite. They tear down and destroy by abusing and abandoning peacemakers, those who demonstrate poverty of spirit, meekness, mercy, purity of heart, and who, in the face of violence and persecution, remain at the gate, that place of kindness and compassion.

Striving to enter the fold wielding power and peddling influence, thieves, bandits, and gatekeepers may, for a time, sustain a status quo that benefits a privileged few. Unlike the true gate, however, they are helpless to lead anyone to abundant life.

When I, as a minister of Word and Sacrament, stand at Christ’s table to speak the invitation, to pray the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, and to recite the words of institution, I make it my mission to open this table to everyone. I don’t ask anyone to profess anything in particular or to act any certain way. Some may find that irresponsible, and I can appreciate that. A certain degree of understanding does help a person to engage meaningfully in the sacrament. But, remember, when Jesus celebrates Passover with his disciples, he institutes this sacrament. And he shares that most significant meal with people who do not understand him, men who will abandon him. He even dips bread into the dish with Judas, his betrayer. Jesus receives all of them at the table.

In place of the Passover meal, the Gospel of John includes the profoundly intimate scene of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. During that holy moment, Jesus says, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” (John 13:7)

Through all things, Jesus trusts that his words and actions will, as God says through Isaiah, “not return to me empty, but…shall accomplish that which I purpose. (Isaiah 55:11)

As the gate, Jesus offers himself as the place to gather, to be welcomed, embraced, fed, nurtured. He offers himself as the one through whom we are sent out to live as those who have been healed of fear, judgment, ingratitude, and death in all its forms.

In return, Jesus asks of us both far less and far more than submission to well-argued dogmas and commitment to quantifiable behaviors. He asks us, for the sake of others, to trust his voice, to follow him, and to live the new and abundant life of holy Love.