EASTER 4, YEAR A

April 30, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

John 1:1-10

 

On the Fourth Sunday of the Easter Season, the Gospel reading is always taken from the tenth chapter of Saint John, in which the dominant image is the Good Shepherd. In the particular passage appointed for today in the three-year lectionary, however, Our Lord nowhere explicitly says, “I am the good shepherd.” For that we have to wait until next year. Instead, this year, he says something curious, “I am the door of the sheep.” An equally good translation might be, “I am the gate of the sheep.”

 

That’s a rather odd image. What does our Lord mean by likening himself to a sheep gate? “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” 

 

The picture here is one of a first century Palestinian sheepfold. Imagine a great circular enclosure with walls built of loose stones, with a single opening to go in or out. The opening is sealed by a primitive retractable barrier, made perhaps of planks of wood or even just sticks. In the morning, this gate is opened, and the sheep follow their shepherd out to the pastures where they can graze, and streams of running water where they can drink. In the evening, the sheep follow their shepherd back in through the gate, which is then closed for the night to protect them from predators, both animal and human, as they sleep.

 

The gate of the sheep is thus the portal between the safety of the fold and the life and freedom of the wider world. If the gate doesn’t open to let the sheep out in the morning, they’ll eventually die of thirst and starvation cooped up in the fold. Conversely, if the gate doesn’t open to let the sheep back into the fold in the evening, and then close securely behind them, then they’ll become vulnerable to attack. The sheep find life and salvation, then, not just within the sheepfold, and not just out in the pastures, but rather in the constant movement back and forth by way of the gate.

 

People in the ancient world knew all about such gates. Most cities and towns were enclosed within walls, in which a gate or perhaps several gates provided passage in and out. These city gates would be open during the day but then closed at night so that the inhabitants within could sleep securely. When a hostile army approached, the gates would be shut. Sturdy gates and strong walls promised effective defense. But, if the enemy laid siege to the city, then the gates might not be opened for months or even years to come. The city walls then would become prison walls, and the inhabitants would begin to die of starvation and disease.

 

Think for a moment of the role of doors and gates in our lives today. Most of us are fortunate enough to live in houses or apartments secured by doors that we can open and shut and lock as we please. These doors function as they’re supposed to when they let us come and go at will. The results can be disastrous when they don’t.

 

A few years ago, I went outside without either my keys or my cell phone. Unthinkingly, I pulled the door shut behind me, and suddenly found myself locked out with no-one home, and no way to get into my car or back into my house. So, the door – normally the means of entry into my home – had become instead an insuperable barrier. Eventually, I rang a neighbor’s doorbell to get access to a telephone to call for help. It was not a pleasant experience. On the other hand, doors that fail to open when people need to get out quickly – say, in the event of a fire – can turn a building into a deathtrap.

 

Much Christian iconography and devotion depicts Christ as the one who opens doors. One ancient tradition holds that in the interval between his death and Resurrection Christ broke open the gates of hell to set free the departed souls there held captive. Another image portrays Christ as opening the gates of heaven to us. At the end of the New Testament, the Revelation to Saint John describes the gates of the New Jerusalem as always open; by day or night they are never shut – an image of a world where threats to our safety and security are nonexistent.

 

But, to return to more mundane doors, aside from letting us in and out, the entryways of our homes mark the threshold between private space and public space. For most of us, life is good when we’re able to move freely back and forth between these two spheres. The tragedy of homelessness is to have no choice but to spend all one’s time out in public, with no private spaces behind closed doors to call one’s own. Conversely, the tragedy of becoming a recluse is to live all one’s life behind closed doors, never venturing forth into the sunlight of public places and the warmth of human fellowship. 

 

And then there are church doors. Just as the doors of our homes mark the threshold between public space and private space, so the doors of our churches mark an analogous passage between sacred space and secular space –between the “in here” of a building set apart for the worship of God and the “out there” of the wider secular world where we carry out so much of the daily business of our lives.

 

So, if we think of the church as a sheepfold, then what might it mean for Christ to call himself the gate or the door? Well, we enter by him, and we exit by him. Unlike the thief, who comes to steal and kill and destroy, we enter in his Name to join in the worship of Almighty God. And then we exit in his Name to do his work in the world. He is both the way in and the way out.

 

If Christ is the gate, then it’s always a mistake to think that we find him only in here or only out there. When we’re out in the wider secular world, he beckons us to come back inside, to take our rest and renew our strength. He unfailingly opens to all who want to be part of his flock. Here we encounter him in worship, Word, and Sacrament. But then, he inevitably sends us back out again to do his work in the world. And there we encounter him among our neighbors and coworkers, friends and strangers—and, above all, in the faces of those whom we’re called to serve in his Name: those who are sick, hungry, homeless, or imprisoned. And so, we find our life and salvation neither exclusively in the sacred space of the church, nor exclusively in the secular space of the wider world, but rather in the continual transitioning back and forth between the two – coming in and going out by way of him who is the gate.