Year A

John 10:1-10

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Saving Gate of the Good Shepherd

In the middle of the Easter season, the lectionary leaps from resurrection appearances to the tenth chapter of John and faith statements about Jesus. We hear Jesus saying, “I assure you that I am the gate of the sheep.” “I am the gate” and “I came so that they could have life, indeed so that they could live life to the fullest.” These statements taken from Jesus’ life, take on new meaning for our lives when we hear them in the season of Easter now that Jesus has been crucified, raised from the dead, and has ascended to the right hand of God in glory. These statements tell us what we can know about Christ. John’s gospel as a whole tells us what we can know about Jesus by repeatedly saying, “I am this”, or “I am that”. For example, I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection. I am the way, the truth, and the life.

The first two words of these phrases “I am” are significant because they take us all the way back to the “I am” spoken when God sends Moses back to Egypt to free the slaves. Moses asks, “Who should I say sent me? And God said to Moses, “My name is I am. “ So Moses went, saying, “The great I am has sent me.” During Jesus’ day the people wanted to know who he was. So he said, “I am” to attest to his divine sonship. I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world and today, we hear “I am the gate for the sheep.” The sheep Jesus is talking about is us. Now, most of us do not react kindly to being called sheep, and for good reason. As anyone who has spent time in a children’s petting zoo can attest, sheep can be pretty smelly, sometimes noisy, and – let’s face it – not very bright creatures.

The image of a sheep can be one that is especially distasteful in a culture that prides itself on individualism because sheep are mindless followers of others who seem to lack courage, will, and foresight to break free from the fold and forge their own way. Who wants to be like that? Yet, in this morning’s gospel story this is what Jesus claims his followers are to be; sheep that follow him and listen for his voice. This claim on those who follow him is in response to the religious authorities and their lack of understanding. At the time of this story, we find Jesus is in conflict with them and they have come, as they nearly always do in John’s gospel, to entrap him, to try and beat him at his own game. Jesus had just given sight to a man born blind which should be cause for great celebration. But the authorities don’t see it that way. They could have cared less about the man whose sight is restored.

They see only cause for yet more suspicion, and more ammunition to us against him. Therefore, they are judged to be blind while the blind man ends up seeing and worshiping Jesus as “Lord,” becoming one of those following sheep. Sheep, in Jesus’ day, did not suffer the same reputation as they do today. Quite the contrary. Healthy flocks were an indication of wealth and a sign of prestige. They were meticulously cared for – fed, watered, sheltered, protected – not by their own owners, but by hired herdsman – shepherds – whose success in stewarding the flocks demanded an intimate knowledge, not of sheep in general, but of the particular sheep given into their care. A special bond developed between the sheep and the shepherd. The sheep came to know the shepherd’s voice and would follow no other.

There is an interesting phenomenon, even today, in areas where multiple flocks are kept. Each flock, having grazed in its own field during the day, moves at dusk into a common fold for protection. Although the sheep are unmarked, the shepherds make no attempt to keep their flocks separate in this nightly shelter. In the morning, when the other shepherds arrive, they go one by one to the gate of the sheepfold to issue their own, distinctive call to their sheep. At the sound of the shepherd’s voice there is a visible stirring within the flock. Then, one by one, the sheep that belong to that particular shepherd move out from among the others and thread their way through the open gate. Today, we hear Jesus claim the gate image for himself, saying, “I am the gate.”

Gate brings to mind something that separates those on the inside from those on the outside. For over two thousand years, the church’s proclamation of Jesus as the gate has served both purposes. Certainly the words of Jesus to the disciples in John’s fourteenth chapter have become the theological content of this metaphor for many: Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” For John’s community, there were the gatekeepers who threatened to put out of the synagogue anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah. According to John, the water of baptism and not blood marked the sheep that entered through the gate that was Christ. Therefore, those who entered by the gate that was Christ had to close the gate on the flock that remained in the synagogue despite the threats of the religious authorities. Of all religious authorities who are more interested in their own prestige than in the welfare of God’s flock, the text says: “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”

Jesus characterizes the religious authorities as worse than bad shepherds. They are hired hands, who he calls thieves and bandits. When the hired hand sees danger coming, he leaves the sheep, and runs away, whereupon the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The good shepherd on the other hand, owns and cares for the sheep, knows and is known by his own sheep, and above all lays down his life for the sheep. Jesus offers himself as the entryway through which the sheep have free access to security on the one hand and sustenance on the other. “I came” from the Father Jesus says, so that God’s people “may have life, and have it abundantly.” What Jesus promises and gives is a quality of life in intimate communion with God, life that does not end, that is rich and overflowing. Good pasture indeed.

Such life is impossible for the sheep apart from the shepherd. Their safety is in numbers, but without the good shepherd to bind them together they will drift apart, each going its own way, more prone than ever to attack, starvation, and loss. But give them a shepherd and they not only follow, they flourish. They seem to know instinctively that they cannot go it alone, that they lack the strength and the resources to make it in this world without some source of guidance and protection. They must depend on the good shepherd if they are to survive and anyone who thinks that we human beings are any different and have no need of a good shepherd, should think again. Because, we are indeed weak, fearful and vulnerable creatures whose attempts to go it alone in our world continues to wreak havoc and destruction not only on us and our neighbor, but also on the creation for which we have been called to care for.

We are sinners in need of a savior, sheep in need of a shepherd. And thanks be to God, that is precisely what we have. And not just any shepherd mind you, but a shepherd who knows each one of us and calls us, leads us, feeds us, protects us and preserves us unto life that is life indeed – and all that, not because of who we are, but because of who he is. “I am the gate,” Jesus says. “Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. It seems being a sheep might not be such a bad thing after all. It all depends on whose flock one belongs to. It all depends, in other words, on who the Shepherd is. He is the shepherd the psalmist speaks of in the 23 psalm. So as the blossoms of the Easter lilies fade, may we proclaim as the psalmist did in another psalm, psalm 118, “Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.”