April 17, 2005 - Fourth Sunday of Easter - Father Andrew Green

FIRST READING: Acts 2: 42-47
PSALM: 23
SECOND READING: 1 Peter 2: 19-25
GOSPEL: John 10: 1-10

No matter what the text is on this Sunday, it revolves around Jesus as the Good Shepherd, even though it would be more proper, perhaps, to call this Sunday, Gate Sunday. But I don't think Good Gate Sunday really has that kind of appeal, so it is still Good Shepherd Sunday. On this day, every year, the fourth Sunday after Easter, we always have one of the texts from John's Gospel that talk about Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

Now, this particular Gospel may be kind of confusing. I don't know if you are confused or not, but, when you jump around from shepherd to gate to thieves and bandits, and who is coming and going, and who is climbing over the fence, there are a lot of things going on, and I don't know that they all follow in line.

In preparing for this sermon, one of the things that I was reminded of was that sometimes divisions in the Gospel are somewhat artificial. If you want to think back to the time of the Magna Carta, around that time the Archbishop of Canterbury was Steven Langdon, and he is given credit with being the person who divided the Bible, and the Gospels in particular, into chapters. So, chapter nine has ended, and this begins chapter ten. But the reality is that, where Jesus starts off at the beginning of chapter ten here, He is finishing up with something He was doing in chapter nine. Chapter nine was the story of the man who was blind from birth, whom Jesus encountered on the road, begging, and, without even being asked, Jesus healed him. This created no small amount of problems for the guy who was formerly blind and for Jesus. The leaders at the temple were harassing the fellow, and then they began to harass Jesus. Essentially, they said to Jesus, "Are you saying that we are blind?", and Jesus said, "If you were blind, there wouldn't be any problem at all; but, since you think you can see, you really are blind, and we have a big problem". And then He went on from there to talk about, "I am the Shepherd; I am the gate; the ones who came before me." Jesus is talking about the religious leaders that came before Him being people who were really not acting out of the best interests of the sheep. They were not fulfilling the responsibilities that had been placed before them by God. And, if you want to get a big picture of this, read the Prophets - read Isaiah, read Jeremiah, read Ezekiel - they talk about the shepherds of the sheep who are fattening up for their own use, not for the intended use of them.

So, Jesus is kind of fitting in to this process, and, all of a sudden, you have kind of this idea of a context in which Jesus is talking. He is talking to a specific group, these leaders, who have seen something wonderful, amazing, a miracle that has not been seen since the world began, and all they can do is say, "He's not supposed to do that!" Jesus is showing them how He is the Shepherd who is caring for the sheep. He is the Shepherd who will even lay down His life for the sheep, and then He makes this statement, "I am the door; I am the gate; anyone who comes in any other way is a thief or a bandit".

Now, to be honest, there are not a lot of sheep trying to get in and out by climbing over. The sheep are going through the door. It is the folks who are helping with the sheep that may be climbing in the wrong way - folks coming over the fence to take tender sheep for the family meal or whatever it might be. So, Jesus is trying to lay out for them that they need to understand that He is the one who is going to be the model and example for everything that has been told about Him in the Scriptures - all of the things about the shepherds and the leaders of the people - Jesus is that model now.

Now, as Christians, we understand Jesus to be saying, "I am the Way". If you want to figure out how to be saved; if you want to figure out how to get to Heaven, you have to come through this gate. It is a part of our teaching. People confuse that with our thinking that people who don't believe as we do are somehow immediately damned and are worth less in God's sight, but that's not true. As Christians, we believe that the way that you get into that place where God is going to care for you and save your soul eternally is through Christ, who is the gate.

Jesus is that gate. When we think about our lives as Christians, how does Jesus being that gate impact us? Jesus talks about the sheep, and I suggest that, by and large, without making too many direct comparisons, He is thinking about us - not St. Paul in the Desert specifically, but that is who is here today, right? So, we are those sheep. Jesus is the gate where we find protection and safety when there are things of which we are afraid. We find support from one another, and we also find whatever kind of nourishment or encouragement we need to go in and out and do the work we have to do.

Like all analogies, this is one of the places where that analogy of us being the sheep breaks down, because the sheep don't do much but eat, drink, bleat, and get lost. Now, that does sound like some of our membership, occasionally, but, for the most part, it is not what we are intended to be doing. We are folks who are gathered together in that sheepfold and who are expected to be in training. We are kind of like apprentice shepherds to Jesus. We are out there to learn what it is to go out into the world and find those other sheep that are lost.

Now, I am mixing a lot of things today in this, because I think it needs it. If you let the service today tell you, "Well, all I have to do is eat, drink, bleat, and make it back in before dark", I think you are missing the challenge and the calling of the Christian life. Everything that we do as Christians, everything we do as a Church - let's just say as the parish of St. Paul in the Desert, or the Diocese of San Diego, or the Episcopal Church; let's just keep it to things that we can have some impact on right now - everything has to be done through that gate of Jesus. The kinds of priorities that we set for ourselves ought to be priorities that are checked out through that gate, which is Christ.

I am not one who really likes the idea of those arm bands, "What would Jesus do? WWJD", because my problem is that, for the most part, many of the people who quote them, when they get to really significant stuff, ignore them. When you have folks who are talking about capital punishment, very few people are asking "What would Jesus do?" When we, as a Church, take on an issue, we are obligated to form ourselves as we understand Jesus would react in those kind of things.

But it is difficult because, to be honest, He didn't leave us an encyclopedia where we can look up every possible thing. We have to look at what Jesus actually did, what He said in the Gospel, and then we have to pray. We have to pray, because the Spirit of Christ, that Holy Spirit, dwells in us through our baptism to continue that presence of Christ in us, as individuals and as a body. So, Jesus is challenging us to move from being sheep that are always looking to get protected from something, to learning what it means to be shepherds - to be shepherds that are going out and caring for others and apprenticing others to take on that mantle, which is Christ.

If you look at the reading from the Book of Acts - I believe it is from the tail-end of the second chapter of Acts, or maybe the beginning of the third chapter of Acts - it talks about all of those folks who, within about 50 days after Easter, began gathering together as a flock, initially because they were scared; but soon they began encouraging one another and, empowered by the Holy Spirit, began to preach to everyone around them. In one day, they baptized 3,000, and every day more and more were added to those who were a part of the community of faith. That is an example of what the Church is intended to be - not that we are all supposed to immediately start living in a giant commune in a tent, but that we are all supposed to be people who are gathering together to support one another, to be encouraged, to be apprenticed as folks who are going out to change the world on behalf of Christ, who is the gate. We are to take the gate that we came in to get here, and we are to take that gate and set it up in all sorts of places, so that people who see it can walk through it and know that they have entered into the life of Christ. We are not supposed to just funnel them all in here to the front doors right out there on El Alameda, but we are to take those gates with us, so that people see that Christ has something to offer them - maybe it's protection from things of which they are afraid; maybe it's a sense of calling to a life that will demand more from them than they have ever thought they could put out; maybe it's the sense of fellowship and working together to change the world - but whatever it is, it is our obligation to take Christ's message, "I am the door; I am the gate", and to try that on for people. We are to model that for them and to say, "Christ is the gate, and Christ has sent me out here to let you know, 'Come on in'".

So, this is Good Gate Sunday, Good Door Sunday. Christ is the door; Christ is the gate; and we are the apprentice shepherds who are out there trying to let people know that, if they walk through that door, they will find Eternal Life, and they will find a challenge that will take everything they have to be a part of changing the world for God.

AMEN